Persistence and attrition in engineering: Understanding the nature of students' experience with barrier courses

To understand the dynamics of attrition in engineering, the study examined the experiences of two groups of students at the University at Buffalo, including persisting engineering students, and students who had enrolled at UB as engineering majors, but had switched majors sometime during the first two years.; With respect to the persisters, the goal was to examine the connection between student performance in barrier courses and persistence in engineering. Barrier courses typically have the highest rate of failures and/or withdrawals. The theory is, students fail or withdraw from key courses that are necessary to major in a particular field, and switch to a major that does not require them. For this study, it was decided that the engineering barrier courses are calculus, physics and statics.; With data from student surveys, personal interviews and transcripts, the study described the experiences of persisters, and identified the factors that may possibly impact their performance in barrier courses and ultimately persistence.; The study about non-persisters used data from transcripts and personal interviews to describe their performance in, and experience with barrier courses, and determined their reasons for transferring out. While transcripts helped describe students' performance in barrier courses, their movement out of engineering and into other majors, and a history of courses taken after leaving engineering, personal interviews provided data on why they left, and how they coped with the transition.; The study has established that high school academic experience, student behaviors including study habits, work habits, coping strategies, students' perceptions about faculty behavior, including teaching styles and the “weed-out” culture, the culture of support in the engineering school and motivation to succeed in engineering all impact students' performance in barrier courses. The study showed that motivation to succeed may be the reason why some students persist even when they “struggle” with barrier courses.; The study has also provided a profile of the non persisters, and has detailed their experiences and progress towards a degree after they transferred out. Together both these components of the study have helped increase the understanding about the nature of persistence and attrition in engineering.