<p>Research findings suggest that, contrary to popular belief, engineering does not have a higher dropout rate than other majors and women do just as well as men, information that could lead to a strategy for boosting the number of U.S. engineering graduates.</p>
<p>Purdue University (2009, August 6). Myth Of High Engineering Dropout Rate Refuted By New Study. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 6, 2009, from <a href=“http://www.sciencedaily.com*%5B/url%5D”>http://www.sciencedaily.com*</a> /releases/2009/08/090804114104.htm</p>
<p>What’s interesting (but not surprising) is how many of those in non-engineering majors started in something else, but nearly all engineering majors started in engineering.</p>
<p>“Data show that the nine institutions vary dramatically in how well they retain engineering students over eight semesters, ranging from 66 percent to 37 percent.”</p>
<p>and </p>
<p>“Engineering programs, on average, retain just as many students as other programs do.”</p>
<p>The retention rate of 66% to 37% sounds reasonable and supportive of the “myth” of high engineering drop out. So that means that other majors have ~50% drop out rates too? That is incredibly high.</p>
<p>Some key details are missing. The impression I got from this article is that engineers are more sure of themselves at a younger age than other majors.</p>
<p>This study seems to confirm exactly the opposite of what was just said by the OP. When you piece together these two statements:</p>
<p>
and
this indeed suggests that engineering has a very high attrition rate. Although we do not have the data that says how many people graduate in other particular majors compared with how many start in them (e.g. how many people graduate with a BS in economics compared to how many people matriculated with economics as their declared major), we can infer from the 70%+ 6-year graduation rates at most universities that that the attrition rate is, on average, much lower outside of engineering.</p>
<p>I see that while it seems many majors have people both flowing in and out, engineering sees primarily out.</p>
If only half of the people in social science majors started in social science majors, isn’t it clear that a huge number of people are switching? The article doesn’t give all of the data, but what is there doesn’t contradict the thesis and I’d give the benefit of the doubt to the guy who has spent years doing research on this topic. Blame the writer for leaving stuff out.</p>
<p>How do the graduation rates prove anything? Every single student could switch majors twice and the graduation rate would not be affected.</p>
<p>Yes, but the point is that people are switching back and forth between majors but the net result is a smaller movement outside of engineering. I even gave a specific example of the kind of information we would need to really pin down where all the kids are going.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Once again, the point is that people are graduating in <em>some</em> major. The overall graduation rate is much higher than the graduation rate from an engineering program. Some major other than engineering is graduating all those kids who dropped out of engineering. It doesn’t matter who is graduating all those kids who started out in psychology or some other major because assumably they would receive a far similar number of students transferring into the major.</p>
<p>The author has carefully (or perhaps poorly) worded what the research says so as to make it sound counterintuitive, but really it’s in line with what I expect at least.</p>
Wait, so when people switch out of psychology or math, it doesn’t count, becuase they switch into other “arts and sciences” majors? The guy says that people switch out of all sorts of majors including engineering at similar rates, but hardly anyone switches into engineering. The data in the article doesn’t contradict that.
So engineering has a recruitment issue, not a unique retaining issue, just as the article says.</p>
<p>Read between the lines, lockn. Any notion that might be held by people with regards to engineering would have to do with the number of people left in engineering relative to the number of people that started in there. I don’t think when anyone says “engineering has a high dropout rate” that they are meaning to say “I bet a lot more people switch out of engineering than the average major” without regards to how many others switch in. Therefore, that non-myth referenced in the article was non-debunked and the research was taken out of context in that regard.</p>
<p>Certainly, there was more to the article than that, but when I couldn’t get past believing the introduction I didn’t bother to read much further.</p>
<p>I’ve heard it in the the context “be careful going into engineering, they weed people out like crazy, you don’t want to take classes then have to switch”.</p>
<p>lol. let’s assume hypothetically that the average IQ of an engineering major is higher than most other majors (something we can probably agree on w/o an organized survey lol). Then, if the dropout rates of engineering majors are similar to others, then that means it weeds out the same proportion of people, but that proportion contains people with higher IQs.</p>
Read the difference: “Have to switch” and “Want to switch”. Chances are that people from the other just wants to do something else while many engineering students can’t handle the curriculum.</p>