Affordability and Engineering Students’ Hidden Curriculum Experiences

Engineering education is influenced by a hidden curriculum that shapes students’ experiences of belonging, persistence, and success. This qualitative study examined how engineering students experienced and navigated the hidden curriculum across three institutional affordability categories: highly affordable, affordable, and expensive. Open-ended responses from participants from different engineering disciplines across five institutions in United States and Puerto Rico were analyzed thematically. Three themes emerged from the findings, revealing both similarities and differences across institutional affordability categories. The first two themes, financial factors and time and effort factors, emerged as prominent hidden curriculum experiences, with students describing the costs of engineering education, employment demands, and resource constraints, as well as the need to develop time management and disciplinary strategies for balancing competing responsibilities. While some financial experiences were recognized as obstacles to continued enrollment in engineering, others emerged through challenges such as balancing employment and academic demands. For the third theme, navigational factors captured how academic progression policies and classroom practices impacted students’ belonging, academic performance, and success in engineering. These findings demonstrate that hidden curriculum extends beyond formal academic requirements to include financial, temporal, institutional, and social expectations that students must learn to navigate.