Research On The Factors Influencing Engineering Students’ Engineer Intention

The international competitive environment urgently needs a large number of outstanding engineering talents,and accelerating the development of engineering talents is a major strategic choice to win the initiative in the fierce international competition.The issue of engineers’ intention is an important part of the engineering talents cultivation process,which can be understood as a realistic expression of engineering students’ satisfaction and career identity with engineering majors,and can also be considered as a weathervane for the evaluation of engineering talents cultivation reform.In this context,this study focuses on the increasingly fierce international competition for engineering talents under the current development situation and the need for reform orientation of engineering talents,argues that the learning and development of engineering students at the university stage play an indispensable and important role in the formation of engineer intention,the background characteristics of engineering students and the level of student engagement affect their engineer intention.This study explores the impact of the background characteristics and student engagement on the willingness of undergraduate engineering students to be engineers.Using the National Engineering Student Survey(NESS)developed by the Engineering Education Research Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2021,on the basis of the data selected before enrollment has become engineers of 2078 samples of the four-year engineering undergraduate students as research object,learn about their student engagement and current engineer intentions,focus on: whether the current career development of engineers maintain a high career attractiveness;the relationship between background characteristics and engineer intention;whether the student engagement affects the change in engineer intention.The article analyzes the results obtained from the questionnaire with the help of SPSS25.0 and the main findings of the study are as follows: first,the overall level of student engagement of engineering students is good,but some links are weak,the scores in extracurricular participation and student-faculty interaction are low;second,engineering students have a strong will to be engineers and a more attractive career as engineers.More than half of the students who did not have a will to be engineers before enrolling in the university have formed a will to be engineers after going through the university level;third,background characteristics influence engineering students’ engineer intention.Gender,institution level,grade level and major have significant effects on engineer intention.Male engineering students show a higher propensity in engineer intention than women.The intention of engineering students in research universities is lower than that in ordinary universities.The willingness of engineers is stronger among freshmen and lower among sophomores and juniors.Material and chemical students show less engineer intention than electronic information students;fourth,student engagement effectively enhances engineering students’ engineer intention.Internal and external learning motivation,student-student interaction(the same major)and professional course learning input can positively influence engineering students’ engineer intention,increasing the level of student engagement can promote the formation of their engineer intention.To sum up the above research findings and conclusions,the author believes that student engagement has a general promoting effect on engineering undergraduates’ engineer intention.In order to enhance engineering students’ engineer intention and help cultivate outstanding engineers,it is still necessary to improve in many aspects: 1)actively create an atmosphere of involvement in engineering extracurricular activities and provide internship and research opportunities;2)pay attention to the “entrance gate” of talent cultivation,help engineering students improve their sense of engineering professional identity and maintain a high engineer intention;3)Consider the important role of background characteristics on engineering students’ engineer intention,encourage female engineering students to participate in engineering-related work,attract engineering students from research universities to stay in the engineering field,build a coherent professional curriculum system and accelerate the exploration of a path to transform and upgrade traditional engineering disciplines;4)focus on stimulating students’ internal learning motivation and raise their academic expectations;5)improve the teaching of engineering courses and build a student-centered undergraduate teaching model.