Executive Summary

Key Findings

Just over 19 per cent of school leavers who meet the university entrance requirement also meet the subject requirements for studying engineering at university-defined as having achieved 18 or more credits in NCEA Level 3 mathematics with calculus and physics - and this equates to an average of about 2,900 students each year over the years 2005 to 2010.

Males are far more likely than females to have achieved these requirements, and Asian students are over-represented in this group. Māori and Pasifika school leavers in particular are less likely to have achieved the engineering pre-requisite.

Not all students who have the pre-requisite subjects go on to study engineering at university. While males are more likely to study engineering, females are more likely to go on to study natural and physical sciences.

The fact that females are less interested in studying mathematics and physics at school reduces the size of the pool of potential candidates that might go on to study engineering. The pool of potential engineering students is further reduced because, even if they have the pre-requisite school subjects to do so, all else being equal, females are significantly less likely to study engineering at university.

For students with the highest levels of interest in science, as indicated by their school subject choices, getting more of them to study engineering at university will necessarily reduce the number studying science, since most of these students study either engineering or science already.

Other research has shown that simply having achieved particular subjects at school will not guarantee success at university-level study, even if those subjects are pre-requisites for the study. Rather, how well a student performs at school is the better indicator of tertiary performance. This is also likely to apply to engineering and science.