Master's and doctoral engineering students' interest in industry, academia, and government careers

Background Graduate education literature tends to focus on faculty careers with little attention to industry careers. However, more than one-third of U.S. engineering doctorates enter industry. Purpose Our purpose is to understand engineering graduate students' interest in industry, academia, and government careers as it relates to their graduate engineering identities. Design/Method A total of 249 engineering thesis master's and doctoral students completed a survey about their graduate engineering identities and career preferences. We created regression models to predict students' likelihood of pursuing careers in industry, academia, and government. Then, we used cluster analysis to understand the extent to which students are considering multiple options and used chi-squared and ANOVA tests to compare the clusters. Results In the regression model predicting an academic career, research recognition and research performance/competence were positive predictors and engineering performance/competence was a negative predictor. Regression models of industry and government described less than 10% of the variance. Four clusters emerged, which collectively demonstrate that engineering graduate students are considering careers in multiple sectors. Students with internships during graduate study were more likely to pursue industry careers. Master's students were underrepresented in the cluster with highest likelihood of an academic career. International students were keeping more options open than some domestic students. There were also differences by engineering discipline. Conclusions Engineering graduate students are considering multiple career sectors. Advisors and education researchers should focus not only on academic career preparation but also on industry and government career preparation, particularly on preparing for multiple options simultaneously.