Multi-Institutional Evaluation of Engineering Discipline Selection

During the fall of 2014, a quantitative study of first-year engineering student discipline selection was conducted at four dissimilar institutions in the Midwest: (1) an Urban Public, (2) a Private, (3) a Large Land Grant, and (4) a Large Urban. At all four institutions, an on-line survey was conducted at the start and at the end of the semester. The questions related to how interested students are in engineering (as compared to other academic majors), how certain they are that engineering is the best field of study for them, which discipline of engineering they are most interested in studying, and how certain they are of that engineering discipline choice. Collectively, there were over 3,300 student responses from across the four institutions studied. The data illuminated some differences between the institutions. However, a common result across all 4 institutions was a decrease in interest in engineering over the fall semester which may be accounted for by a “polarizing” effect in which the students that were more neutral in terms of certainty of engineering and their engineering discipline at the start of the semester shift over the course of the fall semester to the extremes, both high certainty and low certainty.