Should We Still be Talking About Leaving? A Comparative Examination of Social Inequality in Undergraduate Patterns of Switching Majors

Switching majors from one field of study to another is often thought to be a natural and productive part of the undergraduate experience—a process by which students find the best fit for their needs, interests, and aspirations. Yet, in fields with strong social closure, such as the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, students’ decisions to switch their major from one field to another do not always fit the innocence of this functionalist explanation. Instead, many students switch because of conflicts they experience in the social and cultural conditions encountered in these fields (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). Building from different theories, the authors examine the relationships of why a student may or may not switch from one major to another, when taken together the academic, cultural, economic, and institutional contexts of students’ switching and persistence decisions.