Competition for engineering tenure-track faculty positions in the United States.

How likely are engineering PhD graduates to get a tenure-track faculty position in the United States? To answer this question, we analyzed aggregated yearly data on PhD graduates and tenure-track/tenured faculty members across all engineering disciplines from 2006 to 2021, obtained from the American Society of Engineering Education. The average likelihood for securing a tenure-track faculty position for engineering overall during this 16-year period was 12.4% (range = 10.9-18.5%), implying that roughly 1 in 8 PhD graduates attain such positions. After a significant decline from 18.5 to 10.9% between 2006 and 2014 ( R 2 = 0.62; P < 0.05), a trend consistent with a period of rising competition, the outlook has since stabilized between 11.3 and 12% ( R 2 = 0.04; P > 0.05). Given that most engineering PhD graduates will never secure a tenure-track faculty position, emphasizing alternative career tracks during doctoral training could align expectations better with reality.