Aaron Eaton - Comments

50% of US engineering students drop out - Why? - http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_nex...

November 12, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Like - Share

ashish, Michael R. Bernstein, Zahra HB and 35 other people liked this

I am part of the 50% who don't drop out! - Kevin Mohr

I didn't drop out but here is part of my experience in this post from years ago. It was discouraging to hear the professors talk. Needless to say i don't code. :-) http://www.altamirano.org/marketi... - Antonio Altamirano

Thankfully I'm in the other 50%, but I can see why many would change their major or drop out. I saw it first hand where many 1st and 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students changed their majors to something 'easier'. The most common reason was difficulty with the required advanced Math courses. Calculus being the road block for many. - Jeff P. Henderson

If I were entering college now, I would try to go to Olin. I really like their approach. - Paul Buchheit

nice post, I'm looking for the number of engineers (or per thousand capita ratio) graduating in Greece (or greeks graduating around the world) - George Tziralis

Many of Computer Science professors at Stanford were luminaries in their fields, but weren't very good at engaging students in the subject matter. Brilliant researchers don't always make the best teachers. I think this contributed a lot to the dropout rate. - Jess Lee

How does this compare to drop-out rate for all US college students? And does "drop out" mean "of college entirely" or "take a break then come back" or "and choose another major"? The discussion may be lusty but I really don't like discussions that start on a figure w/ no bother to compare it to anything else, or link to info about how it's calculated. - Wade Dorrell

In CA we have two types of public universities. The UC schools require the professors to do research, where as the State University schools do not. I think the State University schools are much better for undergrad tech education as you get much more attention from your professors. - Jeff P. Henderson

The UC Berkeley College of Engineering started the Center For Entrepreneurship and Technology http://cet.berkeley.edu to address some of the issues Dodge talks about. - Ruchira S. Datta

Engineering is hard and requires above-average intelligence. Think about it this way: Statistics tells us that probably 50% of people will be below-average. Wouldn't you want those 50% of the students to drop out before actually becoming an engineer? MIT just doesn't admit that half of the population in the first place, but most schools don't have that luxury. - Gabe

People have a lot of options for (a) careers (b) money (c) power (d) image (e) attracting mates in the US, compared to China/India. Engineers are not valued very highly in the US compared to businesspeople, doctors, and lawyers. - Mitchell Tsai

@Gabe: You would think that all the people that go to study Computer Sciences or seek other Engineering degrees are above the 50% average to begin with. - Amit Morson

somestimes it's a scoail or maturity thing - was for me. I get by. Wished I finished. - Alan Wilensky from Alert Thingy

It's because of the fact that people with higher standards of living pursue less demanding challenges offering similar ROI (I = investment+involvement). That's why there's so many non-US students (especially from lower income countries) in engineering and why they're much less inclined to fail. - Nenad Nikolic from twhirl

Engineering sucks. I think there's a point where any engineering student realizes that even with a degree they're looking at a pretty mediocre salary working in a really boring job. Add this to the difficult coursework and boring courses, well, engineers are good at math. It adds up to being a raw deal. That being said, if you get into engineering at Stanford or UC Berkley, your ROI would look a lot better then mine. I'm sure a large number of engineering students consider dropping out, even after Calculus. - Will Higgins™

All I can do is nod. For a couple of years, not a day when by when I didn't consider jumping ship, for all the reasons commenters here have mentioned: long hours, heavy workload, fickle job market, salary barely comparable with what I could expect with a business or law degree. But here I am, a month away from (finally!) finishing my EE degree, and I couldn't be happier. - Derrick Burns

Continued from above: Basically, I think so many give up because they were looking to get something out of being an engineer: money, prestige, etc. But it's simply too great a commitment on several levels. You really have to pursue engineering because it's something you want to do, something you care about. - Derrick Burns

I dropped out because Chemical Engineering was not what I was expecting. I wanted more Chemistry, less Math. I switched to IT Management and found it much more interesting. Mind you, I'm Canadian. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I remember having a crisis in my final year of Electrical/Computer Engineering. Dropping out was a non-option, but I did consider completely abandoning 3.5 years of engineering study to switch fields and schools during my senior year. In hindsight, I didn't understand what engineers really did. My vision at the time was closer to industrial or product design than engineering. I had to take it on faith in my first two years that I was on a path to do what I was envisioning. - Kelly Norton

I suspect that more than 50% (even at good schools like GATech, I have friends who have done this) are in the wrong field. Many of my friends went into programming because they enjoyed computers and I've told them they would hate it because they don't like math. They don't listen. :) - mjc

still others go into engineering due to parental expectation, which I find ridiculous, but understandable - mjc

Amit: one of the properties of being in the lower 50% is not knowing that you're in the lower 50%. That means many of the applicants do not know they are unqualified. - Gabe

Extensive aptitude/personality testing could fix this - Aaron Eaton

Engineering is a tough subject. how does that compare to other subjects? - John Cass from twhirl

I actually sit on an advisory board for ASU (arizona state) Poly - I can tell you that what I see is students becoming disillusioned by all the stuff they have to learn before they can go out and create something "cool". The challenge is keeping them engaged through the pre-reqs/early coursework. BTW - IMHO the problem with "drop out and learn X" is that they've intentionally skipped the fundamentals that make good engineers. Just because you can code doesn't mean you can engineer... two different things. - Brian Roy

Is Computer Science part of engineering? Because it didn't take much training in Computer Science for me to start doing cool stuff. I wrote my first game and posted it onto the internet my freshman year (Core Wars). By my Junior year, I had designed a programming language and integrated in it into a MUD. Pengtoh had contributed to Linux by his sophomore year. On the other hand, I always flunked electrical engineering classes, and couldn't stomach math past linear algebra. - Piaw Na

I switch from Engineering to a Computer Science degree. Apart from the fact that I wanted to program, there were two reasons. 1) The load was very high (it was close to 40 contact hours/week in first year). 2) The maths was hard - I'm ok at math, but combined with the high load I found I struggled when I wasn't too interested in it. - Nick Lothian

"the US should staple a Green Card to every foreign student's engineering diploma and encourage them to stay in the USA." - Clare Dibble

Same as Nick here. Dropped out due to difficulty and lack of passion for the field. Went back later to finish a BS in Computer Information Systems. - Bill Sanders

I wonder what percentage of medical school students drop out. Engineering is a hard discipline, if you want to be a web dev or a study IT or "new media" instead. Making engineering "softer" because today's students don't like to work hard and expect results instantly will just create generations of mediocre engineers and will not make the US more of an engineering power. - Kevin Goldsmith from twhirl

engineers are boring and dry, pay is low, classes are full of non-social ppl. (and almost no girls). Why not study finance, or something, girls and pay is much better. - imran

Engineering is fun! The big thing is that school's curriculums are frequently irrelevant. For instance, a lot of CS majors require irrelevant Math or Physics not because it's a requirement to do good software (they aren't), but because those classes serve as weeders. The result is, for instance, we get lots of CS majors who can't communicate or string a sentence together. If we rearranged the CS major so that we didn't impose a stupid requirement, we'd get a bigger diversity of candidates and less dropout. - Piaw Na

Engineering is the best!!!! and for those who says it sucks or that the pay is not good (or that we are boring and dry), its probably because you are in that 50% of retards that dropped out of it. No other profession gets paid as much as an engineer right after graduation, and there is usually more demand for engineers than for anything else. I just think people are too lazy to even try anymore. I dont know why, even graduate school is fun in engineering. Aerospace is the best!!!!! - Mike hawk

life in a conceptual box is the result .. content with that, you will stay with it .. not content, universes open up - Gregory Lent

life in a conceptual box? do you even know what you are saying? universes open up when you quit engineering? If only you were to see the world through the eyes of en engineer, we see everything from several different perspectives, not just that of people like you. If anything, engineering has really opened up the world for me as it really is. Stop making those type of remarks. Instead get back to engineering school so you can see what it feels like. - Mike hawk

I think I know the boxes Gregory is talking about from some of his other comments. Whether you've gone to engineering school is orthogonal to whether you can get outside of them. So it's pretty much irrelevant to this thread. - Ruchira S. Datta

I dropped out the day I learned it had nothing to do with driving a train. Now I'm stuck with this silly hat and overalls :( - Christopher Harley

At least, those 50% tried. - ashish

I bet you the pre-med numbers are similar, but I'm not sure universities necessarily track undergrads who aspire to go to med school. In general, how many freshmen actually stick with the major they pick when they start college? - Victor Ganata

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