Intrinsic And Extrinsic Motivators To Study Industrial Engineering: A Focus Group Approach

The literature suggests that students with intrinsic motivators to enroll in engineering programs are more likely to succeed that those that present extrinsic motivators alone. Hence, salary ambitions, perception of prestige, and family pressures to be an "engineer" are far less powerful to push a student to finish their coursework in engineering than motivators such as liking math and science, being good with numbers, loving design or having a powerful role model who is an Engineer or a close professor mentoring. Moreover, differences in cognitive preferences are likely to play a role in the retention of these generation Y students. Those who desert engineering are likely to be stronger in verbal abilities than their staying counterparts. But their lack of ability to concentrate for long hours without multi-sensory stimuli is perhaps the most challenging characteristic of this generation. We discuss the results of a comprehensive focus group study being undertaken at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez among Industrial Engineering students from the freshmen to the fifth plus year. We concluded that a lot of attrition in Industrial Engineering education comes from a misconception of the IE field in general and of the effort required in engineering in particular and therefore, we also explored the misconceptions or mistakes in their understanding of the career choice they made and suggest additional areas which are open to further study.