50% of US engineering students drop out - Why?

There's always hope that the complete collapse of the Wall Street institutions build by those "frat-boy MBAs" will change things. Probably not though. They'll get bailed out by that other frat-boy MBA institution, the government.

Of course the fact that Philip Greenspun walked away from Ars Digita with ~ $8 million proves there are some opportunities.

Because you've got to eternally compete in the job market with 20-year-olds who will always be more proficient with new technologies, and willing to work at lower wages?

Come on, that's not the typical experience of most engineers outside the IT/software sector, and as far as I'm aware, most engineers don't work in IT. I'm an EE in oil and gas and it's definitely a "pay your dues" industry where often, the young people are the ones that are marginalised. Believe me, a guy with 30 years of experience isn't competing with 20 year olds, and their payscales are astronomically different (obviously in favour of the experienced). Furthermore, most of the middle managers and top level executives are engineers (eg. Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon is a civil engineer, van der Veer, CEO of Shell is a mechanical engineer, etc).

I'm told it's a similar story in the mining and manufacturing sectors also.

Your second point is key. Corporate society is structured so terribly that the big-box companies pretty much can't get top talent (and fire what little they can get for various forms of "insubordination"). No one with any talent is going to answer to a frat boy.

There are two somewhat parallel (but unequally situated) trees within the modern workplace, the old-style management tree ("visionaries" at the apex, implementers at the bottom) and the technology tree (of which technologists occupy the middle-upper levels and the lower ranks are filled entirely by machines). The tech tree has historically been mounted to a middling position on the management tree, resulting in a scenario where technology people become peons. The world's learning that this arrangement is a fistful of fail, and the mount point is moving up in the structure... but this is a discrete sort of transition, and traditional managers have to be brought kicking and screaming to it, so it usually happens through the destruction of old and creation of new companies, rather than within existing ones. This is one major reason why big-box companies have been slowly melting down, while the bulk of the nation's private sector talent was rather uselessly employed in an abstruse game called "finance".

In finance, technical people ("quants") were often given a designation one-half level above their seniority-based position, e.g. an entry-level quantitative analyst was between the "analyst" and "associate" levels. Finance is old-style corporate compared to cutting-edge startups, but Wall Street has (had?) a better grasp of how to capture talent than most F-500s.

Engineering is a tough degree, I have seen quite a few people drop out of CS and EE degrees in the last 4 years.

- Honestly the initial years of the program are quite boring, this is a huge de-motivator. People seem to get burnt early during the degree.

- Most teachers don't seem to give a shit. Not all, but many. Young people need motivation not everyone is driven, even as an engineering student. Especially with the content being tough, the faculty needs to show a little more enthusiasm through programs, events and 1-1 with the student.

- Its definitely true that I could have spent more time on working on my startup and other activities in college. Although I have managed to create balance between school and life. I party, I am not an A student. Although, I really don't aspire to be either. I could be more happy getting those As and Bs on all my classes but I will live with A/Bs and Cs. It does take a decent amount of effort to get a low B in an engineering class. Business and liberal arts classes are much much easier. I get a little annoyed when people whine about their silly little stats and writing classes.