Pathway, choice of major, and peer economic status of nontraditional students in engineering

Research on nontraditional students in engineering is sparse. We use longitudinal data from eleven public, research universities in the United States to investigate nontraditional (NTS) and traditional (TRS) students who ever declared engineering as a major. Nontraditional students could help fill the national call for more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in the United States. The researchers focus specifically on engineering students because it has been found that they are different from the other disciplines under the STEM umbrella. The research questions addressed in this paper were: Is the peer socioeconomic status different for nontraditional students compared to traditional students? What choices are nontraditional students making for their major, and are these different from or the same as those made by traditional students? Is the pathway different for nontraditional students compared to traditional students? This paper shows that socioeconomic status of nontraditional students in engineering is lower than traditional students in engineering. We show some different choices that nontraditional students make for their engineering major. This research also shows that nontraditional students who start in engineering are less likely to switch to and graduate in other majors than traditional students - non-traditional outcomes are more binary, resulting in either graduation in engineering or leaving the university without a degree, so non-traditional students lead traditional students in both of those outcomes.