The Early Bird Gets the Worm: Major Retention in CS3

Enrollments continue to rise in Computer Science courses, yet fostering inclusive climates and retaining diverse student bodies remain key challenges. Gender ratios remain heavily skewed and many demographics are severely underrepresented. Numerous studies investigate student retention in introductory courses, but few focus on later stages of the CS retention "pipeline", where techniques and findings from earlier courses may no longer apply.

In this work, we focus on the relatively understudied transition from introductory CS courses to upper level courses via CS3 (data structures and algorithms). We conduct an analysis of archival data for a CS3 course at a large, public university in the US, analyzing anonymized student assignments and university student records to identify factors that result in students choosing not to declare the major. Our analysis indicates that sex alone is not enough to predict students leaving the program after CS3 (despite reporting a desire to declare the major). However, we identify that students intending to major in CS who take CS3 later in their academic careers (often associated with non-traditional students) are 13% less likely to actually declare a CS major (p = 0.00005). Further, we find a disparity between these students and their "fast-tracked" counterparts in their project performance as measured by an autograder (p = 0.00003). Our findings indicate that the strategy of introducing students to CS early in their college careers and swiftly passing them through the intro sequence is effective in retaining students, yet unintentionally leaves behind those who reach CS in a more roundabout way.