Declining Electrical Engineering Degrees Risk Undermining U.S. Competitiveness, New ITIF Report Warns

WASHINGTON—The CHIPS and Science Act will create thousands of jobs over the next several years that will require electrical engineering (EE) degrees. But a new report warns that a declining share of students are graduating with EE degrees. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, concludes that absent policy action U.S. competitiveness in EE-related industries will suffer.

“Many areas of science and engineering help power innovation, growth, and competitiveness, but electrical engineering is one of the most critical, given the importance of electronics and computing,” said ITIF research analyst Trelysa Long, who authored the report. “It’s concerning that U.S. bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate EE degrees have declined as a share of all degrees, while the number of American citizens and permanent residents obtaining EE degrees has grown only slightly.”

Faced with a rising China in the global competition for market share in key advanced industries, the United States has enacted several pieces of legislation to strengthen its position, most notably the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. But with low acceptance rates into top EE programs—and poor retention rates among those admitted—the share of young adults earning EE degrees is declining, making the prospects of filling roles created by the new law more difficult.

• In 2020, U.S. universities awarded only 29,860 EE degrees­—bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate—accounting for 1 percent of total degrees awarded that year.
• From 1997 to 2020, conferred EE degrees rose just 37.5 percent, while degrees in all other fields rose 81 percent.
• Among U.S. citizens, bachelor’s and master’s EE degrees awarded grew only 18.2 percent, while it grew 110 percent for temporary residents during the same period.
• Similarly, among 18- to 30-year-old U.S. citizens, EE degrees rose 20.5 percent from 2009 to 2019, while it grew 40.7 percent for noncitizens in the same age bracket.

The report explains that the decline in awarded EE degrees in the United States matters for two reasons, particularly to U.S. citizens. First, many jobs in EE rated for military or other national security application areas require the applicant to be a U.S. citizen. Second, many international students who obtain an EE degree in the United States return to their home nation, boosting their domestic industry, not America’s. Such slow growth of EE degrees awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents means that the United States will increasingly rely on foreign nationals to stay in the country after graduation to power some of the most crucial technologies in the industry.

ITIF argues that if the United States is serious about keeping its competitive edge, policymakers should provide incentives for colleges and universities to keep expanding EE enrollment for U.S. citizens and permanent residents while also working to increase retention rates in EE programs.

The report offers three key policy recommendations:

1. Congress should require all public universities to report engineering enrollment statistics, including the share of applicants from in-state, out-of-state, and international students, acceptance rates for each, switch-out and drop-out rates, and graduation rates.
2. State legislatures should increase the per-student funding for in-state engineering students to reduce the tuition difference. At the same time, Congress should pass legislation establishing a program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide payments to state universities for every in-state engineering student to help reduce the difference in revenue.
3. Congress should appropriate funds to NSF for five years to be awarded as prizes to colleges and universities that increase and sustain the rate at which their first-year EE students graduate with EE degrees.

“Policymakers need a strategy that will keep retention rates high, especially for public universities that award a majority of EE bachelor’s degrees to U.S. citizens and permanent residents,” said Long. “This would help prevent the United States from overly relying on foreign nationals to power its technologies. Policymakers need to act now. The CHIPS and Science Act will create tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years requiring graduates with EE degrees to fill.”

Read the report.