Grade-point average, changes of major, and majors selected by students leaving engineering

Abstract

Graduation success, grade-point average, and destination major of ten cohorts of students matriculating and subsequently leaving undergraduate engineering programs at nine southeastern universities are studied from 1987-2002. Grade point averages are frozen at the time students leave engineering to investigate the role of grades in their decision to leave engineering and their choice of a destination major. This study adds to evidence indicating that poor performance is not the primary reason students leave engineering. Students leaving with low grades most likely select business, students with high grades more likely choose natural science majors and, interestingly, 10 to 20% at all performance levels choose education or a social science. The study also found that 10 to 15% of the students leaving engineering at all performance levels changed majors at least a second time before graduating, suggesting that changing majors is, for some, a journey of exploration rather than a matter of settling for one's second choice.