Analysis of demand

Many European economies rely on a highly skilled labour force with knowledge workers such as engineers, physicists, and other knowledge-intensive disciplines. To maintain or even improve current standards, many European countries want to increase the enrolment and output of engineering studies, and they face the problem of high drop-out of engineering students which are in many cases caused by lack of mathematical competencies.
For instance, in Germany for engineering fields of study (Maschinenbau, Verfahrenstechnik, Elektrotechnik, Bauingenieur, etc) each year the drop-out rates are [HIS]:

• universities: drop-out rate 25%-35%
• colleges: drop-out rate 25%

and similar figures are published for the years 2002-2006 and for science students (average):

• universities: drop-out: 15%-38%
• colleges: drop-out: 39%-40%.

In The Netherlands, probably the most relevant and trustworthy numbers are from the cooperation of three Dutch technical universities:

• In their start-up plan from 2004 they state they want to ‘grow’ to a result of 70% ‘survival’ in 2010:
  http://www.3tu.nl/fileadmin/pdf_files/JV_Sectorplan.pdf (page 9)
• In their evaluation in September 2008 they state that this number was far to ambitious, and that they are happy to note that the numbers haven’t gotten worse:
  http://www.3tu.nl/fileadmin/3tu/3TU_Evaluatie_definitief_september_2008_def.pdf (page 27)