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Rowan there is either no significant gender difference in satisfaction or the women are
more satisfied than the men.
More detailed data was made available from the University of Washington self-study
made in 2002. On satisfaction questions asked both of University of Washington and
Rowan engineering students, Rowan engineering students, and particularly female
students, are comparatively highly satisfied with their engineering program. As in the
national sample, at the University of Washington, males on many of the variables are
more satisfied than females; at Rowan, as we have seen above, it is more common to find
Rowan males more critical than the female students.
Satisfaction with Programmatic Elements
Rowan students are less likely than University of Washington engineering students to
agree that they are overwhelmed by the coursework. Considering the workload in
engineering courses, 20.6% of the UW females said they felt “very much” overwhelmed
by the fast pace and heavy workload, compared to less than 10% of the UW males. On a
scale of 1-5 (1=”not at all”; 5= “very much”), more than half of the females answered 4
or 5 (“very much”) compared to 25.8% of the UW males. On the same question,
WEPAN’s Pilot Climate Survey found that women were significantly more likely to be
overwhelmed by the fast pace and heavy workload of engineering than were male
students (Brainard, et. al., 1998).
On similar questions, the gender gap among Rowan students was reversed and much
smaller: 42.9% of the males and 37.1% of the females agreed or strongly agreed that the
workload for engineering is too heavy and difficult; 36.6% of the males and 32.4% of the
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