Multiple Starting Lines: Pre-College Characteristics of Community College and Four-Year Institution Engineering Students In response to the pressing need to expand and diversify the engineering workforce, there has been a focus on using community colleges as pathways to four-year engineering programs. The Obama administration, for example, has emphasized expanding this pathway into STEM fields by leveraging and focusing resources on the community college sector. Although practitioners and researchers have considerable knowledge and understanding of the experiences and achievements of community college students, there has been little research on community colleges as a pathway to the bachelor’s degree in engineering. The purpose of our study is to investigate the potential for success via this pathway by comparing students who identify as “pre-engineering” in community colleges with students who have successfully navigated the four-year undergraduate degree in engineering.

By comparing students enrolled in the community college to those who have successfully transferred to four-year bachelor’s programs, we may better understand the entering pre-college characteristics of community college students that are likely associated with successful transfer to four-year engineering programs. Data for this study are drawn from a broader study funded by the National Science Foundation, entitled Blind for Review, which collected data from engineering undergraduates and alumni, faculty, program chairs, and associate deans in a nationally representative sample of 31 four-year colleges and universities and from pre-engineering students at 15 community colleges.

For this paper, we analyze data collected from three different survey instruments: 1) a survey of pre-engineering students enrolled in community colleges (n=1,306); 2) a survey of currently enrolled engineering seniors and “super-seniors” in their fifth year of undergraduate study (n=5,406); and3) a survey of engineering graduates surveyed three years after earning their bachelor’s degrees(n=1,420). Specifically, we examine the academic preparations and personal experiences (e.g., sociodemographic characteristics, high school academic preparation and achievement, and personal and social experiences with which they arrive to college) that characterize students who begin the path to an engineering degree in a community college and who plan to transfer to a four-year engineering program.