Why Students Leave The Engineering Track

[JimG]

Apparently, because it’s too much work, and there’s no grade inflation.

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/?hp

My nephew, who graduated with an engineering degree and was hired even before graduation by a tech firm, sent me this link. Maybe it explains why the U.S. is falling behind in engineering graduates.

What, there’s homework?
What, you have to work really hard to get an A?

 

[Cascadian]

I’m trying to go into engineering, I know it’s gonna be rather difficult. I’m very pragmatic about college education though.

 

[JimG]

I’m trying to go into engineering, I know it’s gonna be rather difficult. I’m very pragmatic about college education though.

It will be difficult, but you’ll end up earning more money, and having a more viable career.

 

[curlycool89]

Apparently, because it’s too much work, and there’s no grade inflation.

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/?hp

My nephew, who graduated with an engineering degree and was hired even before graduation by a tech firm, sent me this link. Maybe it explains why the U.S. is falling behind in engineering graduates.

What, there’s homework?
What, you have to work really hard to get an A?

Well, it’s more complicated than that. Just so that people know I’m not just making stuff up: I’m in my last semester of engineering right now, so I live this everyday.

Grades depend on many more factors. Whether the class is curved or not is important (at my school, engineering classes are curved), and if it is then the class size will have an influence over that curve (in higher level classes, the average is always around a B+, regardless of the actual absolute percentage average).

Whether or not you have to work hard to get an A is also disputable; it depends on your strengths really more than anything. I’ve largely drifted through some classes and still gotten an A, and there’s some classes I’ve worked a lot harder on only to get a B. Some classes I’ve had to study a lot harder for exams, and some I’ve barely studied at all; sometimes my grade will be proportional to how much I studied and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to matter. Then there’s always the grades I just can’t explain (my transcript will tell you that I got an A in Statistics. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t really understand Statistics very well, I think I just know math well enough to fake it).

I don’t know if this is applicable to the US, but this is how it is in Canada. Engineering faculties/colleges don’t offer courses, rather they offer programs. You have to take certain courses in order for you program to be accredited by Engineers Canada (which ensures all engineers in Canada graduating with a degree have similar backgrounds). This means that we end up taking a lot of courses that we frankly don’t care about and just want to pass and get them over with.
For example, my major is environmental engineering. I have taken enough classes to design simple buildings according to Canadian structural codes (and enough knowledge that I would be able to do that in the US with a little studying of the Code). For what reason I can’t tell you, because I don’t care about designing buildings. I have no interest in the subject, and I’m so happy to be done with those courses that I’d like to bonfire my class notes because I’m never going to use them again. Why did I have to take those courses? To fulfill some sort of program requirements.

So yah, it’s a lot more than just a lot of hard work. There’s a lot of stupid things you have to put up with, not to mention that some of the professors couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag (professors are unfortunately hired for research or because of experience, not because of their ability to teach, and it really shows sometimes).

 

[JimG]

Well, it’s more complicated than that. Just so that people know I’m not just making stuff up: I’m in my last semester of engineering right now, so I live this everyday.

Thanks for your comments. Probably a lot of the things you mention would be applicable to humanities programs as well. But it seems that students drop out of engineering programs at a greater rate than they do from other programs.

Also, I’m wondering if most or many college courses grade on the curve.

 

[cviolette]

I went to college for electrical engineering. The teachers try to ween out the dead weight right away. The first year is tough and many kids switch majors or drop out.

My son is going to college for biomedical engineering. He was telling me that there were kids getting 20% on their calculus test. He found calc easy. His high school prepared him for college. Many kids leave high school not equipped to handle college.

He was also telling me that his first lecture for chemistry had over 200 kids. Within weeks there were only 10 - 20 kids showing up. It was not mandatory. When kids realized how much material was being covered many dropped out.

 

[JimG]

I went to college for electrical engineering. The teachers try to ween out the dead weight right away. The first year is tough and many kids switch majors or drop out.

My son is going to college for biomedical engineering. He was telling me that there were kids getting 20% on their calculus test. He found calc easy. His high school prepared him for college. Many kids leave high school not equipped to handle college.

He was also telling me that his first lecture for chemistry had over 200 kids. Within weeks there were only 10 - 20 kids showing up. It was not mandatory. When kids realized how much material was being covered many dropped out.

That is amazing to me. It sounds as if our high schools have been an abject failure in preparing students for college level work.

 

[curlycool89]

Thanks for your comments. Probably a lot of the things you mention would be applicable to humanities programs as well. But it seems that students drop out of engineering programs at a greater rate than they do from other programs.

Well, I don’t have anything that would prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, but the first year of engineering is largely meant to weed out the weaker students.

I do have 1 thing to substantiate this idea. In my second semester of first year, my calculus course was put in a classroom that didn’t have enough seats for the number of people that were registered for the class (around 5 had to sit on the floor). My opinion on that has always been that they expected enough people to drop our after the first semester so that there wouldn’t be a problem (schedules are very rigid in first year, trying to transfer to another section usually means rearranging half/most of your schedule).

Also, I’m wondering if most or many college courses grade on the curve.

That I don’t know the answer to. All I do know is that we’re very thankful for it.

That is amazing to me. It sounds as if our high schools have been an abject failure in preparing students for college level work.

That is a pretty clear “no”, especially in math. Schools are now being actively discouraged (from the highest levels) from teaching basic algorithms and methods of doing math in favour of trying to encourage students to come up with a “strategy” for each and every problem (the problem they don’t seem to understand is that you can’t strategize without the basics, but I digress). So yes, students coming out of high school (at least here) in the next 10 years will be significantly less equipped to handle university problems as we were.

 

[KarenElissa]

That is amazing to me. It sounds as if our high schools have been an abject failure in preparing students for college level work.

Yes. I watched a documentary called “Waiting for ‘Superman’” about the problems in the public school system recently and one of the things they mentioned was that a lot of kids going into college have take remedial classes.

“Remedial education at colleges is becoming more common and more costly,” write Eve Newman and Becky Orr in the Laramie Boomerang, and according to the US Dept of Education’s research, as the journalists report in their series on education: “The study concluded that 30 percent of first-year students at four-year universities and 42 percent of students at community colleges must take at least one remedial class. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found 60 percent of new college freshmen need to take at least one remedial class. Only 17 percent of the students who take even one remedial reading class at college are likely to get their bachelor’s degree.”

 

[ExLibris]

As a Mathematics (switched to Applied Statistics) and Economics double major, I think I can give an interesting viewpoint as to the differences between a hard science and a social science (or business science if you like to call it that).

The biggest difference I experience is study/work time.

How much do I study for mathematics in a week? I study about 10 hours PER class hour, which is the recommended time from the university.

How much do I study for economics in a week? Simply, I don’t study.

Mathematicians are required to digest huge amounts of information every time we go to class. The humanities and arts people will quickly respond, “Hey, hey we do that too.” True.

But let me ask you a very simple question, can I take a senior English major and put him in an upper division Partial Differential Equations class? I doubt you would answer in the affirmative. However, let’s turn it around. Can you put a senior Mathematics major in an upper division English Literature class? Of course you can.

Why? Because EVERYONE in college (any college worth its tuition anyway) can read, analyze, criticize, and write.

Will this theoretical misplaced math student produce work of the same quality as the English student? No, but I trust you get the point.

Political Science major in Quantum Mechanics? Nope.
History major in Organic Chemistry? Not a chance.
Art major in Number Theory? Please.

Don’t believe me? Find a Sociology major who can prove Green’s Theorem.

As for the point about grade inflation, in my experience there is no curves or extra credit in the hard sciences. If you didn’t understand Newtonian Mechanics, then you didn’t pass the class. If you couldn’t find the column space, then you didn’t pass Linear Algebra.

An upper division Econometrics class? I could have passed it with my mathematical education by itself.

The point of my rant: Do not pretend that all subjects are created equal in the undergraduate level, some of us are doing significantly more work than our peers.

 

[ProVobis]

As a Mathematics (switched to Applied Statistics) and Economics double major, I think I can give an interesting viewpoint as to the differences between a hard science and a social science (or business science if you like to call it that).

You did well to do that.

One doesn’t know what fields will be open to him once he graduates. It helps to round out the education with the hard sciences, humanities, social studies, and business courses. There is really no such thing as “wasting” one’s time on any class, even if it’s a non-degree course to learn contract bridge. Who knows, a prospective boss may be looking for a bridge partner. It happens.

 

[Cat]

I think that a lot of high school grads go into engineering because they are fairly smart in high school, and they want to make a lot of money without being a medical doctor or a lawyer. They don’t necessarily understand exactly what an engineer does, but hey, it’s a big money career and a sure-fire job after graduation and that makes mom and dad quite happy!

But then when the student gets to college and actually starts taking the courses in the engineering school, they discover, often to their dismay and always to the dismay of their proud parents, that they really, truly hate it.

It’s not necessarily that they hate the hard work and the studying.

It’s the subject that they hate. They discover that they really don’t care about circuits and electronics and street grids and machines, and that they really don’t have the kind of intelligence that will make them good at the various engineering tracks.

Being on the Robot Design Committee back in high school is kind of fun and you get to travel down state and have fun with all your buds at the Holiday Inn and come back and get applauded for at a school assembly if you win the Robot Contest.

But working on a design to increase the efficiency of a machine by .03%, or trying to put together a circuit board for a new kind of computer just doesn’t give you the same joy as your high school robot did.

And eventually, you realize that no amount of money is enough to make you keep doing something that you hate.

I honestly don’t think it’s about being lazy or unwilling to study. A lot of engineering students switch majors or drop out of college to go to trade school or join the military, and they work very very hard doing something that they love.

The very intelligent girl who ranked first in our high school class went into engineering at a prestigious university. She got great grades and was hired right away at a firm as an electrical engineer.

And she HATED it. Hated the work. Bored to death.

Thankfully, she had the smarts to admit that she hated it, and that the only reason she had gone into engineering was to prove that she was as smart as any man. (This was in the mid 1970s, the height of the Women’s Lib movement and Ms. Magazine and Betty Friedan and all the other feminists urging young girls to not allow themselves to be subjugated by a mere man.)

So she quit her high-paying engineering job and went BACK to college to major in psychology, a subject that had always interested her. She earned her B.S., Master’s and eventually her Doctorate, and is now working as a Clinical Psychologist. She loves it.

Although I believe that high school students have to be wise and make sure that they are able to earn an adequate living with whatever career track they choose (college, trade school, working at a company straight out of high school, military, etc.), I also believe that in order to be successful in any of the applied science careers, you have to actually LOVE the work so much that there is really nothing else that you want to do.

Money is not enough motivation to keep you doing applied science as a living. Money might be enough motivation to do dirty jobs like garbage collecting, or boring jobs like working on the auto assembly line. But all the money in the world is not worth working in a field like engineering (or any science field) if you don’t absolutely love it.

 

[JimG]

I think that a lot of high school grads go into engineering because they are fairly smart in high school, and they want to make a lot of money without being a medical doctor or a lawyer. They don’t necessarily understand exactly what an engineer does, but hey, it’s a big money career and a sure-fire job after graduation and that makes mom and dad quite happy!

But then when the student gets to college and actually starts taking the courses in the engineering school, they discover, often to their dismay and always to the dismay of their proud parents, that they really, truly hate it.

It’s not necessarily that they hate the hard work and the studying.

It’s the subject that they hate. They discover that they really don’t care about circuits and electronics and street grids and machines, and that they really don’t have the kind of intelligence that will make them good at the various engineering tracks.

Being on the Robot Design Committee back in high school is kind of fun and you get to travel down state and have fun with all your buds at the Holiday Inn and come back and get applauded for at a school assembly if you win the Robot Contest.

But working on a design to increase the efficiency of a machine by .03%, or trying to put together a circuit board for a new kind of computer just doesn’t give you the same joy as your high school robot did.

And eventually, you realize that no amount of money is enough to make you keep doing something that you hate.

I honestly don’t think it’s about being lazy or unwilling to study. A lot of engineering students switch majors or drop out of college to go to trade school or join the military, and they work very very hard doing something that they love.

The very intelligent girl who ranked first in our high school class went into engineering at a prestigious university. She got great grades and was hired right away at a firm as an electrical engineer.

And she HATED it. Hated the work. Bored to death.

Thankfully, she had the smarts to admit that she hated it, and that the only reason she had gone into engineering was to prove that she was as smart as any man. (This was in the mid 1970s, the height of the Women’s Lib movement and Ms. Magazine and Betty Friedan and all the other feminists urging young girls to not allow themselves to be subjugated by a mere man.)

So she quit her high-paying engineering job and went BACK to college to major in psychology, a subject that had always interested her. She earned her B.S., Master’s and eventually her Doctorate, and is now working as a Clinical Psychologist. She loves it.

Although I believe that high school students have to be wise and make sure that they are able to earn an adequate living with whatever career track they choose (college, trade school, working at a company straight out of high school, military, etc.), I also believe that in order to be successful in any of the applied science careers, you have to actually LOVE the work so much that there is really nothing else that you want to do.

Money is not enough motivation to keep you doing applied science as a living. Money might be enough motivation to do dirty jobs like garbage collecting, or boring jobs like working on the auto assembly line. But all the money in the world is not worth working in a field like engineering (or any science field) if you don’t absolutely love it.

So, apparently there just aren’t enough U.S. students who love the applied sciences! No doubt India will supply them.

 

[Catholic90]

That is amazing to me. It sounds as if our high schools have been an abject failure in preparing students for college level work.

Many have, yes.

Two of my kids have graduated from a college prep high school (catholic). When my oldest went to college, he felt the college classes were easier than his high school classes. However, many of his classmates were struggling, needed tutors, went to study sessions, etc. just to stay on top of things. He felt very well prepared after high school and suddenly appreciated the AP classes and hours and hours of studying. He is in engineering, btw. His biggest problem is having professors who do not speak English. He suffered through 2 classes with this, and now refuses to take any classes from non English speaking professors. It is difficult to learn from a lecture when one cannot understand them!

 

[Toplink_pin]

Good engineers are born, not made. I’ve been in engineering (electronics, process controls, some mechanical) for almost 2 decades and I find that many of the younger folks are indeed smart “kids” but have not really had any real hands-on experiences. Or, they truly just do not grasp certain principles. It’s not a youth-thing either. Some kids are really good students, they can pass tests, but just don’t have engineering-minds. Pushing kids thru Engineering schools doesn’t automatically turn out engineers. And yes the number one reason I hear is that they can make good money quicker.

Also, the lines between scientist and engineer are blurred today. (who knew there was a line, right?). Scientists are the free thinkers, they work in laboratory environments, and are not necessarily pressured with deadlines, so they can work more creatively at research. Engineers however need to be more disciplined, they take the ideas of science and make them into practical things. Engineers need to understand common sizes of materials for example, and realistic manufacturing processes in order to make things that work properly and are cost effective. They need to know how stuff works, but also how to put something that has many random outcomes into a few finite boxes, while understanding what to do with the remaining outcomes. What I find is that many young engineers are taking the scientist approach, which is good for a while, but are not objective enough to make real decisions. A scientist will tinker forever on a really good idea, and is perfectly happy with a career in a lab. However an engineer has to make tough decisions and know when to stop certain things, and be objective enough to move ahead with an application.

My own personal opinion is that many of the “kids” I encounter have been taught there are no wrong outcomes in life, that everything is a winner. What happens now as they are adults is that they can’t reject bad ideas, they are afraid to make real decisions. For many reasons; not wanting to hurt someone else feelings, a fear of being judgemental, intimidation of finding more problems, etc. Every idea and project gets attention now, every idea gets approval. But no problems really get solved, just moved around a bit.

I have about 20yrs yet to retire, but I’m a little pessimistic about our country’s mfg future. I don’t believe we have the same engineering and manufacturing potential as we did during WW2. Having grown up in an farming lifestyle, I had some real hands on experience when I started down the road in engineering. As a young guy my first technicians experiences were working with an old retired GE engineer; good Lord he worked me like a mule! He was a WW2 era engineer, and he was fluent on his Mac as he was on his old slide rule. But I got to like working with him because he taught me some good engineering discipline. And to make hard decisions; even if it may hurt someones feelings a bit, you cannot appease the entire office and put a bad design into a product.

God Bless

 

[ProVobis]

His biggest problem is having professors who do not speak English. He suffered through 2 classes with this, and now refuses to take any classes from non English speaking professors. It is difficult to learn from a lecture when one cannot understand them!

Anglophones seem to use this excuse a lot these days. In math and the sciences, this happens a lot but shouldn’t be a barrier. I had teachers back in the 60’s who had such heavy accents when they talked no one could understand them either but once they started using the chalkboard, all understood. If you don’t know math symbols and shorthand or don’t know the many pronunciations of different technical terms, you have no business being in engineering or physics. The universe wasn’t written in English.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

That is amazing to me. It sounds as if our high schools have been an abject failure in preparing students for college level work.

A basic high school four-year program should include:

1. Math … up through calculus; how to collect data (part of science lab) and how to do statistical analysis. At the least knowing about averages, means, medians, and plotting data and getting various curves and best straight lines.

In reality, math and science are one and the same. And physics is really “the same” as chemistry.

1. Science … including at a minimum … physics, chemistry, biology, physics lab, chemistry lab, biology lab. Mastery of the periodic table. Chemical reactions. Calculations for ballistics, energy, motion, acceleration … half-life calculations. Some kind of science fair so the students get the idea of how to do stuff. It’s tedious. “Some kind” of a project.

Good teachers can explain a whole terms work in one class; what I have found is that * most teachers drag out the work … job security? job protection? … Young students pick stuff up very very quickly. So there is no need for trig to take more than one class, for example. Sines and cosines can be explained in 15 minutes. [In one case, the students didn’t understand it, so I explained it at home and my child tutored the whole class during a ten minute break. It is made more difficult than it needs to be.]

What seems to be the case is that the teachers are barely one lesson ahead of the class, all too often.

What happens is that the students do not even receive the material … OR the study material is sooo dragged out, that the students zone out from boredom. You don’t have to wait for high school to introduce a lot of this stuff.

1. Writing … a LOT of writing … book reports, essays. Cribbing/borrowing the work of other people on-line does not qualify as writing. In my opinion, all writing should be done long-hand. It’s too easy to plagiarize the work of others, if comes spewing out of a computer.
2. Reading … a LOT of reading … articles, books, essays, various sources. Not just a subscription to the New York Times.

If the students do not have access to a public library with a 100,000 volume collection, then they need a good school library.

The point is that students need to be able to understand stuff.

Opinions don’t count for much.

My experience has been that too many high schools insist on things like “math tracks” … whereas in reality my experience is that all students can do well in all of these subjects in high school. Some will clearly do better than others, but there is no reason for anyone to be denied those classes.*

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Well, it’s more complicated than that. Just so that people know I’m not just making stuff up: I’m in my last semester of engineering right now, so I live this everyday.

Grades depend on many more factors. Whether the class is curved or not is important (at my school, engineering classes are curved), and if it is then the class size will have an influence over that curve (in higher level classes, the average is always around a B+, regardless of the actual absolute percentage average).

Whether or not you have to work hard to get an A is also disputable; it depends on your strengths really more than anything. I’ve largely drifted through some classes and still gotten an A, and there’s some classes I’ve worked a lot harder on only to get a B. Some classes I’ve had to study a lot harder for exams, and some I’ve barely studied at all; sometimes my grade will be proportional to how much I studied and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to matter. Then there’s always the grades I just can’t explain (my transcript will tell you that I got an A in Statistics. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t really understand Statistics very well, I think I just know math well enough to fake it).

I don’t know if this is applicable to the US, but this is how it is in Canada. Engineering faculties/colleges don’t offer courses, rather they offer programs. You have to take certain courses in order for you program to be accredited by Engineers Canada (which ensures all engineers in Canada graduating with a degree have similar backgrounds). This means that we end up taking a lot of courses that we frankly don’t care about and just want to pass and get them over with.
For example, my major is environmental engineering. I have taken enough classes to design simple buildings according to Canadian structural codes (and enough knowledge that I would be able to do that in the US with a little studying of the Code). For what reason I can’t tell you, because I don’t care about designing buildings. I have no interest in the subject, and I’m so happy to be done with those courses that I’d like to bonfire my class notes because I’m never going to use them again. Why did I have to take those courses? To fulfill some sort of program requirements.

So yah, it’s a lot more than just a lot of hard work. There’s a lot of stupid things you have to put up with, not to mention that some of the professors couldn’t teach their way out of a paper bag (professors are unfortunately hired for research or because of experience, not because of their ability to teach, and it really shows sometimes).

I can’t speak to the differences and / or similarities between engineering education in the U.S. versus Canada.

No idea.

My experience may not be valid because I took a “general engineering” program covering all disciplines. The degree ended up as a BS in Mechanical Engineering.

What always got me into trouble, was that I would asked to design a complex system and would include all the electrical, structural, and civil aspects as well as mechanical. The people reviewing it had no clue. They had only experience in one discipline.

However, I have noticed that a lot of my friends in the U.S. sort of design their own engineering college program. And end up with a degree in “cyber-thermodynamics” or some such thing. Because they got interested in infrared spectrometry and chip design for high temperature environments.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Apparently, because it’s too much work, and there’s no grade inflation.

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/?hp

My nephew, who graduated with an engineering degree and was hired even before graduation by a tech firm, sent me this link. Maybe it explains why the U.S. is falling behind in engineering graduates.

What, there’s homework?
What, you have to work really hard to get an A?

Excerpt from the article:

**Professor Babcock has written extensively about college students’ evolving study habits (or lack thereof) over the last 50 years. He found that in 1961, full-time students spent about 40 hours each week in class and studying. By 2003, they were investing about 27 hours a week.

The time spent studying has fallen across the board, but especially in non-engineering majors:

The typical engineering major today spends 18.5 hours per week studying. The typical social sciences major, by contrast, spends about 14.6 hours.**

18 hours a week is less than three hours a day.

That is almost an inconsequentially small amount of work.

Can’t believe it is so low.

The students spend more time than that watching television.

Television allows absorption by osmosis. Of course, what they absorb is trash.

Study material cannot be absorbed by osmosis.

You have to read a chapter a night in each subject.

Start reading in grammar school.

Pay your kids to read. A book a day.

Pay your kids to memorize the 25x25 multiplication table. Start them very young and see how fast they get into it. Especially where there is a tangible reward.

Kids memorize songs and music. Why not math tables?!!

Pay them to draw maps of the United States and the world. There are 50 states and 200 countries. See how much of that they can memorize.

Ask them to count up the number of countries … to make a list. [The number varies from list to list … 176 to 206 … hard to believe. But let the kids research it.

Pay your kids to do chores and they have to submit an invoice [with numbers … math …] each week. They can make a little spread sheet. By hand. Don’t need a computer.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Apparently, because it’s too much work, and there’s no grade inflation.

economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/?hp

My nephew, who graduated with an engineering degree and was hired even before graduation by a tech firm, sent me this link. Maybe it explains why the U.S. is falling behind in engineering graduates.

What, there’s homework?
What, you have to work really hard to get an A?

Read the comments at the bottom of the article.

There’s 87 of them.

Here are three:

Engineers are not valued enough in our society. It’s as simple as that. Starting salaries are higher, true. But they should be even higher! A business major who might get a lower starting salary (but eventually could easily catch up/surpass his engineer buddy) got to spend his college years partying, “hooking-up” with the opposite sex, attending football games, etc. His engineer buddy had to spend all his time in the lab or library. Not worth it.
Jan. 21, 2012 at 8:18 p.m.RECOMMENDED4

bud unanskiholmdel, nj
I have an EE Degree. **There were many DAYS when I would spend 18 hours studying! **I am sure many out there have had similar experiences, particularly leading up to the dreaded final exams. Today, many of the students in India, China, Korea, Taiwan spend just as much time as I did, perhaps more. **The trend in US education in general over the past 25 years has been to make everyone “feel good” by not requiring rigorous study loads. **Conversely, the rewards for the hard work obtaining an EE, Chem E, Physics, etc., are just not there as there have been in obtaining an MBA or Medical Degree. But, I believe the pendulum is swinging back in favor of the technical degrees. The Law of Supply and Demand still works! Many have found that Wall Street is NOT paved with gold!
Jan. 21, 2012 at 8:18 p.m.RECOMMENDED1

LibInTXRosharon, TX
My son entered college to study engineering as he always loved math and science. He quit after the first year because his freshmen math classes were taught by foreigners and he couldn’t understand them, hence low math grades (his first ever) and he made the switch. He said, math is hard enough and then you add a language barrier. He graduated, couldn’t find a job, joined the USAF and got selected to a field in satellite communications because of his high math scores. He is now studying engineering through the USAF, where the professor’s first language is english. Maybe it’s not just the students…