Socioeconomic trends in engineering: enrollment, persistence, and academic achievement

While many studies have examined engineering enrollment, persistence, and academic achievement and a significant amount of literature exists regarding socioeconomic status (SES), the intersection of these is virtually non-existent. This work will begin to bridge the gap between engineering education and SES research by linking two substantial databases. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) database includes all public schools in the U.S. and the Multiple Institution Database for Investigation of Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) database currently represents ten institutions and approximately one tenth of all U.S. engineering graduates. The goal of this study is to identify relationships between socioeconomic status indicators and academic variables, including engineering enrollment, persistence to the 3rd semester, and first year GPA. Academic variables are drawn from the MIDFIELD database and high school codes are used to link National School Lunch Program (NSLP) data from the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD). More specifically, the percentage of students eligible for free lunch at each high school is used as an indicator of socioeconomic status. It is clear from this study that students from low SES schools are at a disadvantage when it comes to engineering enrollment, academic achievement, and six-year graduation. This trend is not apparent in persistence to the third semester. As new institutions are added in the future, a similar protocol can be used to expand this research further. Issues identified in this study will be used to generate SES models specific to engineering that can begin to inform academic policy, as well as the recruiting and advising of students from all strata of socioeconomic status