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from the university, or if they had not attended the university for 2 semesters or more.
Students who were officially designated as “stop outs” on the university records were not
considered to have dropped out of the program, as they had indicated an official intention
to return to the program after a brief break in attendance. All other students, still in the
engineering program in the spring of 2002 or who graduated earlier as an engineering
major, were considered “stayers”.
Of the 352 students who took the survey in the Fall of 2000 and/or the Spring of
2001, 33 could be classified as dropouts by 2002. Note that the percentage dropping out
from our survey is smaller than the actual percentage dropping out of the program, as
presented above. This is because a high proportion of students who dropped out were
already on their way out when the survey was taken and did not complete the survey:
they may not have been enrolled in required classes (where the survey was distributed),
they may have had higher absenteeism, they may have been less cooperative with
requests from the engineering faculty to participate.
The breakdown of the students who took our survey during the academic year
2000-1 and later dropped out of the engineering program is presented in Table IIF-5. The
majority who dropped were first-year students at the time of the survey. About 25% who
dropped out were sophomores when they took the survey; 12% juniors; and only 3% (1
student) seniors. Since most students switch out during the first two years, this
distribution is to be expected. However, it does not mean that they necessarily dropped
out as first-year students or sophomores; only that when they took our survey they were
first-year students or sophomores. Because of the small numbers, we have not broken the
“leavers” down by when they left the program.
IIF-219