The Effect of Cooperative Education, Contextual Support, and Self-Efficacy on Male and Female Student Retention

This study presents the final results of a three-year longitudinal study of retention among male and female undergraduate engineering students enrolled at four major universities: Northeastern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and the University of Wyoming. It examines the effect of demographic characteristics, cooperative education, contextual support, and three dimensions of self-efficacy and their change over time on retention. It is based on a pathways model that links contextual support and cooperative education and other forms of student work experience to self-efficacy as a basis for retention in college and in the engineering major. As a longitudinal study, it incorporates measures at three time periods during the students' academic experience: their second, third, and fourth years. The original data pool constituted all second-year students in the colleges of engineering from the four participating universities. Student respondents initially filled out a 20-minute survey, among which were assessments of three forms of self-efficacy. They then filled out comparable post-surveys one and two years later (as third and fourth-year students) during which those selecting co-op could have completed at least their first set of co-op placements. The findings verified the pathways model. Academic self-efficacy and contextual support in all time periods were found to be critical to retention. Generalized contextual support was found to be particularly important to women and appears to serve as an inducement to stay in school and in engineering. Work self-efficacy, developed by students between their second and fourth years in school, was also an important factor in retention, though it is strongly tied to the students' participation in co-op programs. In particular, higher retention was associated with the number of co-ops taken by students. It was also found that the quality of the co-op placement, in particular through such dimensions as the chance to make a difference, to be part of a team, and to apply knowledge from one's major, enhanced students' subsequent work self-efficacy. Co-op students were also found to rely less on support provided by their colleges, friends, parents, and academic advisors. They were also found to value the instruction of their professors less once returning to class after their first co-op experience - perhaps a reflection of the latter's potential lack of current and real-world understanding or the realization that useful knowledge can also be gained in the working environment. Co-op students' GPAs were also found to decrease less between the second and third years than those of non-co-op students. The finding regarding the impact of co-op on work self-efficacy is claimed in this study to have opened up the so-called" black box of co-op," which articulates the practices and behaviors of cooperative education that shape its contribution to the undergraduate experience. Among the demographic variables, a relatively high GPA was found o be an inducement to persist in engineering and in school. It was also found, at the second survey point of the study, that a student's prior SAT/ACT scores had a measurable effect on retention. Finally, those students who were accustomed to work over a relatively long period of time were especially Page more inclined to leave the university compared to those who had less work experience in their lifetimes. Among the contextual support variables, support from friends and from one's college was found to explain retention at the time of the first survey as students reflected on their freshmen year experience. In an unexpected but modest finding, as we found with returning co-op students, those who persisted in the major and in school were more critical of their instructors than those who left. The findings for co-op in this study not only lend support to those who have long asserted that quality co-ops can enhance undergraduate retention but also demonstrate co-op's enduring enhancement of students' work self-efficacy.