Attracting students to mining engineering: Why do diversity numbers stay so low?

The demographics of mining engineering students remains 85 to 90 percent male. (Image courtesy of the University of Nevada, Reno) Some engineering fields are more equal than others, demographically speaking. The mining engineering profession is not one of the most equal: in the United States, mining engineers are roughly 85 to 90 percent male and 80 percent white or of non-U.S.-resident ethnicity. This demographic distribution starts in college, where mining engineering undergraduate degrees awarded over the last decade largely mirror this pattern (Data USA, datausa.io). Why does mining engineering’s gender and ethnic distribution remain so unbalanced, despite years of dedicated diversity symposia and endless diversity initiatives? Similar efforts across STEM have managed to improve the representation of women and minorities in related disciplines, such as chemical engineering and geology. But the demographics of mining engineering seem remarkably immovable. Solving a problem starts with knowing its cause. Is it that women and minorities simply lack knowledge or awareness of mining? Do they lack exposure to Earth science and other mining-related fields in high school? Do they prioritize career goals that seem incompatible with a mining engineering career? Or are they simply less interested in one? And diversity isn’t just about gender and race — do students’ family educational backgrounds matter? Survey background Two surveys were conducted during the University of Arizona’s (UArizona) fall 2022 freshman Engineering Design course; one in late August to early September and the other in early December. In between, the students received an introduction to each of UArizona’s 16 engineering majors. First they watched a roughly 20-minute informational video on the major, then participated in a 20-minute question-and-answer (Q&A) session with representatives of the major who visited the Engineering Design class. This year the mining major was represented in the Q&A by two white female faculty and one male Hispanic staff member. Enrollment in the course was approximately 600 freshmen. Overviews of the general survey methods and class are provided by Banta et al. (2021) and Barton et al. (2021, 2022). The two surveys received 456 and 478 responses, respectively, after scrubbing out incomplete responses and responses from students under 18. Confidence intervals were 95 percent, and the survey’s margin of error was ±2 percent. The demographics of both surveys were similar: 65 percent male, 33 percent female and 2 percent other or preferring not to disclose. Ethnically, responses were 64 percent white, 19 percent Hispanic and 13 percent Asian. The remainder comprised roughly 1 percent each of Native American, African American, Native Hawaiian, and Middle Eastern. Seventeen percent reported more than one race and were counted in all corresponding categories. Of the respondents, 17 percent reported their parents’ highest level of education was a high school diploma or GED, or less; for 10 percent it was some college, an associate’s or trade degree; for 33 percent it was a bachelor’s degree; for 39 percent it was a master’s degree or higher; and 1 percent did not know. Are women and minorities less aware of or knowledgeable about mining engineering? No. At the beginning of the semester, men’s and women’s reported levels of knowledge of mining engineering were equal to within error (averages 1.61 and 1.59 out of 5, respectively). By the end of the semester, women knew more than men about mining engineering by 3.02 to 2.82. Of the 16 engineering majors, only five had a wider knowledge gender gap in favor of women: architectural, biomedical, biosystems, chemical and environmental engineering (Fig. 1a). There was no racial gap at the start of the semester when white, Hispanic and Asian students rated their knowledge of mining engineering at 1.57, 1.61 and 1.55 out of 5, respectively. By the end of the semester, white and Hispanic students reported knowledge levels of 2.91 and 2.94, respectively, compared to 2.54 for Asian students. At 0.37 to 0.4, this gap is large but less significant than it seems, since Asian students rated their knowledge of almost all engineering fields lower than other groups by roughly 0.2 to 0.3 out of 5 (Fig. 2a). Other racial demographics included too few responses for statistically valid analysis (n < 10). Students’ self-reported knowledge of mining engineering showed a scattered inverse relationship to their parents’ level of education. Averages were 1.81, 1.47, 1.59 and 1.54 for the four levels (respectively, high school or less; some college or trade/associate’s degree; bachelor’s, and master’s or higher degree). This is partly mitigated by the fact that first-generation students tended to rate their knowledge of most engineering fields higher than other students by about 0.05 to 0.1 out of 5. Mining had by far the largest gap at 0.21 (Fig. 3a). Figures 1a and 1b Men’s and women’s self-reported knowledge (left) and interest (right) in different engineering majors at the beginning and end of the semester. Figure 2a and 2b Self-reported knowledge (left) and interest (right) in engineering majors at the beginning and end of the semester, among white, Hispanic and Asian students. Figure 3a and 3b Variation in students’ knowledge (left) and interest (right) in engineering majors at the beginning and end of the semester, by parents’ highest level of education. Is the problem a lack of exposure to Earth science? Probably not. The early-semester survey included a question asking students to rate their interest in various fields of K-12 science: astronomy or space science, biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental science, Earth science, mathematics, physiology or health science and three types of physics (electromagnetics, statics/mechanics and optics). The results revealed no gender gap but potentially significant differences with race and parents’ education. Earth science was ranked least interesting among the sciences, at 2.33 out of 5 for both men and women (27 students reported not having been exposed to Earth science.) Average interest in Earth science was 2.61 for white and 2.53 for Hispanic students, but only 2.3 out of 5 for Asians. First-generation students reported the most interest in Earth science at 2.72 out of 5, compared to 2.37 and 2.38 for students whose parents had some college or a bachelor’s degree respectively. The rating rose back up to 2.66 out of 5 among students whose parents had a graduate degree. We conclude that lack of K-12 exposure to Earth science is not the problem, at least per se; other areas of science have less exposure but still manage to attract high levels of interest (for example, 49 students reported no exposure to electromagnetics but its average interest rating was 2.89 out of 5). Lack of K-12 interest in Earth science is a different question. From these data it can be ruled out as a cause of the low gender diversity, but could contribute to low representation of Asians. However, since most K-12 Earth science programs have minimal mining content, a close connection between high school Earth science and college mining engineering majors seems dubious. Do women and minorities have career goals or priorities that seem incompatible with mining engineering? A small but nonzero fraction of the time, yes. Our questions about motivation showed that the vast majority of students chose a major because they were interested in it, because it would lead to a high-paying job, and because it would lead to a career that offered them lots of options. Together these three accounted for more than 70 percent of responses and were the most common across all demographic groups. White students and students whose parents had bachelor’s or graduate degrees were slightly likelier than other groups to cite interest as a principal factor in major choice, but otherwise there were no variations with race, gender or parental education level. There was some potentially significant variation in the less common responses. While 19 percent of women cited “It will lead to a career that benefits society” as an important factor in their choice of major, only 14 percent of men did. On two subsequent questions about career satisfaction, women were also likelier than men to attach high importance to “Helping the environment,” “Making the world a better place,” and “Helping others.” This last may explain a part of the dearth of women in mining engineering. The most commonly cited motivations for choosing a major — high pay, interest, or a career with options — could be satisfied by almost any engineering major. But the 19 percent of women who want a career that benefits society will probably gravitate toward majors with a more obvious impact, such as biomedical or environmental engineering. (Probably so will the 14 percent of men.) Motivational factors do not, however, explain the lack of racial diversity in mining engineering, and are insufficient to account for the magnitude of the gender gap. Are women and minorities just less interested in mining engineering? Generally, yes. By the end of the semester, women knew more than men about mining engineering, but the interest difference ran the other way around: women rated it 2.26 and men 2.44 out of 5 (Fig. 1b). Combine that with the already 2:1 male:female ratio of the class at large, and a big part of the gender gap in mining majors is explained. For comparison, engineering majors that men and women chose in roughly equal numbers (biosystems, environmental) were the fields in which female interest exceeded male by about 0.25 to 0.3 out of 5. Mining has nearly as big a gender gap in interest, but it runs the other way around. Interest also helps explain the racial makeup of mining engineering. While Asian students are uninterested (2.15 out of 5) and underrepresented, interest in mining engineering was highest among Hispanic students (2.49, compared to 2.38 for whites). While mining was the eighth-mostinteresting of the 16 engineering majors for Hispanic students, among Asians it ranked dead last (Fig. 2b). Mining also appears disproportionately interesting to first-generation students, for whom it was the seventh-most-interesting engineering major (Fig. 3b). For the other educational demographic groups, mining engineering fell between 10th and last. These proportions match the demographics of the UArizona undergraduate mining engineering student body. Though the proportion of women is currently rising, for the last several years, the male:female ratio has been about 4:1, and the undergraduate student body is close to 1/3 Hispanic, nearly 0 percent Asian, and consistently around 25 to 30 percent first generation. Given the demographics of the overall College of Engineering, this means that women and Asian students display a selection bias against mining engineering and Hispanic and first-generation students have a selection bias toward it — corresponding precisely to the demographic variations observed in their interest levels. Conclusions: The probable source(s) of the diversity problem in mining engineering Lack of knowledge and awareness are clearly not the cause of low diversity in mining engineering. Rather, the chronic diversity problem in mining engineering seems to boil down to which students find it interesting. So far, that appears to be lots of white and Hispanic men, and first-generation students in particular, but few women and Asians. Nobody knows what drives interest, but we can speculate a little about the reasons for disinterest. Mining engineering is clearly a satisfying major for students who prioritize a high-paying job or a career with options, or who find it intrinsically interesting — but none of these qualities, except intrinsic interest, distinguishes mining from most other engineering majors. The minority of students who prioritize benefiting society, helping the environment, or making the world a better place include a higher percentage of women than men, who probably sort into biomedical, environmental or another field of engineering rather than mining and add another slight contribution to the low gender diversity. We conclude that demographic variability in interest is the main cause of low diversity in mining engineering, with demographic variability in students’ career priorities and motivations playing an ancillary role. Now that we have a better idea of the problem, can we do anything to fix it? That’s the next step in our research. Stay tuned. Acknowledgments We thank Umar Amjad, Jim Baygents, Ken George and the UArizona freshman engineering teaching team for their help with the survey. This study is supported by National Science Foundation grant 2139096 and runs under UA IRB 2002354299.

Attracting students to mining engineering: Why do diversity numbers stay so low?

Authored by:
Jodi Banta, Isabel Barton

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