Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering is working on an ambitious initiative called 25 by 25, with a goal of almost doubling enrollment to 25,000 students by 2025. “When Dean Banks came on board, she put some aggressive plans in place, including 25 by 25,” says Ed Pierson, chief information officer at the college. “She laid out a great plan for us to focus on student retention and to expand and enhance our program to better suit today’s students.”
Better communication = higher retention
Current retention is around 60 percent; Dean Banks wants to bring that up to 75 percent by focusing on students who transfer out of engineering to other colleges within A&M. The first step? Determining why students were changing majors.
“A lot of it revolved around a simple misunderstanding of the various types of engineering,” says Pierson. For instance, lots of students were not sure of exactly what a particular branch of engineering did so they may have selected a major that really didn’t fit them well, and that could cause them to transfer out of engineering.”…Read More