Characterizing disengagement in undergraduate education at MIT

Abstract

Recent studies have identified a decline in the public welfare concerns of graduates from top US engineering programs, including MIT. As technology ethics becomes a more prevalent topic of public discussion, there is increasing interest in identifying ways higher education can effectively train ethically and socially responsible change-making technologists. While academic institutions have already begun making investments to revamp research and education to address these concerns, such efforts must come paired with a better understanding of the decline in student engagement to issues of ethics, social responsibility and public welfare. This thesis explores the problem of characterizing the trend of student disengagement at MIT. Using survey data of three undergraduate cohorts, we investigate the role of an MIT undergraduate education in the development of students' competencies and long-term engagement-related outlooks. Finally, we provide a comparative analysis of select academic models for fostering more engaged engineering graduates.