Heterogeneous Academic Achievement Profiles of Initially STEM-Intending Students Over the College Years

Heterogeneous Academic Achievement Profiles of Initially STEM-Intending Students Over the College Years Tong Li, Chris Kirk, and Leticia Oseguera (bio) Academic achievement, often measured by GPA, has been extensively studied in the literature of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, including its impact on student persistence and success in college (Rask, 2010). However, most research has only looked at students’ performance at a single point in time, such as their first-year GPA, and has not explored how their academic performance changes over time. As a result, there is a gap in our understanding of the longitudinal aspects of students’ intellectual journeys through college. While some evidence has suggested that students follow different paths of development or academic progress over time (Fesseha et al., 2020; Hong &You, 2012; Robinson et al., 2018), only a few studies have investigated features of college students’ academic achievement changes over the long term, particularly in STEM fields. The literature on college students’ academic performance over time has suggested that while it can be unstable, many students can improve their GPA throughout their college studies. Humphreys (1968) made this observation, and more recent longitudinal studies have supported this idea, including a study by Mabel and Britton (2018). Factors affecting the variability of college students’ academic performance over time, such as GPA slope and variance, have also been investigated. Cheng et al. (2012) found that female students performed better over time and experienced less GPA instability when they had higher levels of family social support. However, research has identified persistent disparities in academic achievement in specific student populations. Sharkness et al. (2010) found that graduating seniors who entered college with an interest in STEM majors exhibited a significant cumulative GPA difference between White students and their Black and Latino peers, even after controlling for precollege academic preparation, college experiences, and institutional contexts. While these studies attempted to uncover the longitudinal features of college students’ academic performance, there has been relatively little research into the different change patterns, particularly among those who entered college with an interest in a STEM major. This study aimed to fill this gap by adding a nuanced understanding of the academic performance change patterns of a group of initially STEM-intending college students at State University and was guided by two research questions: (a) What are the change patterns in those students’ academic performance across different semesters? (b) How are these patterns related to their background and college experiences? [End Page 728] METHODOLOGY We conducted latent profile analysis (LPA) on eight semester-GPA scores of a group of initially STEM-intending students to identify the change patterns of students’ longitudinal academic profiles. LPA is a statistical method that aims to identify distinct groups of personal attributes based on continuous variables by fitting multiple models with an increasing number of profiles until a model that best fits the data is found (Spurk et al., 2020). Although there is no universally agreed-upon minimum sample size for conducting LPA, some scholars have suggested that a sample size of more than 500 is sufficient to detect the correct number of latent profiles in the data (Tein et al., 2013). Using this as a guideline, we selected a total of 625 students, which comprised a group of aspiring STEM students who were participating in a STEM support program, along with a comparable group of peers who were selected based on their similarity in terms of race, gender, and intended STEM majors at State University. State University is a public, land-grant research university with an enrollment of more than 48,000 students as of fall 2022. It has an acceptance rate of approximately 50% and a 6-year graduation rate of around 85%. The university has a predominantly White student body, with over 60% of students identifying as White. Approximately 46% of students are women. The students included in this study were admitted to the university between 2012 and 2016 and reported an intention to pursue a STEM major at the time of admission. The primary indicator we focused on in this study was students’ academic performance, which we operationalized as the composite GPA score at the end of each semester. Through a program...