## 9 Discussion
Key Finding 11: All Students: Switching from FES to PES: For students who switch from FES to PES, the probability of halting increases, while their GPA is more likely to decrease. Key Finding 12: All Students: Switching from MES to FES: For students who switch from FES to MES, the probability of halting decreases, while their GPA is more likely to increase. Taken all together, while not proving causality, the analysis above helps to support the claim that selection and employment of an FES and MES enrollment strategy improves academic outcomes over a PES strategy. Nonetheless, the relation between students' academic performance and changes in enrollment strategies requires a more thorough investigation. Although these two are commonly interconnected forces, it is essential to understand which acts as the trigger and when, in doing so, universities can be empowered to more efficiently identify and address early signs of academic trouble. Furthermore, while this study focuses on the effect of enrollment strategy on academic performance, in \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Source** & **DF** & **Adj SS** & **Adj MS** & **F-Value** & \(p\)**-Value** \\ \hline College & 4 & 1.442 & 0.36049 & 0.43 & 0.789 \\ Switching & 1 & 4.9863 & 4.98631 & 5.89 & 0.019 \\ College \(\times\) Switching & 4 & 0.2207 & 0.05518 & 0.07 & 0.992 \\ Error & 54 & 45.6819 & 0.84596 & & \\ Total & 63 & 52.6965 & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 21: Analysis of variance for the linear regression model for FTIC students switching from MES to FES. Figure 12: comparing changes in GPA between students who switch from MES to FES and students who stay MES for FTIC and transfer students. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Source** & **DF** & **Adj SS** & **Adj MS** & **F-Value** & \(p\)**-Value** \\ \hline College & 5 & 0.7707 & 0.1541 & 0.24 & 0.941 \\ Switching & 1 & 6.1566 & 6.1566 & 9.76 & 0.003 \\ College \(\times\) Switching & 5 & 2.8658 & 0.5732 & 0.91 & 0.481 \\ Error & 66 & 41.6462 & 0.6310 & & \\ Total & 77 & 50.5700 & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 22: Analysis of variance for the linear regression model for transfer students switching from MES to FES. the opposite direction, the impact of students' academic performance on their motivation to change enrollment strategies is left as an interesting topic for future studies. This study also gives rise to an additional question regarding observed differences in performance between transfer students and FTIC students that employ a part-time strategy. Specifically, why do PES transfer students outperform PES FTIC students with respect to GPA? In Section 8, we posited that this observation might be explained by a filtering process whereby transfer students from community college might have a history of part-time enrollment, as such they are acclimated to enrolled and performing well within this structure. Nevertheless, additional research is needed to understand other potential factors (if any) that drive this positive outcome in transfer students. Any related finding could potentially shift this paper's major assertion that FES and MES are almost always preferred over PES, as there may exist unique conditions in which PES is a suitable strategy. Finally, it is worth noting some limitations associated with this study. First, all the analyses in this paper were conducted within the context of universities within the United States; the criteria and ability for students to enroll full-time or part-time enrollment likely differs in other countries. Second, we restricted our study to enrollment during the Fall and Spring semesters. Thus, information regarding summer enrollment is excluded when constructing the HMM. In practice, summer enrollments may be informative and provide greater context in understanding students that employ PES and MES. While including summer data could complicate the analysis, it may reveal key information on students enrollment behavior.