<p>By major:</p>
<p>ChemE
Civil
CE/EE
Mechanical
All others</p>
<p>Nuclear Engineering:</p>
<p>So many…</p>
<p>Materials: Of my class of 17 we lost one to math. And…umm…that’s it.</p>
<p>Of the 30 or so people that were in my material and energy balances course, I can think of only four who did not finish or get on the track to finish. 2 of them dropped out of engineering during the balances course and 2 dropped out later (one for no other reason than he didn’t like engineering, he was making As but switched to math).</p>
<p>In ChE, once you get past the sophomore level courses (thermodynamics, fluid flow principles, heat and mass transfer principles), it’s smooth sailing.</p>
<p>My daughter started with 40-something in ChemE. She said they are down in the mid-30’s now. One went to Biomed Eng and reported back it was so much easier. Don’t know what happened to the others.</p>
<p>I remember back at my other college, we started initially with 50 chemical engineering students. After two freshmen semester we lost all but 13. Obviously, your first two years is an elimination process with tons of projects and homeworks. Over here, we lost only 15 out of 60 students. It might be because my current college is easier?</p>
<p>With me, it was kind of difficult to tell. By the time I got through all the intro courses where there were ALL the engineers, I was late into my sophomore year. It was tough to tell who washed out of engineering and who never really went in the first place. For the twelve of us who started taking upper-division courses in civil engineering for my year, we all stayed there. Two ended up in law and business.</p>
<p>Civil - We started with about 18, but 4 left the school because of academic problems (not sure if they stuck with engineering or not though). All left before junior year, which was when we had 4 transfer students join us. Of the 18 graduates, all 18 stayed in the civil engineering field, which was not the case in past years.</p>
<p>…oh, except for the one that jettisoned his civ career and became an actor, but I’d say he qualifies as an outlier.</p>
<p>If you want to talk about outliers, a civil engineering undergrad at where I did my graduate studies was just signed by an NFL team as a quarterback.</p>
<p>Awhile back I found this article on the internet: :)</p>
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<p>Thanks UCLA Band Mom. I agree. I also remember struggling to learn early math and science on my own in college because my teachers were so inept at the art of teaching. Or else they just didn’t care. The deficit was further highlighted by having one or two excellent teachers for comparison.</p>
<p>But the problem starts WAY before college. We have had quite a few math and science teachers at the middle and high school levels that just could not or would not teach. It is no wonder that so few kids are prepared to be successful in math, sciences and engineering at the college level. I am sure there are multiple reasons for poor teacher preparation, but I feel powerless to affect any change. The best I can do is supplement and reteach, so that when they get to the college level, my kids CAN do learn it on their own (just in case they have to!) </p>
<p>BTW, I agree with the author’s view on technical textbooks, too. Clearly, teaching incompetency extends to the written form also.</p>
<p>That dude must’ve been an engineering major at UF; described the experience to a ‘T’.</p>
<p>um…Engineering is not that hard, seriously. Yea, I mean you have to put a little bit more effort in it than you would in, say, Asian Studies. But if you do the HWs, problem sets and examples and understand them, then you should get above average on exams most of the time, which in most cases means a B-/B. I had a 3.67 GPA in HS, so I was never part of the “cream of the crop” students, but I pulled up in CC with a 3.80 GPA and now am a senior in UCLA EE about to graduate in a year. The author of the above article is clearly a moron and made a good decision choosing to switch majors. We really don’t need or like whiners like him in Engineering. So, yea, Engineering is difficult but very interesting if you are curious about the theories behind how things work (Computers, Cell Phones, Cars etc.) and like to solve problems.</p>
<p>About the dropout rate, I have heard of a lot of people here who have switched out of Engineering into Liberal Arts (mostly Business/Economics or Psychology)…which makes me wonder what made them choose Engineering in the first place, and what they expected it to be?</p>
<p>About lkf725’s hypothesis about the “problem”, I agree that the Science/Math curriculum is a joke in America compared to say in India/China (I did my schooling up to 5th grade in India, and I was flabbergasted at the level of Math students were learning when I came to the States). But there is also a cultural problem which is plaguing America in regards to the relative unpopularity of Math/Science. In general, the value system when it comes to appreciating education in this country is abysmal, which can be seen by viewing the emphasis placed on “Sports” and making the Jocks heroes in our schools and the general disdain or indifference shown towards people who are interested in Math or Science, with them being labeled as “Nerds”. And we can see the consequences of this today. Go to any Graduate program in the top schools in EE/CS or even other Engineering majors and you will find it flooded by mostly International students, whose culture value technical knowledge and realize its potentials. Also a concern is the lack of Mathematical rigor expected from students in schools here. In my HS, Algebra II was considered the “highest-level” Math class students needed to take to graduate. In my AP Calculus class, there were maybe 10 students in total. This is totally unacceptable in this technological era and explains the dropout rate in Engineering programs in the country. In most Asian countries, Algebra (I and II) is taken way before the student even reaches high school so the students there are well prepared for any Mathematics they encounter in college and are not scared by the subject.</p>
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<p>Anecdotal evidence: In my program, 10 of the 13 grad students that I knew were born outside of the United States. The entire full-time civil engineering faculty was born overseas, except for one. </p>
<p>We’re not alone in this problem. It’s happening over in Japan as well. Here’s a link to a NY Times story about it (free registration required): <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/business/worldbusiness/17engineers.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=login[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/17/business/worldbusiness/17engineers.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=login</a></p>
<p>Some interesting excerpts:
- By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.
- In the meantime, the country has slowly begun to accept more foreign engineers, but nowhere near the number that industry needs.
- Some young Japanese, products of a rich society, unfamiliar with the postwar hardships many of their parents and grandparents knew, do not see the value in slaving over plans and numbers when they could make money, have more contact with other people or have more fun.
- But engineering students see themselves as a vanishing breed. Masafumi Hikita, a 24-year-old electric engineering senior, said most of his former high school classmates chose college majors in economics to pursue “easier money” in finance and banking. In fact, friends and neighbors were surprised he picked a difficult field like engineering, he said, with a reputation for long hours.
-A labor ministry survey last year showed there were 4.5 job openings for every graduate specializing in fields like electronic machinery.</p>
<p>the problem with switching out of engineering because it’s too hard is that in most of those cases, one’s switching out because his/her GPA is suffering and it’s hard to land those prestigious finance jobs even if you switch into Economics major by then(as far as i know)…</p>
<p>… for one thing, if i was a HS senior again, i know i’d definitely not apply for engineering again.</p>
<p>i’d instead apply to one of those programs that guarantees you an admission into its medical school. i’d rather become a doctor (duh)…</p>
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<p>I don’t think a moron could write with that sort of articulation.
And it’s not ‘whining’, it’s strategic use of hyperbole to get his point across.</p>
<p>You can’t possibly compare how you (or anyone you know) did to how he did, there’s too many discrepancies (different school, professors, etc) to consider.</p>
<p>Kind of O/T, but I’ve heard a lot of engineering students complain about how they wish they went into finance without realizing that the average econ/bus majors get pretty mediocre jobs compared to the average engineering major. An economics major from an average university with average grades isn’t going to get some hot-shot financial job while an engineering major from an average university with average grades has a significantly higher starting salary and better job prospects.</p>
<p>If you’re talking about graduating from top-notch universities with high grades, then yes, the graduates who go into finance will make plenty of money and have great career prospects compared to engineers, but a huge amount of non-econ/finance students from such universities get good financial jobs as well – especially engineering, math, and physics majors.</p>
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<p>Going to a CC you had the luxury of not dealing with the first 1-2 years of weed-out courses in engineering. </p>
<p>Calling the author a moron is naive… sounds to me like the author just didn’t have the patience or drive to stick with engineering. Neither of which deal with his intelligence.</p>
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<p>somehow you pulling 3.80 GPA in CC and graduating from UCLA EE makes you so proud of yourself and the right to call the author a moron? w.t.*</p>
<p>i think it was a right for him to switch out of engineering but that’s only because it’s pretty apparent that engineering wasn’t his thing.</p>