What makes a difference for further advancement of engineers: socioeconomic background or education programs?

Abstract

Education is considered to be the most effective tool that people can use to lift themselves out of poor socioeconomic backgrounds and lead to professional success, which in turn improves society. Since an education system often supports individuals with a higher socioeconomic status (SES), it may not resolve the issue of socioeconomic background impacting on career outcomes. Given the nature of the research questions, an individualistic approach is used for selecting tools. Using qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, we argue that graduates studying an 8-year engineering program fail to succeed compared to counterparts who studied a 4-year engineering program. Findings suggest that engineering graduates’ socioeconomic backgrounds help them with their career advancement. A policy intervention may help to address the influence of SES on engineering education and professional employment. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Engineering education Career advancement Education and development SES’ impact on education and profession Socioeconomic backgrounds

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations

Department of Foundations of Education, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology, Gazipur, Gazipur, Bangladesh

Funding & Acknowledgements

University of Dayton

We greatly acknowledge the comments made by the reviewers and Professor Simon Marginson (Editor-Higher Education). Without their thorough input, the manuscript would not have reached its enriched version. We would also like to express our gratitude to Professor Christine Ennew Provost, University of Warwick and Professor Charlie Russo, University of Dayton for their kind insights with innovative ways to deal with the reviewers’ comments. Especial thanks to Mr. Md. Moniruzzaman, Deputy Registrar, DUET who died from being infected by COVID-19 and Ms. Morsheda Parvin who provided a unique support for data collection.

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What makes a difference for further advancement of engineers: socioeconomic background or education programs?

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