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ASEE Finds U.S. Engineering Degrees Decline in 2007
Despite a growing national demand for their skills, the number of engineers graduating from American colleges went down in 2007, according to latest edition of Profiles of Engineering and Engineering Technology Colleges, prepared by the American Society for Engineering Education.
The decline in engineering bachelor’s degrees was the first since the 1990s, ending seven years of growth. Although the drop was small 1.2 percent from the previous year ASEE fears it is the beginning of a trend that may continue for several years. That’s because undergraduate enrollment dropped both in 2004 and 2005.
Engineering master’s degrees show an even sharper drop than bachelor’s degrees, having declined 8.8 percent since 2005. Ph.D. degrees, by contrast, have been growing an average of 11 percent since 2004.
The pain is not being felt uniformly across all sectors of engineering; aerospace and biomedical engineering have shot up in popularity while electrical and computer engineering have fallen.
The fall in the number of engineering graduates comes at a time of growing technological competition from Asia and mounting concern about problems involving energy, the environment and infrastructure that require engineering solutions.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected a need for 160,000 more engineering positions over the 10-year period between 2006 and 2016. This 11 percent increase does not include the replacement of many retiring engineers.
The 2007 edition of Profiles details the state of engineering education today, listing all college enrollments, degrees awarded, faculty and research expenditures at the undergraduate and graduate levels. More information can be found online at www.asee.org/colleges.