Women with an UG Engineering Degree in 2001: 19.1% -- In 2013: 19.1%

“how to replace the $25K OOS supplement…keeps OOS women away.” I imagine @CaliDad2020 is good with that.

@sevmom As is their choice. You are not from California. You think it’s fine that we have quadrupled the number of OOS and international students in 7 years. You can think that’s fine. But I don’t have to. And I don’t.

That folks don’t see that the low UC acceptance and yield rate is a huge part of the issue identified in the title of this thread confounds me. That folks don’t think that CA tax money going to fund schools that have not found a way to increase the yield of admitted women to at least the same as that of admitted men is a problem confounds me.

That they don’t see that the subtle digs that schools have to “put a thumb on the scale” to admit women when women perform BETTER at the UC’s (at least at UCSD) is part of the problem enrages me. That folks don’t see that continuing a 15% admit rate for women in ME and EE&CS is a huge part of the problem confounds me.

In 2007 UCLA admitted 193 women into undergrad Engineering and CS, in 2015, 198. In 2007 they admitted 400 OOS/International students. In 2015 the admitted 1000.

600 more OOS/International freshman. 5 more women engineers.

So, I’m confounded.

I have a number of ideas, and I have posted them.

Higher tuition for UCB and UCLA and UCSD and UCSB engineering. UMich get 45000 per kid no problem. Why do we settle for less than 40k?

Allow OOS and International student to be “placed” in a campus the way top 9% are. Didn’t get into UCSD, offer them Irvine (they claim they have more room for OOS students there.) If they take it - net gain for UC system. The OOS/International is disproportionate to UCB and UCLA and disproportionate to the most in demand majors.

Increase outreach to accepted female and URM students. There is no law against aggressively trying to enroll those that are admitted. Again, the SIR rate for women is less than men in engineering. I don’t know for URMs. I’ve found it hard to find SIR rates broken out by engineering schools.

Increase female and URM faculty. 209 says nothing about that.

More responsive deans. I think Sastry is all talk no action. Hopefully Murthy will be better.

It’s not like I’m the only voice out there saying these things. There’s a whole big audit you all can read. There are UCLA enrollment stats available on-line. UCSD GPA and graduation rates. It’s all out there.

Why so few folks think it can be changed surprises me.

And you’re not from Virginia or Michigan or Washington. Most states with good public schools have increased their OOS and international numbers. As I said earlier, UVa has been about 30% OOS for decades , similar numbers for W & M and Virginia Tech. You are in California and the admissions landscape is certainly tough. You have many very high SAT kids , many kids interested in engineering and CS, and not enough slots to accommodate them at what are considered your most desirable schools. Both girls and boys in California are dealing with that, as has been noted already by @PickOne1 .

@sevmom I’m not sure why you are dancing this around. I am not complaining one bit about VA or Wash or Mich. If they want to cut their OOS to 10% next year, they should. It’s their right.

I have never once made any comment about what any other state does. But the simple fact that UCLA increased it’s OOS/International numbers by 600 students A YEAR over the past 7 years and could only find 5 additional female engineers in all those admits speaks volumes.

I really don’t get why you think what VA or Wash or Andorra does has any relevance here. This is a CA funding issue - and the audit from the legislative analysts office agrees with a number of my concerns.

And the CA funding issues is tied up in the women in engineering issue because the UCs educate a lot of engineers.

So the more women engineering students they admit the more women engineers they produce.

See how that works?

And more CA women engineers they produce the more CA women engineers we get. And I think that’s good.

If I was really self-serving I’d want all the women engineers to be OOS or international, then they would go home when they graduate and there would be more job opportunities for my D. But I think that is silly-thinking. I think this state will be hurt by less opportunity for women and URMs who are in state. I think it is a self-perpetuation problem. I think the subtle (and not so subtle) resistance some posters show is just the tip of the iceberg. So I’m pissed. That’s how I get.

Again, Va can send every OOS kid home. I don’t care. But I pay years of taxes here. In CA. I vote here. In CA. And I think the system is in need of change.

It really is unfortunate that a general thread about women in engineering has gotten so off track.

MODERATOR’S NOTE: I agree - please get back to the general thread topic.

On the original topic… I have found it interesting that the most influential force in getting my D to seriously consider engineering has been her female friends who are leaning that way and starting to visit colleges with strong engineering programs.

There’s also something to be said for outreach - explaining exactly what it is engineers do to appeal to girls who may not realize that, actually, some of the things they’re good at might be very applicable to the field after all. My D is one of those people who while strong in both math and science, had always thought of herself as an “art” person (she’s got AP Studio Art slated next year alongside AP Calculus and AP Physics) and it never occurred to her before that the type of creative problem solving and seeing the world from different angles that she loves in making art would also be an asset in engineering (which she’d always assumed was kind of dull and “practical”.)

“MIT has more than enough “deserving” applicants. It doesn’t accept ANYONE that isn’t deserving.” = Amen. The conversation should not revolve around MIT.

“There’s also something to be said for outreach - explaining exactly what it is engineers do to appeal to girls who may not realize that, actually, some of the things they’re good at might be very applicable to the field after all” - Agreed… but why limit it to girls? It seems like guidance counselors could do a better job helping girls/guys sort through whether engineering is a good fit. It should be beyond just “he’s a boy that is good at math…”

Elevating the idea of engineering as a very worthy profession also could help both boys and girls. I am always amazed at comments from some posters (not in the engineering forum) that seem to try to peg professions like engineering as a "trade school " or “vocational” degree.

“There’s also something to be said for outreach - explaining exactly what it is engineers do to appeal to girls who may not realize that, actually, some of the things they’re good at might be very applicable to the field after all”

It is particularly impactful for girls to realize how much the work of engineers helps people. Once they discover how much everything me do in our day to day lives relies on the work of engineers, the field becomes a lot more attractive to many of them.

Reading this whole thread has been exhausting. I keep waiting for reason to set in but I’m losing hope. Paraphrasing the most salient point from this discussion (I can’t take credit as another poster mentioned it earlier):

Equally qualified male and female applicants apply to UCLA, UCB, and top privates (MIT, Penn or Harvey Mudd came up in this thread) for engineering. As private schools, MIT, Penn and Harvey Mudd can and do* put a thumb on the scale for female engineering applicants. Now let’s say both applicants get into UCB and the female applicant also gets into one of the top privates while the male student’s denied. Which student has a higher probability of attending UCB? How would this difference in probability affect relative yield rates?

I can’t take credit for the argument but it’s impeccable logic unless you disagree with the fundamental premise. I think it’s clear that it’s easier for a female to gain admission to someplace like MIT than it is a male (NB: save your offense as easier admissions doesn’t equate to unqualified).

*MIT and Harvey Mudd do. Oddly, I graduated from SEAS and I don’t know what my alma mater’s does.

Having come from the Asian background, our parents tend to encourage or sometime force upon their kids, both boys and girls, to pursue high paying jobs such as medicine, law, and engineering. Some end up enjoying their profession, while some turn out to be miserable. However, that seems to have produced more female engineers.

Ok. Got it. I’ll lay off the UC stuff. Was not my intention to hi-jack or piss people off. But I do think it is a negative feedback loop. A number of my D’s friends, when they realized there were only 20% to 25% women in their engineering program, they switched to LibArts science majors. Which means they will be Physics or CS grads, not engineering grads. But I also think it is changing. I know for my D, she has been interested in engineering for a while, but seeing how design and engineering can be combined made it extra-exciting for her.

@CaliDad2020

“A number of my D’s friends, when they realized there were only 20% to 25% women in their engineering program, they switched to LibArts science majors.”

You actually brought up a very good point here. Why did they switch to LibArts science majors? Were they afraid that they would not get in, or were they more interested in pure science than engineering? Either way, the issue is that there weren’t enough female engineering applicants comparing to males. If the numbers of female engineering applicants are the same as males, I am pretty sure that the percentage of women in the engineering program will increase as well.

@Much2learn said some of this this above, but to expand on it, here’s a bit of a pet peeve of my (engineer) wife: Engineering often gets sold to students as a “You can make good money in your job!” major. This has been found to be a more compelling sales pitch for boys than for girls (in general—there are exceptions both ways, of course). To get girls to seriously consider engineering, the best pitch is “Engineering is all about making the world better for everyone!”

A different way of describing engineering may well not solve the problem of two few women in engineering, but it may actually move the needle a bit.

I honestly never gave the male/female ratio a single thought when I was thinking about majoring in engineering.

Just wanted to share some observations from an engineering meeting I stepped out of now (meeting was in asia, not US).

Several new faces joining this quarterly technical meeting, including 2 female, senior-level engineers. I sat in the back listening to a lot of side conversations by the males. Amazing how many disparaging comments by men in their 50’s, about their female professional peers were about the women’s looks, their clothes. Then there were the eyerolls whenever the women asked valid questions.

At the luncheon afterwards, I heard one of the senior engineering mgrs discuss the US presidential election, posing the question: Is the US ready for a female president?

I said why not? The UK & Germany had/have successful ones-- to which this mgr replied: “But they have to look matronly like Angela Merkel. Being president requires having to juggle a lot of different things.”

As awful as it all was, I reflected that while outside the US, male STEM professionals say horrible sexist things openly, in the US they just do behind their female colleagues’ backs.

They probably think that “a woman’s place is in the house”. [This house](About The White House | The White House) seems to be a perfectly nice one.

@CaliDad2020 , Physics and CS also have very low numbers of women in comparison to men. So, I’m not sure how switching to those majors from engineering is helping your daughter’s friends who were concerned about having only 20 to 25 % women in engineering programs.

@sevmom because the engineering school campus was basically segregated from the LS/AS at the schools they were attending. It was not the specific class but the overall vibe of the “college” inside the University - it felt like 2 different schools, one with 75% men and 25% women in the library, halls, etc. And the other more evenly mixed. It varies at different schools, obviously. Some are more segregated than others and it bothers some kids more than others. And some are almost seamless between schools.