Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics undergraduates’ knowledge and interest in quantum careers: Barriers and opportunities to building a diverse quantum workforce

Efforts to build the workforce in support of the second quantum revolution are growing, including the creation of education programs that will prepare students for jobs in this area. We surveyed 186 undergraduate students with majors across the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and followed up with group interviews to understand their perspectives. The project was designed to understand what these STEM students know about quantum and quantum career opportunities and their level of interest in pursuing a career related to quantum. We found that most of the students know very little about quantum. Nevertheless, except for students in the life sciences, there was an interest in quantum careers. Across STEM majors, women were less likely to express interest in quantum careers than men, but this difference disappeared when we examined only physical and computer science majors. Of the few students who had knowledge of quantum concepts, most learned about this topic from online media, especially online videos. Some students reported learning about quantum in high school classes, where it was taught as an extension beyond the usual topics of the course. The undergraduate STEM students in our study identified multiple ways they would like to learn more about quantum, including short videos, seminars, courses, certificates, and degree programs.

Figure 1

The pie chart shows students’ self-described knowledge of quantum careers. The histogram shows the number and percentage of students in each bin with respect to how they self-described their interest in pursuing a career related to quantum with students rating their interest on a continuous scale between 1 (strongly disagree) and 5 (strongly agree). The four bins are (1–1.9), (2–2.9), (3–3.9), (4–5). The $y$ axis is the number of students, and the bin labels show the percent with respect to the total number (125) of students who answered the question.

Figure 2

Histograms showing student survey responses to “I am interested in a career related to quantum” divided up by gender (left) and by students’ major (right). The four bins are (1–1.9), (2–2.9), (3–3.9), (4–5). The numbers on the bar chart indicate the number of students in each bin. The scatter plots show the full data sample distribution. Note that the $y$ axis in the upper plot is arbitrary—points were assigned $y$ values randomly to make them visible.