I chose my major on impulse. I was a freshman, in a 10 a.m. Zoom call with my adviser, watching her register me for a handful of random gen-eds, before she asked, “Do you know what you want your major to be yet?” Without thinking, almost reflexively, I blurted, “English.” And that was that.
The project I’ve been working on as a CCRC intern this summer, How Community College Students Choose Programs of Study, which we call the Program Choice study, is about how and why community college students decide their major. This has, inevitably, made me think back on that Zoom call and my own impulsive choice. Program Choice asks why community college students choose one major over another, what internal and external factors are shaping those decisions, and what institutional contexts and structures influence major choice. The study answers these questions by surveying students at four community colleges around the country about their major choices over a three-year period. There is little research on how community college students choose their majors, a gap which Program Choice seeks to fill.
Community college students are not always fresh-out-of-high-school eighteen-year-olds but are often working adults and parents going back to school to get degrees that will allow them to gain the skills and credentials needed to advance in their careers, help them earn promotions, or allow them to retrain and begin entirely new careers. Some students are there for technical programs that lead straight to employment and others to save money on tuition before transferring to a four-year university. Major choice for these students is varied and complex and has a huge influence on their post-grad outcomes and employability. Gaining a more nuanced understanding of this choice will allow colleges to better facilitate students’ major decisions and to understand the needs and interests of their students and how they can do better for them.
Though I am a student at a four-year university, I reflected on this question of major choice for myself during my time with the Program Choice team. I had always been the kid with her hand up in English classes who avoided making eye contact with the science and math teachers when they asked a question. I was always interested in the humanities, and, because my family had hoped I would go into something better paying (read: engineering or medicine), I knew I wanted to declare a humanities major early on once I started undergrad. I wanted my decision to be cemented and not a matter that was still up for debate or negotiation with them. The pandemic, too, was a huge influencing factor. My last year and a half of high school was completely virtual, and so was my college application process. My (also virtual) interactions with my college counselors and teachers were limited to things like, “Yeah, I did the FAFSA on time” and “Yeah, I turned that in.” So, although I love my major and I know now that English is perfect for me, I was really making all my major decisions alone. I didn’t have any of the guidance from counselors or teachers that people usually get during a normal senior year.
And so, my impulsive decision on that 10 a.m. Zoom call was a product of family, the pandemic, a lack of support from the adults at school, and my own interests. Similarly, Program Choice seeks to explore all the factors that impact major choice, including finances, age, employability, gender, time to completion, and scheduling, with the aim of understanding what gaps and limitations exist for students’ major choices and what can be done to close those gaps. The study is still underway, with the findings to come after its scheduled competition in 2025.
Basmala Zyada is a student at the City College of New York and a research intern at CCRC.