Research bursts myths on engineering

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Aug. 4 (UPI) -- Engineering, contrary to popular thinking, doesn't have a higher dropout rate than other majors, and women do just as well as men, U.S. research shows.

"Education lore has always told us that students -- particularly women -- drop out of undergraduate engineering programs more often than students in other fields," Matthew Ohland, an associate professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education, said Tuesday in a news release.

"Engineering programs, on average, retain just as many students as other programs do, and once women get to college, they're just as likely to stick around in engineering as are their male counterparts."

Findings were based on examining a database of 70,000 engineering students from nine institutions in the southeastern United States, said Ohland, who manages the database, which followed students over a 17-year period ending in 2005.

Research also showed few students switch to engineering from other majors, indicating a potential strategy for increasing the number of U.S. engineering graduates, Ohland said.

"A huge message in these findings is that engineering students are amazingly like those in other disciplines, but we need to do more to attract students to engineering programs," he said. "If you look at who graduates with a degree in engineering ... 93 percent of them started in engineering. The road is narrow for students to migrate into engineering from other majors."