Why STEM Transfers Switch to Non-STEM Majors: A Preliminary Qualitative Investigation

• In Event: 72.029 - Student Perception and Performance in STEM

Abstract

This study provides preliminary information detailing the perspectives of transfer students that intended on majoring in STEM, who subsequently switched majors. Using interviews and inductive qualitative analyses, challenges, relationships, psychological processing, and institutional association represents the high-frequency codes found within this data. Using these categories, superimposed on a PVEST conceptual framework, we attempt to understand and explain influential factors on students’ decisions to stay or leave a STEM major. Our findings provide an initial insight regarding what factors exist, the influence they have on students’ perception and experience, and students’ produced response and outcome regarding their decision to stay in or leave their STEM major.

Authors

• Terrell Roderick Morton, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Lisa Auchincloss Corwin, University of Colorado Boulder

• Cynthia Demetriou, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill

• A. T. Panter, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill