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Fully Endowed FW Olin College of Engineering Opens
olin01 writes "USA Today has a story on the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which opens this Friday to its freshman class. Olin's goal is to graduate students who are "renaissance engineers," meaning that not only do the have the technical knowledge and skills but also a strong understanding of their context through studies in arts, humanities, social science, and entrepreneurship. This past year, 30 "pre-freshman" worked with faculty, staff, and administration to create the college's curriculum and student live programs. Olin also gives a full tuition scholarship to all admitted students, more information on their website."
With all students getting a full scholarship, the school can more easily compete for the best students. Most of the Ivy League schools have large enough endowments to significantly reduce or eliminate their tuition fees, but they don't because they don't have to. Perhaps schools like this one will help push them in that direction.
For example:
American Heritage (6 hours): [boring information] NOTE: Not required for engineering majors.
That's what I'm talking about.
#2: I am quite well adjusted. I just want to make sure that I know something when I get out. It's my money I'm spending, and you'd better be sure that I'm going to get the best education out of it.
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
Engineers need classes other than engineering ones.
By taking classes in history, humanities, etc. it will help them relate to other college students including the ones that party half the week at neighboring colleges. They might even have sex before they graduate.
c.
One that I've seen... well 2 actually.
:)
#1: Engineers don't take any other courses (from what I've been seeing) besides the engineering courses. No history, humanities, fine arts, etc. It makes for a more well-balanced person. It should be required.
I do agree that everyone should have a balanced education. But let me sound off for a moment on one of my pet peeves: EVERYONE should have a balanced education, not just those in the sciences or engineering! It continually annoys me that "geeks" are made to feel sheepish about any lack of "breadth" they may have, while those in the humanities are free to boast about their complete lack of knowledge of science and mathematics, apparently feeling no shame about it.
The idea of a liberal arts education is often presented as being the opposite of an engineering or scientific education, but let's just review what the seven liberal arts actually were, shall we? Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy. Science and math were strongly represented; enough said.
The next time someone accuses you of lacking breadth, don't get all hangdog about it. Instead, ask them if they can integrate, or if they know how the force of gravitational attraction varies with distance. If not, ask them why not.
I would have loved a course like this. But, I still think it may be solving the wrong problem. My experience is that there are fewer engineers who could do with a dose of liberal arts (though there are plenty) than there are liberal arts students who desperately need at least some basic grounding in science and math.
I have met countless Americans with liberal arts backgrounds who have tremendously difficulty dealing with even the most basic concepts of logic, reasoning, argument and math. This can seriously damage your career.
There are relatively few engineers who would admit with pride that they don't read books or go see films. There are plenty of liberal artists who seem only too happy to flaunt their ignorance of basic math and science.
So I like this course a lot, but I'd rather see something working in the other direction.
Sailing over the event horizon
UofT is an excellent school. But for engineering all Canadian schools (that offer engineering, 40+) are good. Due to the strict accreditation standards, from a high level all the schools are very similar. And believe it or not are right up there with the best from the USA. There is a big "however." Each school does somethings better: have different programs, better teachers/funding for field X, etc. Personally I prefer the smaller class size you will find at the smaller Unis. My graduateing year had 300 students across all fields.
For those considering Engineering in Canada, do not get too hung up on which school is best for you. It is good to find a school that you will like, but not worth stressing over. In the end, regardless of where you go, the best the profs can hope to achieve is to expose you to enough topics that you will know enough to find and read the correct book. All the Canadian schools achieve this goal.
And in light of the corruption of the meaning of "Liberal Arts", we should remember that they were intended to be the things that "every free man should know." Note that they are not the ONLY thing a free man should know.
The anti-science yahoos produced by most liberal arts "schools" are proud of their lack of practical knowledge. This sickens me.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
I know and understand the exact sort of problem these people are encountering. I just graduated from a major East Coast research university in Chemical Engineering and I took exactly 6 courses in 'humanities and liberal arts'. Three were economic courses, if you could consider them true liberal arts classes.
:)
But, a true Rennaissance man does not learn from the typical professor spouting knowledge like a pool of information and dutifully copying it down, in the vain hope that they interpret this as 'learning' and 'understanding'. From the liberal arts classes that I have taken or have heard about from fellow Engineers, most of these classes involve regurgitating the opinions and judgements of the professor in the form of a bloated essay containing very few of one's own opinions or creative ideas.
A real Renaissance person learns by exploration of the world, of history, of math & science, of politics, on their own terms. The problem is not the availability of information, but the motivation of interest in it.
If any Engineer wants to learn history or politics, all they need to do is pick up a few classic books on the topic. Ever read Adam's "Wealth of Nations" or Machievello's "The Prince"? These are books that are fundamental to modern economics and politics, books that are almost never read in a structured class because there's always that fancy new textbook that costs $75-100, but which says the same thing in baby-talk and with some pretty pictures.
Why learn political science from a guy who's never held office?
Why learn economics from a poor professor?
Want to better understand human nature? Studying sociology will only give you unproven theories made up by professors who write textbooks for a living. Go read "The Brothers Karamazoo".
Basically, my point is...to really understand and learn the liberal arts, to study human nature itself in order to become a better leader, a better communicator, a better businessman or entrepenuer, you can't listen to any ol' professor speak about something which someone else wrote in a textbook (the standard fare today). You need to either experience and experiment with it for yourself or read or speak to people who have done so. Countless classic books expound upon human nature and it hasn't changed since humans left Nature...so they're all still quite accurate.
Salis
Who has learned more about liberal arts by reading enlightening and interesting books (fiction & non-fiction) than in any ol' University setting
Favorite
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
The U.S. Military Academy (West Point) already does this to a large extent. The engineering and science majors have to take a reasonable dose of humanities (Psych, Eng Lit/Comp, Int'l Relations, Poli Sci, foriegn language, all kinds of history) over the 4 years, and, perhaps more importantly, the liberal arts-type majors are mandated to take a minor in an engineering field. It makes for much more well-rounded thinkers... it's not the engineering they take, but the engineering thought process associated with it that is important.
It's also full tuition (and room/board/food).
Of course, definitely not for everyone, but a really good education for those who do go.
The anti-humanities yahoos produced by most computer science "curricula" are proud of their ignorance of history, literature, and the proper usage of their native language. This sickens me.
I should also add that a lot of the computer geeks I know are profoundly ignorant of science and of mathematics, as well. The quality of various universities' computer science programs differ widely, of course, but most of them impose much less stringent math and science requirements than (say) the physics or chemistry curricula. I worked with people at software companies who could barely manage single-variable algebra, sweated over the simplest application of trigonometry, and of course knew no calculus. The attitude seemed to me, "Hell, I'll just grab the code out of _Numerical Methods_ or wherever."
I think a lot of computer geeks think they know science because they've picked up a vague smattering of facts from popular science articles and publications. But ask your average geek how Millikan determined the charge on the electron, or how the experiment worked which first determined (with some certainty) that it was nucleic acids and not proteins which transmitted genetic information, and watch him sweat and run to Google for the answer.
C. S. Lewis, more than fifty years ago, wrote of the sort of education that is "neither Classical nor Scientific, merely Modern". Computer science is the apotheosis of this.
hyacinthus.
From my view, this new school is doing a lot of things right.
No paying-your-dues classes. Engineering is about solving problems, and most engineering work is done seat-of-the-pants, with the designer researching and learning as he/she goes. The traditional college would have you believe that two or three years of toolbox-building is required before one can solve any real problems. Any practicing engineer will tell you that this is total BS. Real Engineers(tm) just jump into a problem and think/work/caffienate until it's solved, emerging with experience, knowledge and confidence that they can then apply to the next problem. Modeling an educational institution around this iterative process should have been done a long time ago.
Whole-systems engineering. A program cannot be completely designed without taking into account the students' perspective. Most engineering curricula are designed by "captains of industry" and experienced administrative faculty, none of whom know or remember what it's like to be an engineering student. The result is that we (the students) suffer through overlapping or gap-filled coursework, uninteresting classes, and a distinct lack of communication between administration and the student body. More people claim to have survived engineering school than to have graduated from it.
Focus. A traditional engineering department has to compete with the Business school (with its battle-scarred, industry-culled accounting and law faculty) for funding, university resources, and attention. Unless the engineering school is the centerpiece of the university, it will be hard-pressed to get resources. In this case, the entire school offers only three degrees: ECE, ME, and general engineering. The student body will max out at around 650 people, with each class being only about 75 folks; small enough for every student to know every other student. This fosters networking - of a wireless sort - and as we all know, it's who you know.
No tuition. Not so much for the (somewhat fictional) socially-equal nature of a moneyless college, but for the underlying message that it's not about the money. I especially like the story about the cannon project: here's a budget, here's a goal, see what you can do. This monetary constraint makes the game that much more fun; the coolest cannon will be the one with the best ideas in it, not the one on which more money was spent. What's (hopefully) great about this: the coolest cannon will probably get the best grade, too.
Well-roundedness. My experience is that humanities courses are one step in a bureaucratic procedure on your way to a rubber-stamped degree. In order to truly produce well-rounded graduates, you can't just require that they sit through a few lectures on the Roman Empire. You have to make them interested, inquisitive, curious, and driven, so that they will find these things on their own. Knowledge does not make people well-rounded; wisdom and curiosity do. Our educational instutions today are sadly not in the free-thinker-producing business; they are in the business of producing graduates who will follow commands simply because they are given from somebody "above" them.
Personally, I've gained more useful knowledge from a 9-month programming job and two 6-month internships than I have from my 5 years at the university. College has become almost a rite of passage; if thou desirest entrance to the upper echelons of society, thou shalt work in the mines for a period no less than 4 years.
Must...stop...posting...
-- Hamster