Reply to What's up with all the engineering majors?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "What's up with all the engineering majors?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So many of the kids at my child's high school and those from closeby schools are deciding to major in engineering. I'm curious as to why its become so popular, as it wasn't as common when I went to college in the 90's.

Do parents guide their kids towards engineering now because they think it will be AI-proof? [/quote]

Professor at an ivy, lab was bought from a flagship ranked around 8-12 among publics. We moved across the country over 12 yrs ago, as did other labs. Almost all of us moved. The money and resources were a game changer for research. This ivy was one of the later ones to get into engineering but has moved up fast and will continue to. The teaching at an ivy versus a good but not Berkeley-level flagship is refreshing. At an ivy, it is rare to have students who cannot handle the work, though there was a dip in quality with test optional. No one likes to say it out loud but we all saw it. It has mostly reversed.

STEM education has been pushed hard since the early 2000s, robotics in elementary school, kid coding and particularly girls who code and girls in stem middle and high school summer programs. Boys have always been interested. It is seen as impressive among smart high school students, with many high school districts having competitive-entry stem magnets that exploded around 2015. 
In the late 80s and 90s it was common to switch out of engineering at JHU, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, CMU, other top schools. Many of my peers quit and went to something easier, such as premed or prelaw. They are highly successful adults as it was a top undergrad, but they had no interest in the grind of the engineering courses. Now there are many more every year asking as freshman what to take to be eligible to apply to switch into the engineering school or prepare to declare the major. This is happening across all peer schools. It is a rewarding time to be an engineering professor if you love teaching as many of us do.
Buildings have gone up around engineering and stem the past 15 years, not humanities. It started in the 2010s at top colleges with big donors/big endowments and continues to surge the past few years after the pause of the pandemic. Ivy/top privates were the first to jump on board, adding or expanding engineering when they never had much of it before. Even in the past 3 years ivies have added or renamed departments to reflect the leading edge of engineering fields. Top schools have ties at top industries and know where the technology is headed.

Hot, on the way up fast: AI, materials science, quantum; 
popular, highly competitive for phD, and not in danger of peaking anytime soon: molecular, biomedical, aero; 
just past peak but strong at the phD level: Compsci/compE, civil.
old/not being emphasized wrt funding and phD spots: petroleum, chemE that is not relevant to the hot fields, textile, civil.

Top schools do not rename departments and add phD programs for weak fields. When top schools make decisions, the rest of academia tends to jump on board, same as always.
[/quote]
Quantum has provided almost no results and the industry is tiny.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics