November/December 2017

PE Report
On the Way Up: Bachelor’s Degrees in Engineering

The number of students awarded bachelor’s degrees in engineering increased by 6%, to 112,721, from 2015 to 2016, according to an American Society for Engineering Education report.

This growth is somewhat above the average 5.4% annual increase since 2007. The disciplines that experienced the largest percentage increases over the previous year were engineering science and engineering physics, and computer science (inside engineering) at 24% and 23%, respectively. The disciplines that experienced the greatest decline were electrical/computer engineering at 17% and mining engineering at 8%.

The report, Engineering by the Numbers, also noted that engineering enrollment at all levels is slowing down, which breaks with longstanding growth trends. In undergraduate engineering programs, overall enrollment decreased in 2016 after more than a decade of annual increases. Petroleum and mining engineering showed the largest percentage drops in enrollment, with decreases of 22% and 23%, respectively. Civil/environmental engineering and computer science (inside engineering) demonstrated the strongest growth, with enrollment for each increasing by 11%.

Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded by Engineering Discipline

Larger view of this chart (PDF)