Six Thousand High School Students View Engineering and Scientific Careers

For the past few years, our national professional engineering societies have expressed increasing concern over the engineering student shortage in our country. As a means of investigating, at the high school level, the reasons for this shortage, a questionnaire was prepared by the Office of the County Superintendent of Schools at the instigation of the Student Activities Committee of the San Diego section of ASCE and administered to approximately 6,500 high school students of San Diego County. The purpose of this report is to present the results of these questionnaires and to evaluate some of the reasons for the lack of interest in the scientific fields among our high school students.