Measuring the compatibility between engineering students´ personality types and major of study: A first step towards preventing engineering education dropouts

Research suggests that almost half of engineering students switch to other majors or drop out mainly due to three key reasons: teaching and advising insufficiency; complexity of engineering curriculum; and a lack of `belonging´ within engineering [1]. The current study measures the compatibility between engineering undergraduate students´ personality types and their major of study in order to estimate the extent to which engineering students `belong´ within engineering. An online questionnaire of Holland´s typology of personality was used to obtain scores on students´ personality types. Results suggest that the match between students´ personality types and Engineering is relatively low. An improvement in this match could help avert engineering dropout.