Comparing student outcomes for women and men in Electrical Engineering to Civil, Chemical, Industrial and Mechanical Engineering in the USA

Throughout Europe and the USA, Electrical Engineering (EE) suffers from an underrepresentation of women even when compared with most other engineering disciplines. This study uses a Varge multi-institution longitudinal dataset, the Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD) to examine engineering student outcomes in the USA. This work considers undergraduate student outcomes for women and men in EE and compares them to those in the other four largest engineering disciphnes in the USA: Chemical (ChE), Civil (CVE)? Mechanical (MCE), and Industrial (ISE) Engineering. This research focuses on over 94,000 men and 24,000 women who ever enrolled in one of these five disciplines. This includes first-time-in-college as well as transfer students. Analysis shows that EE has fewer women than men at enrollment and graduation and the percentage of women is comparable to MCE but lower than the other engineering disciplines. Students graduate in EE in six years at lower rates than ISE, CVE, and MCE and comparable rates to ChE. Women in EE graduate at slightly higher rates than men. Stickiness is the number of students who graduate in a major divided by the number who ever declared that major. EE has the lowest stickiness of the disciplines studied. In comparing the net population change of students from start to graduation, EE loses about 22»/. of the women and men. Only ChE has higher percentage losses. MCE has comparable losses, CVE loses about 10% of its student population and ISE gains students from start to graduation. This work contributes to the literature by examining engineering students disaggregated by gender, discipline, and entry point. This study can inform studies in other countries.