Abstract

This study had two purposes. The first purpose was to identify the reasons why college students who already changed majors wanted to do so again. The second purpose was to understand the process of changing majors among college students who had already changed majors once. In this study, qualitative data was collected from 33 college students who changed majors one time. Among them, 11 students were interested in changing majors again while the remaining 22 were not. The Consensual Qualitative Research-Modified method was used to analyze the data. There were three major findings. The first finding was that students who intended to change majors again did so to find new opportunities for their futures and out of dissatisfaction with their second major. The second finding was that students who intended to change majors again had initially changed majors due to difficulties and discomforts that they had with their first major. However, this avoidance motivation was not observed in students who were not interested in changing majors again. The third result was that students who did not intend to change majors again searched more for career-related information while changing their majors initially than those who did. This paper presents these results’ implications for college students, career counselors, and college administrators.