The extent of faculty vacancies in colleges of engineering, the effects of such vacancies upon research and instructional programs, and the nature of the competition between academia and industry in hiring engineering faculty were surveyed. The focus is on permanent full-time faculty positions in the following major engineering fields: aeronautical and astronautical, chemical, civil, computer science and computer engineering, electrical, industrial, and mechanical engineering. As of fall 1980, there were approximately 16,200 permanent full-time engineering faculty positions in the 244 institutions with at least one accredited engineering program. Additional findings include: the 50 institutions with the greatest engineering research and development (R & D) expenditures accounted for 45 percent of all permanent full-time engineering positions; almost 10 percent of full-time engineering faculty positions were unfilled at the beginning of the fall 1980 term, and of these, 45 percent had been vacant since fall 1979; the top 50 institutions in engineering R & D had a vancancy rate of 8 percent, compared with a rate of 11 percent at all other institutions; over half of all institutions reported a substantial decrease in their ability to recruit or retain engineering faculty over the past five years; that proportion was 64 percent at public institutions and 29 percent at private institutions; and during 1979-80, almost 400 full-time engineering faculty voluntarily left academia for full-time employment in industry, representing 2.7 percent of the permanent, employed faculty. Technical notes and a sample questionnaire are appended. (SW)