Prediction of the Probability of Graduation of Engineering Transfer Students

Abstract

THERE IS little doubt in the minds of I many that the educator of today is deeply inter ested in the prediction of the future. E v e n a casual examination of the literature readily dem onstrates the willingness of investigators in ed ucation to devote considerable time and effort in attempts to determine their ability to predict the educational scene of tomorrow from known data of today. Specifically, repeated studies have been made to determine estimates of the future academic achievement of students, those estimates being based upon such present measures as scholastic aptitude, mechanical aptitude, interest, and previously demonstrat ed scholastic ability. It is evident that the results of these efforts to predict, most of which have been based upon principles of correlation and linear regression, have assisted the instructors and counselors of students. This is true for the most part in en gineering education as well as in other areas. Needless to say, however, the degree of assis tance has varied greatly. For example, pre dictive studies concerning certain groups of students are comparatively few in n u m b e r. One such group is the transfer student group, especially the transfer students in engineering. Although education research and editorial comment reported in the higher education journals tend to exclude the question of the po sition of transfer students in colleges and uni versities, the importance of this group of stu dents is steadily increasing in the opinions of many. In engineering, for example, instruct ors and administrators alike are becoming more and more aware of the impact on engineering colleges made by the undergraduate students who first began their college studies at institu tions of higher learning other than the one from which they ultimately hoped to graduate. The academic and social adjustments to be made by such students who transfer from one institution to another are often genuine problems for the instructors and counselors of both institutions concerned. The Division of Engineering at the Iowa State College enrolls sizeable numbers of transfer students each academic year. Estimates have been made that as many as 40 percent of the en tering engineering students at the beginning of a fall quarter had received college credit from other institutions of higher learning. The per cent of the engineering graduating class who were originally transfer students has been a s large as 50 percent on occasion. In the light of these figures alone, further in vestigating of the collegiate academic careers of the transfer students entering engineering would seem warranted. In addition, college of ficials and transfer students have repeatedly in quired about the likelihood of a student's aca demic success in engineering after transfer. The answers to such questions have been shrewd guesses at best since few adequate tools have beep developed which will reduce to administra tive routine the prediction of a transfer student's academic success in the Engineering Division. It was the purpose of this study (1), there fore, to devise an instrument to predict the prob ability of academic success in engineering of students who transferred from other institutions