Abstract
Attrition from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers remains a persistent challenge across Ghana’s higher education system, with a substantial share of graduates leaving STEM-related employment within five years of completing their degree. This study examines whether structured peer and faculty mentorship during the final year of undergraduate study affects long-term career retention. Using a longitudinal cohort of 400 STEM graduates drawn from five Ghanaian universities between 2018 and 2020, we compare outcomes for students who participated in a formal mentorship program against a matched control group who did not. Five years post-graduation, mentored graduates showed a 34% higher rate of continued employment in STEM-related fields, along with higher reported job satisfaction and a greater likelihood of pursuing postgraduate study. We discuss implications for university policy and propose a low-cost mentorship framework that other institutions could adopt.
1. Introduction
Ghana’s national development strategy places significant emphasis on building domestic STEM capacity, yet universities and employers alike report that a large proportion of STEM graduates transition into unrelated fields shortly after completing their studies. Prior research has pointed to limited early-career guidance, unclear pathways from degree to employment, and a lack of sustained relationships with mentors as contributing factors. While mentorship programs have been studied extensively in North American and European contexts, comparatively little empirical work has examined their effectiveness within West African higher education systems, where institutional resources, labor market structures, and cultural expectations around mentorship differ considerably.
This study addresses that gap by evaluating a structured, university-administered mentorship program implemented across five institutions: University of Ghana, KNUST, University of Cape Coast, University of Education Winneba, and Ashesi University. The program paired final-year STEM students with either a senior faculty member or an alumnus working in industry, with monthly structured check-ins over a two-semester period.
2. Methodology
We recruited 400 final-year STEM undergraduates (200 mentorship participants, 200 matched controls) across the five participating institutions during the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 academic years. Matching was conducted on discipline, gender, prior academic performance (cumulative GPA), and self-reported career intent at baseline, to reduce selection bias between groups.
Participants were surveyed at three intervals: prior to mentorship assignment, at graduation, and five years after graduation. The five-year follow-up survey measured current employment sector, whether that sector was STEM-related, job satisfaction (5-point Likert scale), and postgraduate enrollment status. Response rate at the five-year mark was 78% (312 of 400 original participants).
3. Findings
Mentored graduates were significantly more likely to remain in STEM-related employment five years after graduation (71%) compared to the control group (53%), a difference of 18 percentage points, corresponding to a 34% relative increase in retention. Mentored participants also reported higher average job satisfaction (4.1 out of 5) than controls (3.4 out of 5), and were more likely to have enrolled in a postgraduate program (29% versus 17%).
Subgroup analysis suggested the effect was strongest among female participants, who showed a 22-percentage-point retention gap between mentored and non-mentored groups, compared to a 15-point gap among male participants. Qualitative interview data indicated that mentorship relationships were particularly valuable in helping female students navigate workplace environments where they were often underrepresented, and in providing role models who had successfully built long-term STEM careers.
Participants most frequently cited three benefits of the mentorship relationship: clearer understanding of realistic career pathways, direct introductions to employers or graduate programs, and sustained encouragement during early-career setbacks such as job searches or postgraduate application rejections.
4. Discussion
These findings suggest that relatively low-cost, structured mentorship interventions can meaningfully improve STEM career retention, particularly for groups that are otherwise underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Unlike large-scale curriculum reform or infrastructure investment, mentorship programs of the type studied here require modest institutional resources: coordination staff, a matching framework, and a commitment from faculty and alumni to participate.
We note several limitations. The five-year follow-up period, while informative, cannot capture longer-term career trajectories, and further work should examine ten-year outcomes. Additionally, self-selection into the mentorship program, despite matching efforts, cannot be fully ruled out as a contributing factor, since students who opted into mentorship may have differed from controls in unmeasured ways, such as motivation or existing professional networks.
5. Recommendations
Based on these findings, we recommend that Ghanaian universities consider:
Formalizing mentorship programs as a standard component of final-year STEM curricula, rather than an optional extracurricular activity
Prioritizing mentor-mentee matching that considers gender representation, given the stronger effects observed among female participants
Establishing lightweight tracking systems to monitor graduate outcomes beyond the point of degree completion, enabling longer-term evaluation of program effectiveness
Building partnerships with industry alumni to expand the pool of available mentors beyond faculty capacity
6. Conclusion
Structured mentorship during the final year of undergraduate study is associated with meaningfully higher STEM career retention five years after graduation. Given the modest resource requirements relative to the scale of the observed effect, mentorship programs represent a promising and scalable intervention for Ghanaian universities seeking to strengthen their national STEM talent pipeline.
