What makes students enroll in engineering: A case study

Recently, Engineering programs in the Middle East have witnessed a remarkable increase in students´ enrollment. To investigate the motives behind such increase, three universities in Lebanon were targeted as a case study. A Likert-scaled survey measuring different types of influences and motives was completed by (n=387) undergraduate engineering students. The results showed that the genuine interest in the field was the main influence affecting the students´ own decision. Also, the study examined various intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors through four categories: personal growth, professional growth, social growth, and financial growth. The descriptive statistics of the measured items showed the professional growth including job satisfaction that improves the level of students´ creativity in a challenging environment was the leading motivator for choosing engineering. The analysis discusses the identical importance for intrinsic and extrinsic factors which suggest the students´ need for a balance between intrinsic and extrinsic driven prospects for a life time profession.