Correlation Between Engineering Students' Performance in Mathematics and Academic Success

It is quite popular among engineering educators to suppose that the academic performance of undergraduate engineering students depends on their mathematics skills, but there is only a little data available that substantiates this assumption. This study aims at shedding some light on this perceived dependency by comparing examination results in mathematics with those of the core engineering subjects over a period of more than ten years. To identify the relationship between the students’ individual mathematical proficiency and their performance in applied engineering subjects, the examination performance of students in first, second and third semester mathematics courses has been correlated with their corresponding performances in mechanics and other mechanical engineering subjects. The results show that there is a significant positive correlation between the mathematics and mechanics grades; a correlation between mathematics and other engineering core subjects also exists but is, in general, less distinct. The study has been supplemented with a comparison of the dropout rate of students enrolled in the classes from 2002 until 2009 with their performance on an anonymous pre-course diagnostic test of mathematical skills, which took place every year in the first week of study. Prior studies on the relationships between students’ university entry scores and their performance in terms of grade point averages showed that the expected correlations either do not exist or are too weak to base educational interventions on. A comparison of pre-college mathematics skills with degree program drop-out rates, on the other hand, shows a clear trend that a below-average high school mathematics education entails an elevated risk of drop-out.