Attracting tomorrow’s engineers: an evaluation of a scheme to enhance recruitment into engineering

This paper reports a survey of 16 to 17 year old students who took part in a school based project activity designed to motivate them to consider a career in engineering. The scheme can be considered a success in that an uppermost estimated figure of 19% more students were recruited to engineering undergraduate courses than might otherwise have been the case in the absence of the scheme. The price that was paid for this was that for every additional engineer recruited to an undergraduate course there were ten participants on the scheme. The way that youngsters make decisions about career choices is discussed in an attempt to throw some light on the mechanisms for uptake (and abandonment) of careers in engineering.