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April 2007

Did you know.... that an NC State undergraduate who changes their major to a curriculum in another college is extending their graduation by an average of half a semester?

For students who are not intra-campus transfers, the average time to graduation is 8.7 semesters.  Intra-campus transfers graduate, on average, in 9.3 semesters.  This comes from an analysis of new freshman cohorts entering NC State in 1998-2000 and only including students graduating in six year (twelve semesters) or less. 

Table I

When compared to college of entry peers, Table I shows an inter-college major change increases time to degree for every college except Natural Resources, where changing majors to another college decreases average time to degree by .2 semesters.  Conversely, transferring from CALS, PAMS, or Textiles increases average time to graduation by almost a full semester.

Table II

Table II is an expansion of Table I; it shows the average semesters to graduation by college of entry and exit.  It also shows that when compared to peers in the college of graduation, internal transfers take more time to graduate than students who entered the college as freshman.  Design or Engineering have the longest time to graduation with an average exceeding five years.  It also shows that students transferring into CALS and Management also graduate more quickly than other internal transfers.

Table III

Table III shows the transfer patterns of students changing majors.  The largest source of internal transfers is First Year College, which isn’t a surprise given the intent of FYC is to help students find the right major to transfer to.  The next largest source of internal transfer students is Engineering, which sent over 100 students to CHASS, CALS, and Management.  A substantial number of students also transferred from CALS to CHASS.

Table IV

 

Table IV shows the good news: from the 1995 cohort to the 2002 cohort, fewer students are transferring from one college to another (when we exclude non-degree granting curriculums like FYC).  As intra-campus transfers take longer to graduate, fewer intra-campus transfers will improve campus graduation rates which is good news for the campus and its students.

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