Electrical engineering students at San Jose State find earning a degree in four years grueling and difficult, prompting the department to research student success and try to improve pass rates.
Electrical engineering has a four-year graduation rate lower than engineering and several other common majors.
As of Fall 2015, electrical engineering’s four-year graduation rate was 16.5%, compared to engineering students overall rate which was 17.7%, according to the SJSU Office of Institutional Research.
Other departments have much higher four-year graduation rates, like business with 40.6% or political science with 44.4%, according to the office.
Electrical engineering professor David Parent said graduating in four years is difficult, not only in electrical engineering, but in most other departments as well, especially if students fail classes or change majors.
“You repeat one class and you're going to be here longer, for anything,” he said.
He said the four-year graduation rates for the electrical engineering department do not reflect its success because many engineering students aim to work in internships while studying.
Electrical engineering’s five-year graduation rate is almost 30% higher than its four-year rate, at 45%, according to SJSU Office of Institutional Research.
General engineering shows a similar pattern, with five-year graduation rates 30% higher than four-year rates according to the SJSU Office of Institutional Research.
Other majors do not increase as sharply from four-year to five-year graduation rates, with both business and political science increasing by roughly 10-25%.
Electrical engineering junior Juan Salvador said he is on track to graduate in four years because he got ahead by taking summer classes and has not “taken the hard classes that everyone fails.”
Several electrical engineering students said they rely heavily on RateMyProfessors.com to choose their professors.
Salvador said reviews on RateMyProfessors.com are accurate and not usually overly negative, although sometimes the review depends on the student and how well they understood the material.
The four SJSU electrical engineering professors with the most ratings on RateMyProfessors.com all have low-to-medium scores, with three out of four having scores below 2.5 out of 5.
By checking RateMyProfessors.com, Parent said he learned that he is a “controversial figure.”
“I got no useful information from it, because it tended to be pretty angry,” he said.
Although RateMyProfessors.com can help electrical engineering students choose their classes in some cases, SJSU often only offers one section of advanced major courses a semester.
“So we have no choice,” electrical engineering junior Shirley Ong said.
Parent said few professors can teach advanced electrical engineering courses because of the nature of the material.
“As you get more and more in the discipline, there's less people who know the material and so then there's less people who can teach it,” he said.
Several electrical engineering juniors said that professors in their first major courses have tried their best to help students, although some students will not understand the material.
Electrical engineering junior Joseph Yang said his professors have encouraged students to visit office hours and get help with their homework.
Yang said the test average in his digital logic circuit design class is a C+.
“It’s not too bad yet,” he said.
Although many students think a good professor will completely change their experience in a class, Parent said the material remains consistently difficult.
“Sometimes students think, ‘This instructor’s great,’ versus another one, but their pass rates are exactly the same as somebody they like or somebody they don't like,” he said.
Several students recognize the material as difficult, no matter which professor teaches it.
Salvador said every electrical professor he has taken has tried their best to help students, but “it’s just a subject that doesn’t click with people.”
Ong agreed that all the professors are trying their best to teach students, but that some will not understand the material regardless.
“At least they are putting in the effort,” she said.
Electrical engineering is so difficult for students because of the amount of time classes demand and the heavy emphasis on applying prerequisite material, said Parent.
“It's not designed to be difficult, to be exclusionary,” he said. “It's just hard.”
Parent said three units in an engineering class will require more effort from students than a class with the same number of units in another department.
Electrical engineering junior Aliba Mehdi said she had seven homework assignments due during the first week of an electrical engineering class.
“We were really overwhelmed, but I guess we’re used to it by now,” she said.
Although many students wait until class to read the course material, Parent said students need to read ahead so they don’t get behind.
“Usually the ones with a million questions are doing well, because they, kind of, don't wait to hear about it in class,” he said.
Salvador, who is taking the same class as Mehdi, said one of those seven assignments took most students about 10 hours to complete.
“I think now we kind of got used to suffering,” he said.
Salvador said he is taking three classes with labs this semester and that electrical engineering takes much more work than an average college major.
Parent has researched student success in his electrical engineering classes and said the only way he increased pass rates was by emphasizing the importance of doing homework.
By giving students who did not have time to keep up with the homework an opportunity to drop the class before failing, Parent said his pass rates in his introduction to the circuit analysis class increased from roughly 50% to 70-80%.
“It really made a difference,” Parent said.
Although Parent said he is working on adding workshops to his classes, he said the best way to succeed in electrical engineering is by making “study buddies,” who can help students who are not familiar with the material better than faculty can.
“It can be hard for faculty to be thinking like somebody who doesn't quite know it yet,” he said.
Parent also incorporates group activities into his classes to encourage students to make friends.
“Half the students could be commuting, right?” he said. “So if we don't make time in class to make friends, it can be hard.”
