Factor Analysis for Women in Engineering Education Program to Increase the Retention Rate of Female Engineering Students

摘要

The lack of women students in college of engineering is a serious problem as a lack of human resources in industrial fields of South Korea. The purpose of this study was to develop an effective measurement tool to measure the women students' mind of dropout from engineering and to increase the retention rate of women students in college of engineering in South Korea. In order to develop an effective measurement tool, factor analysis for female engineering students at P University in South Korea was conducted. The analytical results showed that social and cultural effects are more significant ones than social effect alone, and the effects of gender discrimination in industrial fields or college to the women engineers are more significant than effects of regional or positional ones. Also results showed responses that the physical differences from man students, such as the ability to drive machines or to handle tools, their parents' financial supports, the gender cognitive engineering education and the boosting for job recruiting are more significant effects than the scholastic ability. In this research, we developed the measurement tool to measure women students' competencies in college of engineering and contributed to make the women in engineering education according to the results of factor analysis. These researches have been progressed since 2006 annually, and we had proposed to programs for the gender cognitive engineering education and the special programs for women engineering students. As the results, women engineering students' dropout rate in college of engineering in P University as a model was about 5% at 2006, it was much higher than 1% of male students', however the dropout rate of women engineering students were decreased to 1% at 2015 due to women in engineering program and proposed programs based on the results of factor analysis of women engineering student's dropout from college of engineering.