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Women and Men of the Engineering Path: A Model for Analyses of Undergraduate Careers

by
Clifford Adelman

This monograph, by Clifford Adelman of the U.S. Department of Education's research and statistics division and a technical adviser to NISE's "College-Level I" project, was published jointly by U.S.E.D. and NISE.

Executive Summary

This monograph seeks to provide college academic administrators, institutional researchers, professional and learned societies, and academic advisers with a tapestry of information to improve their understanding of the paths students take through higher education. It begins with the observation that of those students who earn bachelor's degrees by age 30, 16 percent entered with no particular major in mind, and only 42 percent of the balance earned degrees in their intended field. These data indicate a considerable degree of student field migration.

The study demonstrates that migration rates are by-products of factors in students' choice of field, including curricular momentum and quality of academic performance carried forward from high school, the growing trend toward multi-institutional attendance, the nature of community college curricula for transfer students, credit loads and stop-out behavior, classroom experiences, changing student perceptions of the labor market, and student misconceptions of what given fields of study and occupations are all about.

Engineering was chosen as a case because it brings all the variables affecting choice, persistence, and migration into play. And because undergraduate engineering programs are offered in a limited number of institutions, we can offer a sharper primary story line about student history and choice. Engineering was also chosen because, while the overall "attrition" from the field is not high after students reach the "threshold" of the field, it is much higher for women than men, an unfortunate situation in a discipline with a historically severe gender imbalance.

The evidence used in Women and Men of the Engineering Path comes principally from the 11-year college transcript history (1982-1993) of the High School & Beyond/Sophomore Cohort Longitudinal Study (HS&B/So), as well as the high school transcripts, test scores, and surveys of this nationally representative sample.

This is the first national tracking study of students in any undergraduate discipline that identifies attempted major fields from the empirical evidence of college transcripts. A "curricular threshold" of engineering was defined, and the careers of students described with reference  to that threshold. While 16 long-term "destinations" of students who reached the threshold are identified, they are collapsed into four for purposes of analysis:

• Thresholders, who never moved beyond the requisite entry courses.
• Migrants, who crossed the threshold of the engineering path, began to major in engineering, but switched to other fields or left college altogether.
• Completers, some of whom continued on to graduate school by age 30.
• Two-year-only students, whose college experience was confined principally to engineering tech programs in community colleges.

Selected Findings

Attendance Patterns and Degree Completion.

• Attending more than one institution is not a drag on degree-completion--for anyone. More than half of the HS&B/So college students attended more than one college, and 40 percent of this group crossed state lines in the process.

• Community college transfer students evidence strong preparation, with degree completion rates equivalent to those of 4-year college students. The transfers constitute 1/6th of the degrees awarded in engineering.

• The bachelor's degree completion rates (in any field) of students who reach at least the threshold of the engineering path are much higher than those for anybody else.

• While there is a 20 percent gap between men and women on the engineering path who eventually earn degrees in engineering, among the most qualified students there is no difference in degree completion rates.

The Empirical Core Curriculum.

• Changes in the empirical core curriculum of engineering students over two decades reflect increases in sub-field concentrations in mechanical and computer engineering and declines in civil and chemical engineering.

• No matter what one's final destination on the engineering path--threshold, migrant, or completer--bachelor's degree recipients spent more time in calculus than any other course. For degree completers in engineering, one out of every seven credits earned was in mathematics.  

• Of the groups on the engineering path, the migrants have much higher course participation rates than others in physics, computer science, computer programming , and philosophy, providing some clues as to where these students go when they leave engineering. 

• Among engineering degree completers, only four courses outside the sciences, mathematics, and technology—introduction to economics, English composition, general psychology, and introduction to management—turn up frequently on transcripts.

High School Backgrounds.

• The highest level of mathematics studied in secondary school is strongly correlated with bachelor's degree completion in any field. The correlation is stronger for men than women, and stronger, still, for students from the lowest socioeconomic status (SES) quintile. But once students reach the threshold of the engineering path, these effects diminish.  

• In terms of high school mathematics and science backgrounds, women and men who come to the engineering path look remarkably alike, yet very different from the women and men who never attempt to major in engineering. Women, however, have a higher academic performance profile (academic grade point average, class rank) than men, regardless of where they end up in college.

• Women who eventually completed engineering degrees had slightly higher SAT scores than male completers and were more uniform in test performance, whereas women who left engineering performed much worse than men on SAT and evidenced greater variance in performance.

• About 4 percent of high school graduates with curricular momentum in mathematics and science and high quality academic profiles were not interested at all in engineering, rather, for the most part, in "pre-professional" preparation in college and (for women) in health sciences/services majors. Women constitute 60 percent of this high-talent group, and among high-talent students, very few input measures can be squeezed to explain nuances in subsequent student choice.

Choice and Attrition in Engineering.

• As evidenced among labor market participants at age 28/29, engineering attracts a high proportion of people who had a consistent occupational goal starting in high school and a low proportion of people who were constantly changing their career objectives.
• Women who intended to major in engineering enjoyed the highest degree of parental support for bachelor's degree attainment among all women--or men--who intended to major in any field.
• Once in higher education, there is considerable "traffic" among the disciplines, some (but not all) of which can be explained by students' curricular momentum. Students who migrated from the engineering path did so primarily to disciplines requiring strong quantitative skills--computer science, business, and physical sciences--skills in which these students had made considerable investments.
• Credit loads in engineering are not much higher than those in other fields, though engineering students perceive overload because of a high ratio of classroom, laboratory, and study hours to credits awarded. The perception of overload is one of the major factors involved in decisions to leave engineering.  
• Women and men earn similar grades in engineering courses; and the women who leave engineering have higher grades than the men who leave. Women who leave engineering do not leave because of poor academic performance, though they do evidence a higher degree of academic dissatisfaction.

Selected Major Findings

(1) Curricular momentum begins in secondary school, and sets up both trajectories and boundaries. Secondary school mathematics study is the key booster to these trajectories, with performance in trigonometry the gate to potential science or engineering majors in college. The trajectories accelerate and the boundaries become more defined in college. Curricular momentum explains why nearly half the students who leave engineering (the migrants) eventually earn bachelor's degrees in the physical sciences and computer science.

(2) There are considerable differences between engineering and science that confuse students in high school and eventually come into play in field migration. Engineering practice, as students discover only in time, involves clients (and all the ambiguities, cultural contexts, and negotiations that come with clients) far more than the practice of science, and client specifications lie at the core of engineering design. The differences in the culture and texture of engineering and science are highlighted in women's experience in both the college laboratory and the workplace.

(3) The metaphor of "paths" is a far more flexible and accurate way to describe student histories than "pipelines." We cannot micromanage choice, and judge a system to be deficient because students are constantly exploring, acquiring, and changing academic identity. "Pipelines" with "leaks" are convenient metaphors of institutional  policy, but they neglect both the texture of student histories and the nature of the paths students discover, sometimes with many detours. What we can do is to improve the signs along the pathways, and, in the case of women in engineering, improve the quality of instruction and professional sensitivity to women's minority status.

Conclusions

This monograph concludes with a number of suggestions for changing the image of engineering among high school students and potential college majors, particularly women. Given what we know of actual practices in different kinds of engineering workplaces, whatever negative views students have ought to be reexamined. There is just as much complexity and difference, joy and difficulty in the engineering workplace as there is in other occupations. Engineers are not a monolithic gang of boys "tinkering" in a technological "sandbox," and telling bad jokes abut incompetence. Foremost among the suggestions is that neither women nor men will choose engineering for the right reasons unless the profession can reach out to a broad population with a full portrait of the richness of its culture an practice, and with a clear map of its intersections with and divergences from bench science.

The study also concludes with suggestions to other disciplines for undertaking similar tracking studies , particularly in fields such as psychology or nursing, where men have been a distinct minority.