Over at least the past quarter century, engineering educators and even the national press have viewed with concern the declining interest of US students in the STEM disciplines relative to otherchoices available to students. Within engineering and computer science, educators are coping with large increases in undergraduate enrollment in some disciplines (for example, mechanical engineering) and large declines in enrollment in others (for example electrical engineering and computer science after the "dot com" collapse). Over a period of four academic years, Binghamton University has held a student survey designed to rank the factors which influence choice of major. This work examines the results of these surveys, as collected from a pool of approximately 300 freshman engineering-intended majors, each year. Three factors were rated by students as most important in their major selection process: (1) Personal Academic Interests; (2) Potential for Societal Contributions; and (3) Job Prospects. Students also had a high degree of support for "Decision Before Freshmen Program."
展开▼
