The STEM Attrition Problem
Nearly half of students who begin college intending to major in STEM leave the field within six years. For bachelor’s entrants, attrition is about 48%.1 For associate entrants, it climbs to 69%.1 Fewer than 40% of students who enter college as STEM-intending actually finish with a STEM degree. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) noted that raising STEM retention from 40% to 50% would produce three-quarters of the extra one million STEM graduates needed this decade.2
The Bottleneck: Proofs and Gateway Courses
What derails many otherwise strong students isn’t algebra or calculus skills alone—it’s the sudden shift from computation to proof-based reasoning in mathematics and computer science. Two of the most common gateways illustrate the problem:
- Calculus I: national DFW (drop/fail/withdraw) rates average around 27%.3 While Calculus I is not formally a proof course, it introduces students to theorems and justification without providing the training in logical reasoning they need to succeed.
- Intro Programming (CS1): multi-institutional studies find pass rates near 68%, meaning almost a third of students fail.4 Programming requires the same habits of precision and logical structure as proofs, yet few students enter with that preparation. In fact, the Curry–Howard correspondence—often summarized as “proofs are programs, and propositions are types”—makes clear that the discipline of writing code is fundamentally aligned with the discipline of writing proofs.
High school curricula rarely train students to read, write, and validate arguments—yet proof-based thinking underlies modern STEM fields from AI and machine learning to data science and economics. This gap is why even talented students falter in these early courses.
Why High Schools Must Act
If students graduate without proof fluency, they struggle immediately in first-year STEM courses. That leads to attrition, lost career opportunities, and weaker alumni outcomes that reflect back on schools. It’s not enough to celebrate college acceptances into STEM—schools must ensure students can get through those programs and thrive.
Andrew M. Cavallo’s 12-Week Bootcamp
This is where Closing the STEM Gap: Proofs for College Readiness comes in. Developed by Andrew M. Cavallo and based on his book of the same name, the program is a flexible, 12-week bootcamp that builds the small nucleus of skills students need most:
- Fluency in propositions, quantifiers, sets, and functions.
- Mastery of five universal proof techniques: direct, contrapositive, contradiction, cases, induction.
- Application within math students already know—Algebra II through Calculus—so the skills transfer immediately.
The bootcamp is deliverable in multiple formats: semester residencies, after-school bridge programs, or intensive summer sessions. It requires no additional teacher workload, no changes to existing curriculum, and can be implemented immediately.
Mission-Critical for Administrators
Retention—not recruitment—is the bottleneck. National data show that even a 10 percentage-point increase in STEM retention would yield most of the extra graduates needed nationwide.2 Schools that prepare students for proof-based reasoning aren’t just helping individuals succeed—they are securing alumni outcomes and institutional reputation in a future where proof-based reasoning is central to all advanced STEM work. Andrew M. Cavallo’s College Readiness Proofs Bootcamp is designed to help schools boost both admissions and long-term retention in higher education.
Call to Action
If your mission is not only to get students into STEM but to see them through to success, then Proofs for College Readiness is mission critical.
Contact Andrew- Chen, X. (2013). STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields. NCES 2014-001. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
- President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2012). Engage to Excel: Producing One Million Additional College Graduates with Degrees in STEM. Executive Office of the President.
- Bressoud, D., Carlson, M., Mesa, V., & Rasmussen, C. (2013). The Calculus Student: Insights from the Mathematical Association of America National Study of College Calculus. MAA Notes.
- Watson, C., & Li, F. W. B. (2014). “Failure Rates in Introductory Programming Revisited: A Large-Scale Study.” Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education, ACM.