Gender and graduate school: Engineering students confront life after the B. Eng.

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2002 by Baker, Sarah, Tancred, Peta, Whitesides, Sue

Discouragement is, indeed, part of the women students' experience. One form is in the difficulty of obtaining information. Here, similar proportions of the women and men have searched for information about graduate studies and finding, but the men find this information much easier to obtain than do the women. In fact, "not enough information" is the major concern for both women and men when asked about applying for graduate studies and funding. Both women and men talk of their lack of knowledge of the application "process." For example, M1* would have liked to talk to somebody who knew "the process," which might have helped him get the timing of his applications in order. Others elaborate:

"I always thought the process was like, the profs choose...[their] students and then they just ask...if they want to do a Masters. I never thought of it as a process of me going to a prof and asking...to do a Masters for him...." (F2).

"I'm very poorly informed about the whole process of doing a Masters and Ph.D. I've heard something about fast track, which means you move on to doing your Ph.D. right away...I don't know much about that...." (F3).

notice of the award aside and the deadline passed. On the other hand, a male student (M4) recounts how a professor with whom he worked the previous summer advised him to switch his medicare and driver's license to Quebec ("to be a citizen of Quebec") so that he would be eligible to apply for an FCAR scholarship for graduate work

We asked our respondents about the sources they would consult for information on graduate studies and funding; for both women and men, "course-related contacts" (i.e., professors, teaching assistants, other graduate students and undergraduate students) constitute their major source of information on this topic, and these contacts were rated as being equally helpful by both genders. However, it is clear from the more qualitative data that women depend much more on personal contacts* than men. They mentioned departmental secretaries (often by name), professors, and friends as their main sources of information. The men mention the first two sources, but the Web replaces friends as the next most important source of information. Despite mentioning personal contacts frequently, both women and men are aware that such sources are limited; one woman student opines that: "It's the secretaries that give advice in the office, and they don't have the time or the knowledge to be giving good advice" (F1). As to professors: "...they push McGill and Canadian universities. I want to go to the top schools in the States" (10F). However, what is striking is that the male respondents rate additional sources of information more positively than do the women. These sources include both academic and non-academic staff who serve as advisors; documentary resources; and the university's Career and Placement Service (CAPS). Although the men are more positive than the women, neither group rates these sources highly. Responses to a series of wrap-up questions on sources for graduate studies information, the departments, the Dean's office, and the undergraduate associations were rated as lower than adequate by the women and only the departmental sources were considered better than adequate by the men. For funding, these sources were considered, at best, adequate, and mainly less than adequate. Both the women and the men rate their knowledge about funding below the mid-point on a five-point scale. This may explain why the use of these sources is quite low, i.e., not because of lack of awareness, but because of negative evaluation. What appears to be happening is that the women have fewer additional sources of information that they consider valuable and that a significant lack of information is the consequence.