2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The purpose of this critical theory paper is to problematize the existing relationship between public engineering education in the United States and the military industrial complex that funds, advises, and otherwise shapes and supports it. Engineers in the United States enable many of the top weapons manufacturers and therefore should have an active and informed interest for the applications of their technology and for public welfare as a whole. Existing research shows that student opinions are complicated by conflicting views on moral good and career stability when describing their views of militarization in engineering education. Using a Decolonial and anti-imperialist framework that negatively views profiteering from violence, our analysis understands engineering student apathy as harmful to public welfare, and we seek to challenge it at the theoretical and practical level.

Sociopolitical disengagement is a known issue in the field of engineering education research. However, much established research exploring student values around sociopolitical engagement mainly targets wealthy universities with primarily wealthy and white students, so we instead consider a very large university system in the United States that serves majorly working-class students of which a majority are not white. What’s even less common practice is that we interrogate militarism explicitly as a critical example of the enactment of students’ sociopolitical values; in this paper, we explicate the relationship between the academy and the military industrial complex using the example of several university campuses in this system. We also offer some qualitative data from these campuses in an attempt to supplement this discussion. Our findings and analysis inform our current understanding of varied political awareness and ethical disengagement among engineering undergraduates related to the issue of militarization on their campuses. We hope that this paper can both improve the characterization of how students perceive the ethical qualms their field holds while also furthering efforts by academics and educators in confronting engineering student disengagement related to militarism - as well as their own complicity within their own roles.