Students' Enrollment in Engineering: Motivational Factors

This study investigates the influences and motives behind students' decisions to choose an engineering major. To learn more about what drives students to enroll in engineering programs, three universities in Lebanon were targeted as a case study. A survey with Likert-scaled items measuring different types of influences and motives were completed by 387 undergraduate engineering students. After rating the potential influence sources, a genuine interest in the field appeared to be the main influence affecting the students' own decision. An exploratory Factor Analysis was applied to the various intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors and generated four categories: personal growth, professional growth, social growth, and financial growth. One-way repeated measures ANOVA showed that the professional growth including job satisfaction that improves the level of students' creativity in a challenging environment was the leading motivator for choosing engineering.