Back on track? : the lived experience of University Students who changed their first undergraduate course

Abstract

According to the Office of the Registrar at the University of Malta (UOM), on average, 1400 students withdraw from their course, whereas 700 students enrol in another one, every year (personal communication, October 5, 2016). In this dissertation, I explored the experience of university students’ transition from their first to their second undergraduate course, including their decision-making process and motivation. I used homogeneous sampling to recruit five participants (two females and three males) from the UOM population. The participants were of Maltese nationality, between the ages of 19 and 22, unemployed, and currently reading for their second undergraduate course, after having withdrawn from their first undergraduate course within the last two years (between 2014 and 2016). I adopted the qualitative research paradigm and conducted semi-structured interviews. I used Thematic Analysis (TA) (Braun and Clarke, 2006), through which I identified three themes from the data, namely ‘Going Inside and Outside of the Norm’, ‘Filling the Empty Space’, and ‘The Bright Side’. The findings have implications for career guidance and counselling, the Student Advisory Services (SAS), and the UOM.