Self-Esteem, Factors of Discontinued Studies, and Compensatory Behaviors: The Lived Experiences Of Discontinued Students From the College of Engineering and Architecture of the Cebu Institute of Technology - University

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, numerous students from the Philippines decided to discontinue their studies. With that, the study focused on the effects of discontinued studies on the self-esteem of students who decided to do so. The factors that were considered and compensatory behaviors were also investigated. The research conducted to investigate the variables used a transcendental phenomenological design. It utilized the snowball sampling method to gather and interview six (6) students from the Cebu Institute of Technology – University who were enrolled in programs under the College of Engineering and Architecture (CEA) but dropped out when the pandemic started. Through thematic analysis, the researchers came up with global themes that described the shared phenomena among the participants. These global themes gave findings that there were positive and negative implications for self-esteem, multiple factors that led to the decision of discontinuing one’s studies, and the compensatory behaviors present since dropping out. The findings of this study can become useful in understanding the thought process of dropouts and can offer new insights on the lack of educational achievement and performance can affect self-esteem. This is in contrast to existing studies that focus on the effects of self-esteem on educational achievement instead.