2024 Collaborative Network for Engineering & Computing Diversity (CoNECD)

The soaring rates of mental health symptoms and distress among college students constitute a significant challenge for higher education, especially among undergraduate engineering students. In a recent national study, Lipson et al. (2022) found a significant increase in rates of depression (134.6%), anxiety (109.5%), and suicidal ideation (45.5%) among 350,000 racially diverse college students between 2013 and 2021. Students with marginalized or minoritized identities (e.g., students of color, first-generation college students, sexual and gender minorities) are even more likely to experience greater mental health concerns (e.g., Lipson et al., 2018; Lipson et al., 2022). Preliminary data collected from students with marginalized identities at UNL for a larger grant about mental health in engineering suggests that financial challenges can exacerbate students’ mental health challenges and impact the kinds of opportunities available to them. More investigation is needed to understand the relationship between financial hardship and minoritized engineering students’ mental health, collegiate experiences, and career opportunities.

To address this need, the purpose of this paper is to examine minoritized engineering students’ experiences of financial hardship and the connections between these realities and their mental health, collegiate experiences, and career opportunities. We use a qualitative study design, drawing on interviews conducted with 21 minoritized undergraduate engineering students at a large, comprehensive, land-grant university in the mid-west. Interview data was collected using an interview protocol that the PI team developed to probe at constructs of interest, including mental health (e.g., depression and anxiety), discriminatory experiences (experiences with classism and perceived ethnic discrimination), career self-authorship (e.g., career adaptability), academic outcomes (e.g., college persistence), and cultural wealth (e.g., community cultural wealth). The interview data will be inductively analyzed using thematic analysis (Miles, Huberman, Saldana, 2019). We plan to compare the data from participants who experience financial difficulties to the data from participants who do not experience financial difficulties to identify differences in experiences. We will begin by open coding the data, wherein we will inductively develop codes from the data. Then, those codes will be condensed into categories, which will be further refined into themes. The themes derived from this process will describe the data and answer the following research question.

How do personal financial constraints impact the collegiate experiences, mental health, and future career opportunities of undergraduate engineering students’ who hold one or more traditionally marginalized identities?

By identifying variations in experiences and opportunities, this study aims to develop comprehensive recommendations and strategies to address structural barriers faced by minoritized students with financial disadvantages in engineering. Through rigorous qualitative research, we aim to identify the opportunity gap and develop recommendations that will increase engineering student retention, improve overall experiences, and establish specific strategies for supporting students with financial difficulties. We also intend to evaluate the impact of these financial hardships on students’ collegiate experiences, career opportunities, and mental health. We plan to share our findings with members of the engineering education community to better support and understand minoritized students burdened with financial constraints.