Login

2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Understanding the Master’s Engineering Workforce Landscape: Employer Demands and Student Goals

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session II

This paper presents findings from a mixed-method project examining the alignment between mechanical engineering job advertisements and enrollment decisions made by mechanical engineering students. Although there are four times as many master’s engineering degrees awarded as PhDs, there is less work specifically examining career decisions and workforce implications for engineering master’s students. The limited body of work that investigates STEM master’s degree holders tends to focus on potential individual economic benefits, primarily increased salaries. The primary perspectives in STEM master’s education literature regarding this increase in pay and opportunity are that master’s programs provide employees with additional skills and knowledge needed for higher-paying, higher-demand jobs. However, other demographic factors show a similar predictive relationship to pursuing a master’s degree, so the connection between pay and degree may not be as clear-cut as assumed. In addition, the focus on increased salary can overshadow other considerations in a student’s decision to pursue a master’s degree, such as career mobility rooted in values, familial or social expectations, employer requirements, or subject area interest. These factors, while connected to potential salary increase from degree conferral, may hold other motivational emphases for choice of graduate program, discipline, and focus. Furthermore, the number of STEM master’s programs has increased in the last decade, including the expansion of accelerated master’s programs and specialization topics to address industry demands. The high rates of international students enrolling in these programs have also raised concerns about master’s programs’ ability to attract and retain American students, who may be seeking other career advancement or skill development opportunities. The emphasis on the salary benefits of STEM master’s degree conferral undermines an understanding of why students choose to return to pursue a degree: elements central to maintaining supportive and relevant graduate programs. Bridging these concerns, this paper reports findings from an ongoing NSF-funded project examining why students transition from industry careers to pursue a mechanical engineering master’s degree. We investigate the alignment between the perceived benefits of a mechanical engineering master’s degree program from both a student and industry practitioner perspective using an exploratory concurrent mixed-methods approach. This ongoing project will include: (1) in-depth semi-structured interviews with returning mechanical engineering master’s students (n = 20) to provide insight into their motivations for pursuing the degree; (2) analysis of 1.3 million mechanical engineering job postings collected by Burning Glass Technologies, using natural language processing techniques to extract information about their qualifications, employee knowledge and skills, job tasks and responsibilities, and tools and technologies used. These data are compared to understand how students’ perceptions of master’s degree programs align with the desired characteristics described in job opportunities. Using an adapted version of Perna’s model of student college choice to guide analysis, we present findings based on the research question: What is the (mis)alignment between the skills associated with jobs in mechanical engineering that require a master’s degree and current master’s students’ perceptions of the skills needed for employment? This work is funded through the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers (RFE) program.

Authors
  2. Mitchell Gerhardt Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0009-0006-4191-1654 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]
  3. YiXiang Shawn Sun Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8724-7716 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]
  4. Riya Budhathoki University of Nebraska - Lincoln [biography]
  7. Dr. Andrew Katz Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]
  8. Dr. David B Knight Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4576-2490 Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University [biography]
Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

« View session