Reasons Influence Students’ Decisions to Change College Majors
Maram S. Jaradat, Ed.D

Abstract
The purpose of the study was to understand why students decide to change their majors and the factors that influence their decisions in the Middle East universities. The three categories presented by the different researchers in the reviewed literature; (1) Personal & course preferences; (2) influential issues and (3) job issues were the lens used by the researcher in addressing the relationship between the factors and students’ later major change. The researcher wanted to explore students’ perceptions about the reasons that mostly affected their decisions to change their majors. The participants were 1725 undergraduate students in a Middle East university of which 494 students were changing their majors. One survey was used to collect the data for this study: Influences on Choice of Major Survey. The researcher found that 28% of the students in this university were changing majors. She also found that college change had significant correlations with the negative factors presented in the three categories. The analysis showed that students in their first year were changing majors because of the difficulty of their prior majors (r=-.207, p< .000). Students in their second year were changing majors because of their college instructors (r=-.019, p< .023). Students in their third year were changing majors because of their prior majors that were difficult (r=-.362. p<.046) or not challenging(r= -.227, p<.015) and some of the introductory courses they did not like or were difficult (r=.298, p<.001). Students in their fourth year were changing majors because of their parents’ influence to choose other majors (r= .271, p< .009)

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