A Comparison Of Male And Female Student Issues That Affect Enrollment And Retention In Electronics And Computer Engineering Technology Programs At A For Profit Institution

Women are underrepresented in the science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) work-force and in the undergraduate SMET programs at the colleges and universities in the United States of America. Studying the enrollment and retention issues of electronics students at a for-profit institution could improve the female enrollment and retention rates and help other colleges and universities increase their female student population which would help meet the future SMET work-force needs. The objective of this paper was to compare men and women in terms of self-confidence and self-efficacy as two of the dependent variables related to the enrollment and retention issues in electronics programs at a for-profit institution. The study used 2X3 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) and cell contrast tests in order to analyze the quantitative data. Surveys were administered to 576 students in electronics programs at the for-profit institution’s two campuses in the fall 2004 trimester. The response rate was 63.9%. For this paper, the survey instrument asked for information on self-confidence, self-efficacy, gender, program level, and age. The research findings showed that there was no statistically significant interaction between gender and program levels in the for-profit institution’s electronics programs in regard to selfconfidence. Even though there was no significant main effect of program level, there was a significant main effect of gender on self-confidence. Male students had significantly higher selfconfidence ratings than female students in the end program level, and the effect size was close to medium. The research findings indicated that there was no significant interaction between gender and program level in regard to self-efficacy. There was no significant main effect of gender or program level on self-efficacy, either. The findings generally agreed with the literature review that females had significantly lower ratings than males in regard to self-confidence. The results of this study did not support the literature which indicated that self-efficacy was an issue for the retention of female students in undergraduate SMET programs. Neither did this study support past research that women pursuing undergraduate degrees in SMET fields showed more anxiety and, therefore, less selfefficacy than men did.