April 19, 2024

OIR data shows trends in students’ major choices

Over the past 10 years, clear trends have emerged in the data on what students study at Capital.

The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) at Capital is responsible for helping the university in making policy decisions and planning for the future. They gather and analyze data on students, faculty, and staff. This data includes admissions profiles, head counts, composite ACT scores, and much more.

Each year, OIR compiles these data points into the Fact Book. Through the use of tableau, a data visualization tool, OIR has published an interactive Visual Fact Book (VFB) that can be used to show data over time. OIR’s webpage does note that the VFB is a companion, not a replacement, to the Fact Book.

According to the university’s website, Capital offers 60 majors to students. These majors for undergraduate students fall into one of five schools:  School of Natural Sciences, Nursing, and Health; Conservatory of Music and School of Communication; School of Social Sciences and Education; School of Management and Leadership; and School of Humanities.

The total headcount partitioned by schools goes back to 2008. In each year besides 2008, the schools have ranked the same in terms of total students enrolled.

The School of Natural Sciences, Nursing, and Health has always had the greatest number of students.

The next greatest number is the Conservatory of Music and School of Communication.

Following by that is the School of Social Sciences and then the School of Management and Leadership.

The School that has always had the least number of students has been the School of Humanities.

These trends can be broken down further by major. The data table for Undergraduate Enrollment by Major dates back to the fall of 2009 and goes to 2017.

The major with the greatest number of students within the School of Natural Sciences, Nursing, and Health is Nursing with 351 students in 2017.

For the Conservatory of Music and School of Communication, the most popular major is Professional Studies in Music Technology (BA) with 115 students.

In the School of Social Sciences and Education, psychology has the most with 165 students in 2017.

The School of Management and Leadership has the most even spread of students enrolled, but in recent years, business management has had the most students with 166 students total in 2017.

Lastly, in the School of Humanities, political science was the most studied major with 83 students in 2017.

For more data visualizations and the full comprehensive Fact Book, visit the Office of Institutional Research page on Capital’s website.

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