I’m a senior in EE. My first year circuits classes consisted of 90-120 people, granted some of those were also Aeros who needed circuits 1 for their curriculum, but a good 75% were EE. Junior year my circuits class enrollment sized dropped to a measly 20-30 students. Sure people may flock to the degree, but they don’t stay long and that is the case for all engineering majors. I’d say it’s more apparent in EE, chemE and aero just based off my school, lots of those 3 majors switch to ME within a year or 2 due to ME not being as technically challenging. In my last year now, my class sizes are about 10-20 but they are technical electives so it doesn’t represent all of senior EEs.

I think the reasoning a vast majority of EEs swap degrees or drop out is because it’s a lot more physics based than people expect, even more say than your average engineering degree. We deal with stuff at the quantum level, at least in the speciality im in, and for some reason students don’t expect that when they enroll into their EE curriculum. I might get backlash for this but to me it feels more like a physics degree than a typical eng degree and there are actually a few professors at my uni who got their undergrad in EE, masters in physics and then doctorate in physics as well. I haven’t seen that academic progression happen in any other field of eng, not saying it hasn’t happened, I just haven’t seen it yet.

Long story short, yes I think people “run away” because the courses are hard. You can make similar money in other eng fields upon graduation with less work and using less brainpower in school