Factors Influencing Computer Engineering Student Success

Abstract

In this paper, we analyzed 14,280 student-semester entries from 3,005 undergraduate computer engineering students, enrolled at a minority serving institution over 10 years, to investigate contextually relevant factors of student academic success. We highlighted the change in student demographic and performance over the 10 years. We also examined the relation of student semester Grade Point Average (GPA) with the following factors: living on campus or off campus, being enrolled part-time or full-time, ethnicity, gender, being first-generation college student, financial need, and transfer status. When appropriate, we also considered the role of ethnicity within each of the factors. In addition to statistical tests (t-test, ANOVA, Tukey HSD, and Games-Howell) to compare the average semester GPAs, we also calculated the effect size in the cases where the difference in GPA was significant to demonstrate the effect of the factor on students’ semester GPA.