Why women drop out of engineering programs.

• Position: 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...