Getting better with age: Older students achieve higher grades and graduation rates

This study uses longitudinal data from eleven public, research universities in the U.S. to compare grades in required courses, graduation rates, and final cumulative grade point average of traditional (TRS) and nontraditional (NTS) students who ever declared engineering as a major. There have been national calls for increasing the numbers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in the U.S., and nontraditional students represent a large potential source of STEM majors. Engineering is studied separately because it has been found to be different than other STEM disciplines. The participating institutions are representative of large public universities that offer a large majority of U.S. engineering degrees. Understanding the choices and outcomes of nontraditional students can inform the process by which the students earn their degrees. Our results show that NTS earn grades that similar (but consistently higher) to those earned by TRS in Science, Mathematics, Engineering courses and have similar cumulative final grade point averages. NTS also graduate in six years at higher rates than TRS. By recruiting and matriculating more NTS, engineering programs can increase six-year graduation rates and graduate more engineering students.