The Terrible Two's

The first years in engineering are critical in terms of retention.

WE APPEAR TO BE in another period of soul-searching and agonizing about how to deal with engineering enrollments. The percentage of college graduates majoring in engineering has declined steadily over the years. The realization that many engineering tasks are being farmed out to China and India, both of which have dramatically larger numbers of engineering graduates, has served to heighten concern about retention. Dropping out occurs most often in the first two years, and several ideas have been proposed on how to keep students in engineering. Purdue professors Phillip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz have suggested that …