Engineering education may diminish concern for public welfare issues

Collegiate engineering education may foster a "culture of disengagement" regarding issues of public welfare, according to new research by a sociologist at Rice University.

For the first-of-its-kind study, the researcher used survey data from four U.S. colleges to examine how students' public-welfare beliefs change during their college engineering education and whether the curricular emphases of their engineering programs are related to students' beliefs about public welfare. The study found that engineering students leave college less concerned about public welfare than when they entered.

Study author Erin Cech, an assistant professor of sociology who has B.S. degrees in both electrical engineering and sociology, said that many people inside and outside engineering have emphasized the importance of training ethical, socially conscious engineers, but she wonders if engineering education in the U.S. actually encourages young engineers to take seriously their professional responsibility to public welfare. Complete post can be read here