Women Now Encouraged to Pursue Engineering Studies

Women have opportunities to major in campus and online college, university and technical school engineering programs that could put them among the highest paid bachelor's degree graduates, yet few reportedly pursue studies in the field. Areas of engineering specialties include everything from computers and electronics to the environment, and the job outlook for some engineers particularly appears positive. The numbers of women receiving engineering degrees and moving on to these fields nevertheless are reportedly lacking.

Four of the five highest paying starting salaries for 2010 college graduates went to petroleum, chemical, computer and electrical engineering majors, with salaries of between $49,381 and $74,799, a National Association of Colleges and Employers 2010 Salary Survey shows. In 2008, civil engineers held the most engineering jobs, and this same group is expected to enjoy the largest employment increases into 2020-21, Bureau of Labor Statistics information shows. Biomedical engineers, on the other hand, are expected to experience the fastest employment growth into 2020-21, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

To lure women to engineering students at campus and online colleges, universities and technical schools, agencies and institutions are offering scholarships, fellowships and grants tailored especially to them. To draw and retain women, some are designing classroom curricula to accommodate their diverse learning styles. Even with these incentives, women account for less than 21 percent of graduates with bachelor's of science degrees in engineering, according to the Foundation Coalition.

Women have different learning styles than those of men, some contend. Having found that women enjoy "cooperative" learning and "spacial reasoning" projects that some say involve visualization, the Foundation Coalition reports that it has responded. Some colleges, universities and technical schools might have incorporated efforts such as these into their engineering curricula, the coalition web site suggests.

A greater demand for engineers than there is a supply of candidates to fill positions has contributed to the appealing salaries, a representative of the National Association of Colleges and Employers has suggested. Diversity is important in the classroom as well as the workplace. Students in a diverse classroom are able to interact with different genders and cultures and pick up skills such as conflict resolution, the Foundation Coalition web site notes. Working in the engineering field, diverse employees might help create products that appeal to a larger, international customer base, the web site notes.

Mentors have been seen as a means of encouragement. An e-mentoring network known as MentorNet offers female engineering students and others opportunities to communicate through e-mail with professionals in the field. The College of Engineering at Oregon State University, for one, claims that it ranks fourth in the number of women professors at PhD-granting institutions.

There was some growth in women in engineering in the 1970s, a time when colleges and universities followed affirmative action guidelines, a Women in Science & Engineering report notes. By 2006, however, only 1.6 percent of all bachelor's degrees that women earned and 8.8 percent of those awarded to men were in engineering, according to the report. In terms of faculty members, the report suggested that those of the future are likely to be from outside of the United States.

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