The gender gap in engineering...

The biggest problem in Universities today is the fact that males only comprise about 40% of the student body. Yet, look at what Universities are willing to do to address the gender gap in engineering.

Engineering schools in Ontario are grappling with a drop in female students in an alarming reversal of the trend everywhere else in universities.

Women have fallen to just 20 per cent of first-year engineering classes in Ontario, down from almost 30 per cent five years ago — just as they reach nearly 60 per cent of all university undergraduates, more than 53 per cent of medical students and nearly half of law and business classes in North America.

Worried educators blame the drop partly on engineering's outdated image — "We're not all nerdy Dilberts!" insists one female prof — but also on a daunting new Grade 12 math course believed to be scaring off many students, especially less math-cocky females.

"The new math course is killing us, because even though girls do well in math, they often don't think they're any good, so they'll decide not to take it and then don't choose engineering," said biophysicist Gillian Wu, York University's dean of science and engineering.

In a bid to halt the growing gender gap, Ontario's 15 engineering schools held an emergency summit last winter and have launched a number of rare steps this fall:

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They have changed entrance requirements this year to make them more female-friendly, by scrapping the dreaded Geometry and Discrete Math course as a compulsory requirement for engineering, and instead making it one of several options students may take, including biology, a subject girls often prefer, as well as earth science and data management.

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They have banded together to host simultaneous hands-on workshops next Saturday at campuses across the province to pitch engineering to girls and their parents as a "people profession" that helps others as much as the health professions so popular with teenaged girls.

The five-hour event, called Go Eng Girl, will try to replace the notion of engineers as "grease monkeys who just tinker with machines," says mechanical engineer Lisa Anderson, Ryerson University's full-time co-ordinator of women in engineering, "with the more up-to-date image of engineers doing everything from designing hip replacements to finding ways to reduce pollution."

So, the first thing they do is to lower the requirements! Gee, why not take math out of the engineering curriculum for good?