Shock to the System
To boost graduation rates, schools must help transfer students adjust and thrive.
By Natasha L. Smith, Jacob R. Grohs, and Eileen M. Van Aken
Increasing the persistence of undergraduates in higher education has been a goal for several decades, particularly within the engineering education community. In the past decade, engineering educators have focused retention efforts on transfer students, primarily those moving from two-year community colleges to four-year schools (known as a vertical transfer). However, an increasing number of students are starting at traditional four-year institutions and transferring to other four-year institutions to complete their degrees (deemed a lateral transfer).
Students may choose to transfer for a variety of reasons. Better understanding these, as well as student needs and eventual success factors, can provide a new perspective on persistence in engineering—one that is not tied to degree completion at an originating institution but that recognizes and accounts for more fluid movement across institutions. The lessons learned can help grow the number of engineering graduates.
In this study we wanted to determine the makeup of our institution’s engineering transfer students (lateral versus vertical) and examine the effects of several variables on post-transfer academic performance and graduation rates. These included demographics, transfer GPA, credits earned before transferring, subgroup, and three transfer shock measurements. The subgroups were categorized as lateral in-state, lateral out-of-state, vertical with an associate’s degree, and vertical without an associate’s degree. The transfer shock measurements were calculated using the difference between the student’s term GPA and transfer GPA for each of the first three terms of full-time enrollment. Multiple logistic regressions were used to determine which factors significantly affect graduation in four years.
Demographics and credit earned before transferring were not found to influence graduation in four years, while transfer GPA and transfer shock in each of the first three terms were found to significantly impact four-year graduation. On average, transfer GPAs of the subgroups were very similar; however, differences appeared in their three transfer shock measurements. The four-year graduation rate for lateral in-state transfer students was 3 percentage points higher than lateral out-of-state, 6 percentage points higher than vertical with an associate’s degree, and 8 percentage points higher than vertical without an associate’s degree transfer students. These findings point to a different transition experience between the subgroups, which influences their ability to graduate in four years.
Our study is the first to classify and compare engineering transfer student subgroups and to consider the change in their academic performance in their first three terms of enrollment compared with their transfer GPA. The findings demonstrate that transfer shock, commonly cited in transfer student literature, is not a onetime occurrence from which students then recover. We discovered a decrease in the term GPA compared to the transfer GPA in each of the first three post-transfer terms. We believe that a transfer student’s GPA in their first post-transfer term is indicative of the future post-transfer term GPAs, rather than representing a temporary change. The amount of decrease in students’ GPA has a positive correlation to four-year graduation rates. These findings point to the importance of onboarding and support programs for engineering transfer students through their first several terms.
The results of our study also suggest that engineering transfer students are a diverse population and require a more tailored onboarding and support system to address their varying needs. While this research does investigate different post-academic experiences, it does not address the reasons why each subgroup chose to transfer and how that might influence their persistence. Additional scholarship focused on the lateral transfer student’s decision to transfer is an important next step to better understand how the engineering education community can more broadly support engineering student persistence.
Natasha L. Smith is director of enrollment management at Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering, where Jacob R. Grohs is an associate professor and assistant department head for graduate programs of engineering education, and Eileen M. Van Aken is a professor and department head of industrial and systems engineering. This article was excerpted from “Comparison of Transfer Shock and Graduation Rates Across Engineering Transfer Student Populations,” which appeared in the fall 2021 Journal of Engineering.
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