Preferences And Challenges For Female Graduate Engineering Students: A Survey Based Study

Increasing the number of female graduate students in engineering education has always been challenging. This study presented here examines the preferences and self-recognized challenges identified by international female graduate engineering students at U.S. schools. These findings can also be used by institutions to attract more female students in graduate engineering programs by integrating in ongoing recruitment and retention efforts. Research findings are based on a comprehensive online survey designed and conducted by the authors, who are of diverse nationality, educational background, and gender. Male and female international graduate students and alumni at U.S. schools were invited to complete the online survey. Results indicate that preferences of international students to choose a graduate school differ by gender and female students tend to choose a school on a different set of criteria compared to their male colleagues. Common challenges faced and preferences adopted in choosing a school identified by female graduate students are compiled, contrasted to male responses, and presented. Survey results discussed here can be directly applied by institutions to improve recruiting and retention of women graduate engineering students. Introduction Importance of recruiting and retention of engineering students to keep up with workforce demand and technological advancements have been highlighted in several publications 1-4 in the past. Institutions of higher learning are under tremendous pressure to improve recruitment to keep up with educational competence and better student outcomes such as retention and completion 2 . There are several factors that contribute towards increasing recruitment and retention including engineering image 3 , institutional administrators, faculty members and students themselves 4 . Understanding the diversity of engineering students and incorporating that in recruiting and retention efforts are very important to maintain diversity 5 . Evaluating challenges and preferences of female students and integrating in recruitment efforts will definitely help the institutions. Cultural and gender diversity among students in academic institutions and among employees in the corporate world brings different perspectives to the academic and corporate environment and substantially helps with the growth. Engineering students could be distinguished based on gender, nationality, regions, ethnicity and age group. International students play a major role in increasing the diversity of graduate engineering students and contribute in many ways 6 . Understanding challenges faced by international and minority students is critical for a successful graduate program 7-9 . Najafi et al. presented a typical global model to increase the enrollment of minority and international graduate students 10 . Women are significantly underrepresented among engineering student population and have been a minority for several decades 11 . Several studies in the past have examined the lower number of female students in engineering and have discussed strategies to recruit and retain women students in science and engineering 11-14 . Globally, female professional scientists represent 25-35% of the research workforce 15 . As of 2006 data, approximately 20% of engineering students are female 16 . One theory regarding why females are represented in lower numbers, is a cultural influence that discourages participation in engineering area 16 . Some of the suggested solutions are providing tools and methods to female students for early exposure to P ge 15972.2 technology, confidence in using technology, information to enhance technological literacy, willingness to learn new skills, and higher levels of trust in technology 17 . One of the studies aimed at determining a more accurate measure of retention, examining the factors affecting retention of females, and increasing the retention rates as conducted by Brainard et al. 18 . Authors reported that the freshmen and sophomore years are the times when women students are most likely to switch out of an engineering program. In another study, first-year and final-year female undergraduates in a male-dominated academic area reported higher levels of discrimination and stereotype threat than women in a female-dominated academic area 19 . Survey results based on 437 sixth grade students showed that there continues to be significant gender difference in science experiences, attitudes, and perceptions of science courses and careers 20 . Girls generally tend to choose professions that help humanity and they need to be shown how engineering principles, such as biomedical engineering, can be applied to improve human life 21 . Use of integrative multimedia courseware was presented to support and accommodate student learning style differences to improve the retention of underrepresented engineers 22 . Enhanced presence of women into visible and influential academic and engineering positions by improving graduation rates for female graduate students was provided as a solution for improving recruitment and retention of undergraduate female students 23 . Felder et al. observed gender differences in performance and attitudes based on several chemical engineering classes 24 . The unexpected performance of female students in class may be caused by prejudices acquired prior to college, differences in priorities, shortage of female role models, instructional methods and the attitudes of professors, advisors, and classmates as suggested by Felder et al. In this study, an online survey was conducted to evaluate the preferences, influential factors and common challenges for female students. Results were compiled and interpreted in a way, to also enhance the recruitment and retention of international female graduate students. In the next two sections, survey design and survey findings in detail have been presented and the last section concludes the paper. Survey Design This online survey approved by International Review Board (IRB) at Mississippi State University was designed by a group of faculty members and a student. Respondents were kept confidential and the survey was voluntary, open to only international graduate students at U.S. universities. There were 1180 students and alumni who took the survey from STEM fields at U.S. schools recruited via contacting student organizations, administrative offices and colleagues. Among them, 558 were current students at an U.S. university from an engineering background, with 421 males and 137 females. Students were from different nationality including Africa, Asia, Australia and Pacific Islands, Europe / Russia (but not Scandinavia), Middle East, North America (Canada and Mexico), and South America. The actual number of invited respondents and the response rate was not known, as the respondents were not directly contacted. Survey data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel software due to ease of analysis and interpretation. In future, more complex statistical analysis will be done using comprehensive commercial tools. Specific questions relevant to this paper are presented and discussed in the survey findings section. Results are presented graphically in column graphs, and radar graphs to better visualize the data. P ge 15972.3 Survey Findings This section focuses on the common challenges faced, preferences adopted in choosing a school, campus department helpfulness with initial paperwork, experience with faculty members, safety and security of campus identified by female graduate students contrasted to male responses along with some open ended responses. The survey findings presented here are based only on engineering student population and not alumni students. Common Concerns for prospective students: In this survey conducted online, the students were asked to rank a list of eleven most common concerns with 1 as the greatest concern and 11 as little or no concern. The common concerns were: 1. Transcript evaluation 2. Meeting the deadlines for admission 3. Getting VISA 4. Being accepted into the program 5. Housing 6. Language and culture change 7. Funding/ Support 8. Finding a good academic advisor 9. Finding good courses 10. Finding job after graduation 11. Safety and security of the Campus Figure 1: Concerns among prospective students ranked. Male and female responses are contrasted by calculating the average rank for current student’s population. Variability among the concerns is seen. P ge 15972.4 In this paper, male and female responses are contrasted by calculating average rank based on the ranking provided by the respondents. Significant variability was found between male and female respondents as shown in Figure 1. Top most concern differed between male and female students. For female students the top 3 concerns were: 1. Funding/Support (composite rank of 8.2) 2. Being accepted into the program (composite rank of 7.5) 3. Finding a good academic advisor (composite rank of 7.2) For male students, the top 3 concerns were: 1. Finding job after graduation (composite rank of 7.9) 2. Transcript evaluation (composite rank of 7.7) 3. Getting VISA (composite rank of 6.9) The least ranked concern was “Finding good courses” for male students and for female students it was “Language and culture change” with “Housing”. Prospective students’ influential factors in choosing a school: This section of the online survey sought to determine which factors influences the most from the student’s perspective to decide on a particular school. Survey respondents were asked to rank the following factors based on which influenced the most in their decision to apply to a particular university with 1 as greatest influence and 10 as little or no influence. Below were the options given to respondents: 1. University recruitment effort 2. Correspondence with graduate school/professors before arrival 3. Funding opportunities 4. Ranking of the school 5. International student population 6. Location