Final Draft

Noah Agwu

Maddie Kahl

ENC2135-142

7 February 2018

Health related undergrads retention rate plummet

Over the years the way juveniles enter and exit college has raised a red flag for many institutions across the state of Florida. An apparent increase in undergraduate students falling out of majors revolving around health or allied health-based curriculum has come to the attention of countless professionals. I personally became interested in this topic long before I composed a research question for it. Whether it be as simple as a college major switch, or a complete exit from a university, one can argue there is a growing disparity in the number of students entering these majors as undergrads to those graduating from these health programs. Life evaluations students may face could perhaps reveal some intimidating barriers such as fees, number of years in an educational facility, licensing, high competition for employment, and many others one might go through to reach their desired carrier. These issues endorse the question, what are the main reason students in bachelor medical programs in the state of Florida drop out of their original undergrad major? This question will revile what types of life changes a person might have made due to the various road blocks that may have and still present themselves.

I personally have found that no matter how passionate a student is about a career choice, the path to getting there may be so strenuous that it forces students along another rout. I was a first-year undergraduate nursing student and ended up switching majors three times before I landed in the exercise science major with a whole new outlook on where I wanted to be in life. I became fascinated with how many other students in health majors this happened to, leading me to research and collect evidence on this occurrence. Through my investigations I’ve come to find out that countless other students, not only in Florida but across the country have been dropping out of medical based majors from undergrad up through pre-med.

Studies show that there has been an increase in students pre-maturely exiting medical programs. Reasons for dropping out of these majors are arguably different for every student, as life dose not affect everyone the same. However, some reasons such as finances, academic curriculum, and student preparedness stick out as some of the main reasons students are convinced to drop out. In the article, “Graduation Rates and Attrition Factors…,” written by main author Marie Caulfield, Caulfield states “… this trend reflects a perceived need for additional experiences for career success or competitiveness in the residency matching process or, alternatively, a generational shift in the view of the educational timeline” (Page 2). This is very important because the author is narrowing down reasons for students having trouble in medical majors. Student in various institutes may either be uninformed of the requirements needed for them to get to their desired careers or just run into the realization the staying with their specific major would be made nearly impossible due to various reasons.

One major reason found for academic failure in these majors is academic readiness. Students all over the nation are affected by this. Academic readiness includes both pre-college and during college. Countless student signs up for majors out of high school unaware of the academic requirements that would be demanded of them. This can become an overwhelming situation due to the challenges a curriculum might hold. On the other hand, there are students that where aware of the academic requirement’s but failed to get off on a strong foot in there required classes and are now behind and can’t catch up due to various reasons. Academic challenges can arguable be one of the main reasons a student may feel the need to reevaluate there future and make drastic changes.

This argument however can be rebutted with an idea that there may be an increase in medical students under secondary education graduates specifically in the state of Florida. This is a solid argument, but one must identify the sample size in which the argument comes from. Students that are entering these secondary educational institutions have successfully made it through an undergraduate degree in the health field. This means that more students are choosing to go for a secondary degree as opposed to settling for a four-year degree. However, this argument dose not cover up the fact that students are dropping more and more each year from health or allied heath undergraduate programs.