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Thursday, March 24, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Women avoid engineering
Despite low enrollment, jobs plenty
By Julie Adam Kansan staff writer
The number of women enrolling in the School of Engineering is down, but those women who get degrees in engineering may find jobs quicker than their male counterparts.
Several years ago, the number of KU women enrolling in engineering was going up, but in the last five years that figure has dropped to where it was in the 1970s, according to the University provided by the School of Engineering.
In 1982, the number of women enrolled in engineering was 15.2 percent of the total engineering enrollment. The total enrollment has declined since then, and so has the number of women enrolled. Last year, 12.4 percent of engineering students were women.
Although the number of women in engineering rose from 1978 to 1982, that number started declining in 1983 and has been decreasing ever since.
But the percentage of women receiving degrees compared with the total is at its highest point of the 1980s. A low of 11 percent was recorded in 1984; the 1987 figure is 15.6 percent.
And those women receiving engineering degrees may have a better chance of finding their first jobs, said KU engineering placement director Julie Cunningham.
Many employers of engineering majors are government-affiliated agencies, and they aggressively recruit women because of affirmative action programs, she said.
Sue Coleman, a 1968 KU graduate in electrical engineering, said she found her job at NRC, a computer company in Wichita, a few months before she graduated.
"Statistically, we do have an easier time getting a first job, but it's harder to go a long ways up," she said.
Problems
Marylee Southard, an adviser for the KU Society of Women Engineers, doesn't know whether the decrease in women enrolling in engineering is a trend or just a plateau in the field. But, she says, the national school and just a doctor at KU.
Southard said she thought one
reason enrollment was decreasing was because of misconceptions or ignorance about engineering. Some of the misconceptions she mentioned were that engineering is highly competitive, that it is only a male profession and that women generally are not good at math or science.
She said the trend also showed that women major in business instead of engineering because business is stereotyped as a glamorous career.
Women also are uninformed about the different facets of engineering that are open to them and about what an engineering job entails. Southard
"It's definitely a trend," she said,
"But politics has a lot to do with it."
Christie Dudley, president of the KU Society of Women Engineers, said she thought enrollment was declining because people were returning to traditional values and ways of thinking.
Solutions
Dudley said the Society of Women Engineers was trying to break through politics that didn't encourage women and minority advancement.
The group tries to inform women of the possibilities and achievements open to them in engineering, she said.
Dudley said her club tried to give women engineers help and serve as a center of information and encouragement. The group keeps a test file for women engineering students to use because fraternities often have similar engineering test files but sororites don't.
southard said that the awareness of engineering possibilities needed to be heightened and that women needed to be encouraged to pursue an engineering degree.
Encouragement for females in high school and grade school is needed to break down the barriers and discouragements that women face, she said.
"That barrier needs to be destroyed by guidance counselors, teachers and math teachers," she said.
Southard cited a study of college women engineering students that showed that 45 percent of the women had been discouraged from entering the engineering field by counselors, friends or parents.
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(Graduate Students see page 2 of the Timetable)
MAIN ENROLLMENT FOR UNDERGRADUATES SUMMER AND FALL 1988
CAUTIONS
- Advising and Dean's Approval Stamp Periods END EARLY. Make an appointment soon to see your advisor.
- Plan your schedule well! List a good selection of alternate courses.
- Bring signed yellow Special Permission/Approval cards for courses coded I or P!
KEY DATES
Enrollment Card Pickup:
March 23-April 1: School of Social Welfare;
Applied English Center
March 23 & 24: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences;
School of Business
March 28-April 1: All other schools
- Advising Period:
March 28-April 1: Schools of Journalism and Pharmacy
March 28-April 8: All other schools
Pre-professional School Co-advising: See Timetable
- Dean's Approval Stamp:
March 28-April 1: School of Journalism
March 28-April 20: School of Education
March 28-April 8: All other schools
- Enrollment:
Appointments start Friday, April 1. Check your enrollment card for your preassigned appointment time.
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