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Why College Students Leave the Engineering Track http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/why-students-leave-the-engineering-track/ Actually another study of science students asked the students why they were transferring or dropping out of science majors, and the number one reason cited was poor teaching: http://www.science20.com/news_releases/6_researchers_take_science_education "when college students abandon science as a major, 90 percent of them do so because of what they perceive as poor teaching; and, among those who remain in the sciences, 74 percent lament the poor quality of teaching" via http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/50-examples-of-the-need-to-improve-college-teaching/

According to an Associated Press analysis of data from 2011, 53.6 percent of college graduates under the age of 25 were unemployed or, if they were lucky, merely underemployed, which means they were in jobs for which their degrees weren't necessary. Philosophy majors mull questions no more existential than the proper billowiness of the foamed milk atop a customer's cappuccino. 

Students in academic difficulty who took the "Learning and Motivation Strategies" course in their first quarter at Ohio State were about 45 percent more likely to graduate within six years than similar students who didn't take the class. Average-ability students who took the course were also six times more likely to stay in college for a second year and had higher grade point averages than those who didn't take the class. "We are taking the students who are least likely to succeed in college and teaching them the skills they need to stay in school and graduate," said Bruce Tuckman, a professor of education at Ohio State, and creator of the course.

Some of the most innovative applications for hand-held devices, however, have come from professors working on their own. They find ways to adapt popular smartphone software to the classroom setting, or even write their own code. That's what I discovered when I put out a call on Twitter, as well as to a major e-mail list of college public-relations officers, asking about the areas in which professors and college officials are making the most of their mobile devices. Here are the six scenarios that people mentioned most often. I have highlighted the apps in each category that got users' highest marks.

Science, math and engineering departments at many universities are abandoning or retooling the lecture as a style of teaching, worried that it's driving students away.

According to UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, of all Black, Native American, and Hispanic students who aspire to a STEM degree in their first college year, just 19 percent, 20 percent and 22 percent, respectively graduate from a STEM department.

"Aside from a few institutions' references to improvements in retention or pass rates, most interviewees did not explicitly mention a desire for better learning outcomes as a main factor behind their decisions to increase their online offerings," write Bacow and Bowen. To the contrary, "the belief that students in online courses may learn the material better than their traditional-format counterparts did not appear to be widely held."