Engineering in the late 60s and 70s
It is also important to look at the context of engineering enrolment around that time. For this section, two different scholarly articles will be discussed, both of them talk about certain figures and data that might shine some light on why an institution such as Poly was facing extinction. At the end, there will also be a brief summary of an article that illustrates the condition of New York City during this time, which is also an important aspect to point out.
The first source for this section was a University of Princeton document. The paper includes various tables that show certain trends in engineering and education in general during the years before and after the merger. The first figure shows the enrollment in different fields. In the engineering curve, there is a clear sharp decline during the year of 1970. This trend is actually visible in all fields except in fields related to “Business and management”, which has a steady upward trend all the way to the 80s. The second figure that will be analyzed from this paper is the doctorate degrees in science and engineering by field and by year. In this figure all fields suffered a sharp decline in the years leading up to the merger, with only a steady influx in the mid 1980s.
The second article that will be analyzed is a paper published by the US Department of Education in 1993. The first important figure shows data relating to the percent of 20 to 24 year old enrolled in an education institution by year. For most years before 1970, there was a steady increase in the number of students enrolled. For males, which was the majority of the student body at the time, this peaked in 1970. The second figure shows the number of public and private highschool graduates by year. The same can be observed here, with a peak in 1970 and then a small decrease until 1993. This figure can show that due to the fact that since there was no increase in the number of students, there was less interest in attaining a higher education degree.
Both of these trends papers show that engineering and education as a whole went through a downfall that affected many institutions such as Poly. The post war boom in education was over and young people came to the realization that higher education was not a priority anymore.
Additionally, New York City during this time was also in a decaying state. The pictures in this item show various aspects of ordinary life that were most likely not appealing to incoming students and also explains the decrease in enrollment.