Disillusioned By Engineering, or "Why Do Capable People Leave Engineering?"

This study, using personal experience as a basis for curiosity, seeks to explore why some portion of engineering students change their majors, whom I am calling "switchers." Another set of students are "persisters," or students who are still currently enrolled in engineering but have considered other paths. In collecting data, two students from each set, within the author's social network, were interviewed. Articles primarily concerning attrition and retention within engineering education were surveyed in this study. The literature's reasons for leaving engineering were tabulated and used to code these interviews, then the trends outside of this table were studied. The literature and all interviewees both stated that engineering students struggle with poor teachers, poor teaching methods, poor curriculum, and a lack of time. Outside of the literature, job prospects caused the interviewed students to feel trapped in engineering. Whether to take this study beyond the exploratory stage, and how to do that, is being considered currently.