2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Historically, engineering has been characterized as a field of privilege only accessible to individuals who have access to higher education and opportunity. While the field has been working to dispel this reality, the 2020 pandemic, caused by COVID-19, emphasized this gap in accessibility within engineering education. The COVID-19 pandemic triggered several challenges, including finances. Economic challenges caused by the pandemic resulted in individuals losing their jobs, additional financial strain on households, and supplementary working responsibility to meet financial needs [source]. This is especially true for engineering students belonging to families with an income below the National median.

The purpose of this paper is to understand engineering student's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as it pertains to their family’s socioeconomic status. While existing scholarship has talked about this from the general undergraduate perspective, this paper explores the experiences of both undergraduate and graduate students particularly within engineering and how this has been highlighted through the rapid spread of COVID-19. For the initial data collection, participants shared their stories by responding to the prompt: Imagine you are chatting with a friend or family member about the evolving COVID-19 crisis. Tell them about something you have experienced recently as an engineering student.” In addition to responding to this prompt, participants were asked to provide data related to their family’s socioeconomic status. Given this data, this paper seeks to answer the following research questions:

(1) How do engineering students belonging to families with an income below the national median describe their experience of the COVID-19 pandemic?

(2) What responsibilities do engineering students belonging to families with an income below the national median have?

(3) How does engineering education cater to students belonging to families with an income below the national median?

By answering the research questions, we investigate the inequities engineering students face in relation to their family’s socioeconomic status.

To determine evidence of their experience during the pandemic, student narratives were coded for connections between student experiences and family income. This was done to better understand how financial privilege works in engineering education. Codes were grouped together to form themes to inform a thematic framework of student experiences. This work will be done to inform future work in designing approaches to make the field more inclusive and accessible regarding socioeconomic background.