Are there any studies that look at what percentage of college students stick with the first major that they declare? Can this be broken down by individual subject or at least sciences/social sciences/arts?
Ballpark estimate from one (large) school:
Googling “percent college students change majors” brings up a lot of claims that “most” or “over half” or “sixty percent” of students change majors, but I saw no data breaking it down by discipline.
It’s hard to compare across institutions because some colleges allow students to wait and “declare” a major later in the process. Students at those colleges might “mentally” change their major a number of times before signing up for one, but it’s all off the record, requires no paperwork, and the college likely has no indication of it. A similar student, enrolled at a college which expects/requires students to declare a major earlier, might end up doing one or more formal changes of his major. Therefore, the second college might report a higher frequency of change even though these students’ thought processes and goal shifts were essentially the same.
There may be some national surveys which ask, but for the same reasons they need to be specific about that they mean.
I don’t think of myself as switching majors. I did change the specific degree I was aiming for. I started off with a General Computer Science degree, then changed to specialize in Networking (still a CS degree), then they added a Computer/Network Security CS degree, and I started in on that. Now I can no longer go to that school I am now going for a Network Administration CS degree. I am going to get a CS degree, and depending on how long the cash will hold out I am going to go for a Masters.
My brother is another that didn’t change degrees he just added to them. He started out in auto repair at the local community college. He took just about every class they offered, and could have had his degree except he didn’t take any of the general education requirments. Instead of taking those he took electronics classes. Now he is doing the general ed stuff, and will end up with 3 or 4 degrees from the same school.
-Otanx