Former CivE student turned surveyor here. This might sound disgruntled but it's genuinely not. Civil draws plenty of qualified candidates, including those from the "engineering undecided" crowd. The issue is retention, and this is coming from someone who transfered out of my program to another related program.

Civil engineering programs lose plenty of qualified applicants who quite frankly see an easier path in the college of business. Programs also probably lose an equal number of individuals to other career paths where you see the fruits of your labor sooner. Nearly half my current program is former CivE students including myself who got tired of the academic grind without being able to truly apply the knowledge in a real world setting and see tangible results.

Looking back maybe I should have stuck it out, and probably half of my friend group including me wants to go back and get our Civil degrees eventually because we view it as unfinished business. It's also made me realize why programs are losing kids, you can't put everyone's nose to the grindstone and expect them to want to continue, especially when tenured professors don't care much about they classes they're teaching.

Granted I had the math and physics background to succeed, and I probably go to one of the most well respected programs in the country, but within a month of being in my curent program my Dean had helped me get a co-op, I was helping teach basic classes, and I felt like I was genuinely doing something. If students are introduced to their prospective industry, even it's for 10 hours a week, they can feel like they are actually putting their knowledge to work. This is a massive issue I've seen in the first 2 years of engineering where students have to take core classes but don't see how that always applies to their future jobs.