Why women drop out of engineering programs - Higher Education - Women's Experiences in College Engineering project

Why do many women drop out of engineering majors? A comprehensive study finds that the reason is not lack of academic ability, but a discouraging academic climate and women not feeling part of a larger engineering community. Females who succeed in the major often do so by availing themselves of a variety of support activities and resources during their undergraduate years, suggests the large-scale, multi-institutional, longitudinal examination of women's experiences in college engineering programs, by Goodman Research Group, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

While women make up 56.8% of the U.S. workforce, a mere 8.5% of the country's engineers are female, and they compose approximately 20% of enrollment in engineering schools. Over the past decade, a large number of research studies have sought to understand why. The Women's Experiences in College Engineering (WECE) project is the first statistical investigation into the institutional and personal factors that keep women in undergraduate engineering. The three-year study found that participation in support activities is vital to these undergraduates, who need to feel they are part of a larger community in engineering. WECE investigators discovered that women who participated frequently in social activities--particularly functions such as guest lectures, field trips, and social events--were more likely to stay in the major.

On average, the women who stayed had higher grades in their engineering-related courses than those who left, but two-thirds of those who quit had engineering grade averages of A or B in a previous year, suggesting that many students capable of doing the work were leaving anyway. Even those who were doing well academically often were discouraged.

The study collected data from over 20,000 undergraduate women and from faculty and administrators at 53 post-secondary institutions. Approximately half of these institutions maintained formal Women in Engineering programs, which seek to recruit and retain female students by offering a range of academic and social supports such as mentoring, tutoring, skills workshops, career explorations, and social opportunities. Others provided similar supports without benefit of a formal program.

The study's report outlines a number of specific recommendations for supporting women in undergraduate engineering. Females are most likely to leave engineering majors in their freshman or sophomore years. With the exception of technical institutes, colleges and universities generally do not accept students into a field-specific engineering major until their junior year, suggesting that support measures are particularly crucial during the early undergraduate semesters.

Students who held positive views of the climate in their department and their classrooms were most likely to stay in engineering. Those who left often cited factors such as workload, competition, and discouraging faculty and peers. The report recommends various ways to make the academic climate more welcoming, such as providing academic advisors, requiring fewer "grunt" courses in the first two years, and making room for students to pursue interests outside of engineering.

The study also confirms previous theories that a woman's self-confidence is a major factor in whether she persists in the major. Noting that "a student's self-confidence increases when she feels that someone believes in her engineering abilities, cares about her, and wants her to be part of a community," the report urges that engineering programs seek to bolster women's self-confidence by increasing faculty sensitivity to the issue, among other means.

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