著者

滝 紀子

出版者

Japanese Society for Engineering Education

雑誌

工学教育 (ISSN:13412167)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.57, no.3, pp.8-13, 2009-05-20

参考文献数

2

被引用文献数

1

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Although Japan professes to be a scientific and technological country, more and more students have refused to apply to departments of engineering. From fiscal year 1992 through fiscal year 2008 the number of university applicants dropped to 71.6%. The number of applicants for engineering departments dropped to 61.1%, which is sharper than the decline in the number of total applicants. Among all faculties of national and public universities, engineering departments (first stage of individual exam) have the lowest difficulty level. Almost half of the engineering departments in national and public universities allow more than 50% of their applicants to pass the exam. The gap in difficulty level of entrance examinations between topnotch national universities and rural public universities has been expanding. The difficulty of entrance examination of medical technology departments is much higher than that of engineering ones. However, high-performing students have been enrolling in medical technology departments. For private universities, the gap in the number of engineering applicants between major metropolitan universities and rural ones has become considerable. Almost half of the high school teachers have realized the tendency of students' shying away from engineering departments. The contents of learning of engineering departments are too segmentalzed to understand, which makes it difficult for students to get an image of what they can do in their future after graduation. It is crucial for engineering departments to offer easy-to-understand information on future occupations to junior high students and high school students.