Undergraduate Changes of Major

GVSU Office of Institutional Analysis
September, 2020

Following are some statistics showing the frequency with which GVSU undergraduates make changes to their major program. Please note the following points about how changes are identified:

These figures are compiled from census data, which are captured once per semester. This means that changes only register if they are evident in students' records on the census dates of successive enrollment terms. In actuality, students may make changes to their programs in between census captures that would not be counted by this method. For example...

Student is a Biology major at start of fall term (in August). In October she changes her major to Psychology, then in November switches to Biopsychology, which is still her recorded major when the winter term census occurs in January. This would be counted as one change (from Biology in August to Biopsychology in January).
If the same student had changed to Psychology in October, but back to Biology in November, no change would register at all, since her major would have been Biology in both the August and January censuses.
If she changed from Biology to Psychology in October, but didn't re-enroll after that fall, no change would register, because there is no subsequent census record with which to compare.

Since there are 3 semesters in a year, the maximum annual number of changes that can be recorded for an individual student is 3;

For the purpose of counting changes, "Degree-seeking", "Non-degree", and "Honors College" are not counted as majors;
Recall that students can have simultaneous majors. For this report, a "change" means that a student dropped a previous major, either with or without adding a new one. For example...

Student changes from English to Writing;
Student changes from English / Writing to English;

If a student adds a second (or third or fourth) major without dropping a previous one, it's tabulated here as a "New Major";
If a student progresses from pre-admit status to the corresponding secondary admit major (e.g. Pre-Engineering to Engineering), it is not counted as a change, but is tabulated as a "Secondary Admit." However, if a student adopts two secondary admit majors (as is common in Seidman College of Business -- e.g. Pre-business to Finance / Marketing), it is counted as both a secondary admit and a new major.

The following table shows the number of each kind of transition per year for recent academic years. The prevalence of major changes has remained relatively steady as measured by the number and percentage of students experiencing at least one change, as well as the average number of changes per student. The percentage adding new has remained steady since 2015-16. The percentage of students undergoing secondary admission to a major has increased since 2016-17.

Transitions in undergraduate major by academic year

	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20
Total	21206	21374	21640	21183	20919	20393
Changes per student
0	17835	18234	18637	18271	17959	17331
1	3057	2899	2756	2653	2716	2854
2	311	239	247	256	240	207
3	3	2		3	4	1
New majors per student
0	20090	20430	20754	20264	19979	19499
1	1115	942	885	919	940	893
2	1	2	1			1
Secondary admissions per student
0	20059	20291	20241	19793	19481	18958
1	1147	1083	1399	1390	1438	1435
Changes	0.17	0.16	0.15	0.15	0.15	0.16
New Majors	0.05	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.04
Secondary Admissions	0.05	0.05	0.06	0.07	0.07	0.07

The next table shows the number of transitions experienced over the whole undergraduate academic careers of students earning bachelors degrees in recent years. Only students who started at GVSU as new freshmen (FTIACs) within 6 years of their graduation date are included. Almost 50% of degree recipients did not change their majors at all. The average number of changes is about 1 per student. About 27% of the degree recipients had undergone a secondary admission process.

Transitions in major over undergraduate career, by graduating class

	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20
Total N	2362	2464	2566	2666	2874	2815	2919
Changes per graduate
0	1052	1133	1251	1239	1448	1424	1474
1	858	929	886	936	946	959	998
2	336	296	316	345	356	330	327
3	87	74	92	118	99	81	87
4	25	27	18	23	22	19	28
5	4	4	3	5	3	1	5
6	0	1				1
New Majors per graduate
0	1831	1892	1950	2042	2223	2185	2324
1	508	542	582	592	628	601	581
2	23	30	34	31	22	29	13
Secondary Admissions
0	1985	1977	2048	2073	2199	2075	2133
1	377	487	518	593	675	740	786
Averages
Changes	0.81	0.76	0.73	0.79	0.72	0.69	0.7
New Majors	0.23	0.24	0.25	0.25	0.23	0.23	0.21
Secondary Admissions	0.16	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.3	0.27