Gender Differences in Graduate Bioentrepreneurship Education - A Case Study: University of San Francisco

Graduate bioentrepreneurship education programs are sufficiently new that little has been researched concerning gender differences. This paper is a case study of the Professional Science Masters (PSM) in Biotechnology at the University of San Francisco, and an analysis of 95 students in five cohorts during the period 2012-2016. Student gender differences are presented in a number of ways, including undergraduate GPAs, GRE scores prior to application, cohort acceptance profiles, dropout-transition-failure rates, prior work experience, and post-degree employment figures. Female students were somewhat more successful than men in completing the degree program, and 100% of all graduates were fully employed in the biotechnology industry post-degree, or accepted into full-time PhD programs. Gender differences were also determined using the GLAS project, the Gunn-Lorton Attitudinal Surveys, which measures confidence levels in a variety of STEM tasks. The major finding of this paper is that males were more comfortable than females to a statistically significant degree with Transitional Technology, i.e., smartphones and computer applications, and the Internet. No gender differences were detected in attitudes regarding science and mathematics, while both genders registered low comfort with high mathematics and tasks with no science, technology or mathematics. Future research includes comparisons of PSM students will all graduate students in the GLAS database, including non-bioentrepreneurship students. Further studies are required to determine the need for Transitional Technology skills, both in bioentrepreneurship graduate work and in subsequent employment in the biotechnology industry.