That's an easy question for a difficult answer. First of all, there's a proportion, so it can be that other fields are growing faster than natural science and engineering. The numbers are going up, but proportional to the total number of students enrolled, there are fewer who choose biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering relative to social sciences, humanities, and health. We don't normally use the term “hard sciences”, because that's not the reality, but there are some kids who, through high school, opt out of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Therefore, at that early age, they limit their options. When they get to university, they don't have the prerequisites to go into the natural sciences and engineering.
On March 28th, 2012. See this statement in context.