Editorial

Engineering Enrollment in Colombia. Ending the crisis?

Although the global economic crisis of recent years has led to a decline in the demand for new graduates, the particular demand for engineers has increased. Research has shown that, even in economies threatened by such crisis, companies are looking for suitable candidates to fill new engineering positions on both the production side and in organisational management.

Contrary to such good news for young engineers, the amount of candidates applying to study engineering has decreased in almost every country around the world. The situation in Colombia seems to be similar when complaints from several engineering schools are considered. However, the statistics should be reviewed because this situation may have changed during the last year.

Reviewing the Universidad Nacional de Colombia's (UNC) figures during the last year has revealed that 38,724 young candidates ap-plied for admission to 20 engineering programmes on UNC campus-es in Bogota, Manizales, Medellin and Palmira during the second half of 2011 and the first half of 2012, showing an increase of a little over10% in the number of applicants compared to the preceding period. The programmes having the greatest increase in demand have been civil engineering, industrial engineering, petroleum engi-neering, geological engineering, chemical engineering and agriculture-related programmes: agricultural engineering, agribusiness engineering and agronomic engineering. There were also more applicants for environmental engineering and electrical engineering programmes. There was a slight decrease in the number of electronic engineering candidates in Bogota which was offset by a significant increase for the same programme in Manizales. Other programmes such as mechanical engineering, mechatronics engineering and systems engineering maintained their number of applicants.

Four programmes attracted more than 55% of applicants: civil engi-neering (18.6%), industrial engineering (16.2%), systems engineering (10.6%) and chemical engineering (9.8%). The bad news is that while demand is so great, UNC can only admit very few applicants. For example, only one in 21 candidates is admitted to civil engineering or one in 35 candidates to industrial engineering.

Why then do some engineering programmes complain? There are several reasons. The number of high school leavers has increased during recent years; 414,424 left high school in 2002 and 625,466 in 2010, representing almost a 50% increase in the number of leavers.

One would thus expect at least an additional 50% candidates apply-ing for engineering programmes. However, there is another explanation which may be useful in understanding some engineering programme managers' complaints and that concerns the number of engineering programmes being offered which may be too high compared to the number of candidates. For example, if the simplification that candidates for studying an engineering programme at UNC would also aspire to study the same programme in any other university were accepted, then some interesting facts would emerge. Civil Engineering had 7,195 aspirants at UNC during the aforementioned period; according to SNIES (Sistema Nacional de Información de Educación Superior), there are 64 active programmes, meaning that each institution could attract an average of 112 applicants. In the case of industrial engineering, which had 6,271 applicants, there are 150 active programmes, or an average of 41.8 applicants per active programme.

The issue becomes dramatic regarding systems engineering having 4,090 applicants for 223 active programmes, i.e. 18.3 applicants per academic programme each year (nine applicants per semester). By contrast, programmes such as petroleum engineering had 1,638 applicants in Colombia but only 4 active programmes having an average of 749.5 applicants per institution. The situation is also favourable in chemical engineering, having 210 applicants per institution or electrical engineering having 111 applicants per institution.

Another important issue which must be resolved is that, despite an increase in higher education institutions and the proliferation of programmes in some disciplines, the percentage of Colombian school-leavers who can enter university is still very low; less than 25% of young students can gain access to higher education. The figures also show a significant escalation in the number of foreign engineers entering the country and seeking permission to work in national and international companies.

Engineering schools are thus faced with an important challenge: being able to attract more applicants and keep them until they obtain their first degree.

Studies have revealed several causes preventing admission to engineering schools. The main explanation has stressed that high school students lack a solid foundation in maths and science and do not enjoy working in these disciplines. However, research also shows that students who leave engineering schools during the first semesters do not have lower performance in maths and science compared to those who remain. So, what is the difference? Students who drop out of engineering have a bad attitude towards what they are studying, have poor knowledge regarding what the engineering profession involves, have a negative view of the type of activities engineers engage in on a daily basis and do not enjoy studying maths and science.

Another element mentioned in several scenarios is that young peo-ple do not see engineers engaged in their daily activities on television in the same way as doctors, lawyers, managers, singers and food presenters have lately come to do so. Instead, they watch television programmes negatively caricaturing engineers or science students and news related to the failure of on-going work or serious corruption problems in engineering management.

If engineering schools want to increase the number of applicants, then we should try to address causes preventing students from attending them. We must actively support the Colombian Ministry of Education and educational institutions to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics and science. We must socialise practice with new students, showing the challenges, responsibilities, type of work and social and environmental responsibility involved in our actions. We must address weaknesses in the teaching of maths and science in high schools. Likewise, we could have more school-leavers applying for studying engineering if there were attractive television shows about the lives of engineers as there regarding disciplines attracting more high school graduates to their classrooms.

José Ismael Peña-Reyes
Dean
Faculty of Engineering
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá Campus.