Open AccessTHE EDUCATIONAL TRAJECTORY OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO ENGINEERING PROGRAMS AT A COMPREHENSIVE CANADIAN UNIVERSITY
Author(s) -
Scott Davies,
Liu Q,
Greg J. Evans
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
proceedings of the ... ceea conference
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2371-5243
DOI - 10.24908/pceea.vi0.14130
Subject(s) - demographics , grading (engineering) , diversity (politics) , engineering education , mathematics education , school district , population , medical education , psychology , engineering , political science , sociology , medicine , engineering management , demography , civil engineering , law
This paper reports an analysis of an integrated data set that longitudinally tracked over 14,000 students from Canada’s largest school board (the Toronto District School Board [TDSB]) into Canada’s largest university (the University of Toronto [UofT]). Our analysis showed that when controlling for high school academic records and other student demographics, immigrant students from TDSB were more likely to pursue engineering than other fields of study; math ability was a strong predictor for the TDSB-UofT Engineering pathway; and while engineering students had better academic outcomes than other students, they had lower CGPAs than would be predicted by their academic performance in high school. These findings reveal three characteristics of UofT Engineering: its selectivity and rigor, transnational character of its student population, and complex student diversity. The study also suggests UofT Engineering look into its grading practices.