The National Academy of Sciences and Engineering have issued reports calling for renewed efforts to train new scientists and engineers to help the nation to remain competitive on the global scene. This raises the question of what can be done to help US colleges and universities produce more engineers. The common perception is that engineering disciplines produce more ex-students than other majors, which would not help the US' lack of young engineering graduates, but is that true, or a common misperception?

New research shows that engineering actually does not have a higher drop-out rate than any other field of study, but it does show that very few people drop into the field in the first place. The work also finds that women drop out at a rate no higher than their male counterparts, which runs counter to another widely held fallacy.

The data behind the research was collected from a group of nine higher education institutions in the southeastern US and included more than 70,000 engineering students over a 17-year period. The analysis found that students who begin their academic path in engineering are no more likely to drop out (of engineering, not college in general) than those who picked any other major.

The retention rate showed a great deal of variability among years and institutions over the eight semesters covered—it ranged from 66 percent to 37 percent. Women and men left engineering at the same (relative) rate, even though the percentage of women is so much lower in engineering fields.

One finding that did separate engineering from other major fields of study was apparent in the percentage of graduates who had started college in their eventual major; that's an indication of how many switched into a major partway through their collegiate career. Only half of those with social science degrees started in that field, 60 percent of physical science majors did, but a full 93 percent of engineers began their academic career in engineering.

This last bit of data shows that next to no one decides to become engineer once they reach the collegiate level, indicating that the low numbers of entry-level engineers is not one of retention, but one of recruitment. It's a point that appears time and again when looking at these types of issues. The authors offer up a few ideas that may help students transition into engineering, such as not having separate prerequisite courses for engineers, such as specialized calculus or lab sciences. Removing hurdles like having to take a slightly different version of a previously completed class will help with this.

Personally, I still contend that if you have not interested a student or child in engineering by the time they reach college age, then it is too late. It's something I have personally observed, and the data contained in these papers could be interpreted as supporting it. I think they best way to get people interested in the existential pleasures of engineering—to borrow a book title—is to introduce it to them when they are young, before they come to the false realization that engineering is hard, potentially scary, and a field devoid of creativity.

Journal of Engineering Education, 2008. PDF link: (open access)

Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, 2009. DOI: Upcoming.