Enduring Commitment: Exploring Why Low-Income and First-Generation Students Choose to Stay in Engineering

Given the intense challenge of engineering schooling, gatekeeping capabilities of the courses, and the high dropout level of engineering students, this study aims to uncover what factors fuel students to show enduring commitment throughout the course of their engineering education.An abundant number of studies focus on student persistence; however, this study focuses on students with minoritized identities who may face additional challenges because of financial stress and lack of experienced familial support.This study uses 11 interviews from undergraduate engineering students who are either first-generation students, low-income students, or both.During these interviews, participants were asked why they chose engineering as their major and if they had ever thought about leaving engineering.The answers to these questions were then thematically analyzed and analyzed using existing motivation frameworks.Our findings show that low-income and first-generation students share intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivations for choosing engineering.Moreover, despite their financial disadvantages, low-income and firstgeneration students are more likely to choose their engineering majors due to an intrinsic motivation factor.