I think I have come up with a potential thesis topic: the UIUC Engineering Pathways program. I want to study how it is the same and/or different from the normal transfer process. I would focus on: if and how their backgrounds and pre-UIUC results differ from other transfer and native students, and try to find strengths and weaknesses of the program. Some downsides that I can see are that the university does not track transfer students differently after they arrive on campus, and potential difficulty getting data on Pathways students directly. But I think it would be useful to know how designated programs may help or hurt students.
To start I collected data from College Measures (collegemeasures.org) about the Community Colleges that are connected to the Pathways program, as well as general information about Illinois community colleges . I also found information on UIUC transfer students overall (http://www.pb.uillinois.edu/Documents/transferchars/2012/2012-Transfer-Characteristics.pdf) . Both sets of data were for 2012, and can be found summarized here.
For spring break, it intend to look more into the Engineering Pathways program: checking it's requirements, finding out how many students utilize it, etc. I will also try to find similar programs both at UIUC and other universities to compare and contrast their set up. Perhaps there has been some scholarship already on guaranteed transfer programs, so I will try to find what others have done. Finally, I want to use the data I collected to see if the chosen Community Colleges are any different from others in Illinois, and if Pathway students are any different from other transfer students.
Hopefully this is a reasonable topic for my senior thesis. Any comments would be appreciated.
As I said in a previous comment. One aspect of this that may be unusual is the high rate at which students exit from Engineering, while there revenue model relies on relatively constant enrollments in all four cohorts - freshman through senior year. This makes transfers important to fill vacancies.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say normal transfer process, there is some issue as to what that means. Are transfer students strategic for the host institution? Or are they incidental? It would be good to say something about this in making your comparison.
One other thing to ask is about pathways where the student transfers out of the engineering track while still at the community college. If that is happening with some regularity, then the process you are looking at is about only the survivors. If that is what's going on, it is interesting, but the results need to be interpreted carefully in this case.