A taxonomy of engineering matriculation practices

There is clear evidence that engineering persistence varies significantly among institutions. 1 Institutional culture, 2 policy, 3 and selectivity 4,5 likely all play a role, but much research is needed to understand exactly which aspects of an institution most strongly influence student success. Even though retention in engineering is as good or better than other groups of majors in higher education, 1 retention in engineering continues to be one of the dominant topics of interest among engineering education scholars. This is not surprising given that the national average retention rate is 56% and can be as low as 30%. Also, while engineering retains students as well as other majors, engineering strives for a culture of continuous improvement, and some have speculated that there is potential to improve the retention rate to 80%. 6 Particularly in that attrition is more prevalent in the early semesters, 7 it is suggested that the matriculation model of an institution might account for a significant amount of the institutional variability in persistence. Indeed, recent research shows a link between an institution’s approach to engineering matriculation and important outcomes. Students entering in first-year engineering programs make different choices and experience different results than students who admit directly to a discipline. 8 There is also evidence of a relationship between an institution’s approach to engineering matriculation and persistence, switching from other disciplines into engineering, transfer from other institutions to the institution’s engineering program, likelihood of graduating in the first degree program selected, and time to degree. 9 Research combining the results of two surveys of first-year engineering programs describes a variety of characteristics of that particular matriculation model, yet that work also stops short of exploring first-year engineering programs in the context of other matriculation models. 10 Clifford Adelman’s metaphor of “paths” is used as a framework, 11 because it captures the fact that there are many ways for students to navigate the process of getting an engineering degree. Note that this is somewhat in contrast to “pipeline” metaphor, which suggests only one entrypoint with many “leaks” or exit points. 12,13 In keeping with this paths metaphor, this work considers a diversity of approaches by which students proceed from matriculating to an institution to being enrolled in a degree-granting engineering program and taking classes from faculty in that discipline.To the extent that important outcomes are affected by the matriculation practices of an institution, it is important to the engineering education enterprise as a whole to know how prevalent the various matriculation models are. Independent of this systemic objective, institutions with a diversity of matriculation models have an interest in improving these various outcomes and, in some cases, have an interest in changing from one matriculation model to another. In support of benchmarking, continuous improvement, and to avoid reinventing the wheel, institutions have much to learn from knowing which institutions use a similar matriculation model, what matriculation models are being used by peer institutions, and what matriculation models are being used by aspirational institutions. In this paper, both to establish a complete taxonomy and to classify all U.S. engineering programs using the that taxonomy, we research all 390 U.S. undergraduate institutions with ABET EAC-accredited engineering programs to determine the universe of practices leading to direct contact with a specific engineering major. Data were gathered from university, college, and departmental websites as well as clarifying telephone calls to admissions and engineering personnel. To further explain how this taxonomy may work in practice, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with College of Engineering representatives at 11 institutions to determine: 1) who makes the admissions decision for engineering students; 2) at what point may students declare an engineering major; and 3) the formal mechanism by which students are advised.