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Why Students Are Leaving Engineering
Ted writes "A former engineering major has written an interesting article explaining why he thinks many smart students are not studying engineering anymore." Many business leaders have commented on the lack of engineers and several companies have even started initiatives to help bolster our diminishing ranks. Will these measures be enough, or does the system require much more drastic measures?
Well, interesting thoughts on his part, but the truth is that all curriculums have weed-out courses or they are not worth a damn. Discrete math is used for a weed out on CS because it IS the core of CS (it is a fun course, though). Likewise, it makes a good wee-out for any major that requires it. Many ppl just do not get it.
With that said, this guys real problem was not that the university was too tough. The real problem is that his high school did not prepare him. More likely, it coddle him into thinking that he was one of the top. However, with US grade inflation, he was most like average. Hitting top course right off the bat would be difficult.
Now, as to the prof who could not teach, well, there are a lot of them out there. No university and curriculum is immune from it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't mean to be mean, but sometimes certain people need to be weeded out of programs. I hate to criticize someone, but six times on a titration experiment? After the first time you fail you think you'd learn from your mistakes. As a former mechenical engineering major who switched to be a mathematics major I can empathize. I came from a good high school and took many challenging courses and did well on many AP test. College is quite a transation in many ways, it can be a difficult one. However, if you are failing out of Discrete Mathematics (the easiest math course, besides college algebra) and you can't handle the experiments in a chem lab, maybe you aren't cut out to be an engineer. The courses are challenging, at least you found out early on that you weren't up to it.
Who wants to compete with engineers in India who are happy to work for $50 a month?
Yes, there are some jobs that must be done locally, but the supply/demand ratio looks grim. Seems like a lot of hard work and expense to compete for such dismal prospects.
Still, engineering makes a lot more sense than computer science, which in turn makes a lot more sense than math.
Law school is the only way to go. An easy $150K after a few years. In the future, all USA citizens will make their living suing each other.
I originally started out as a Computer Science major at Georgia Tech. I, however, left that school after my first year, and am studying Psychology at a state university. (I didn't leave because of grades either -- I left with a 4.0 GPA)
I'm way too social of a person for my own good sometimes, and I had a terrible time finding friends who were interested in anything that I liked. Nobody to go to concerts with at the various great venues in Atlanta. Plus, the school was fairly "greek or die" with respect to socialisation, and I despise the Greek system by and large (and I did, in fact, pledge a fraternity despite that) so my options were a bit limited. My impression of most of the other engineers/science majors there was that they were very antisocial, introverted people, whereas I was not.
Having switched to a school with few engineers, and changed my major to an outwardly-focused one, I'm so much happier.
I would bet there are other engineers/computing majors like myself who are smart enough to "hack it" in the program, but for one reason or another, simply cannot deal with the lifestyle that goes along with it.
A lot of the time the professors just don't understand how LITTLE you know. It is like you are in 1st grade and they are reaching down to 7th grade to try to introduce 12th grade concepts.
I had a very smart college professor (Dr. Verma) who was notorius for being a very hard class (even weedout levels- 50% drop/fail rates). Here is the tip that gave us close to an 85% pass rate that semester.
I figured out to ask him for a "trivial" example. When he gave a "trivial" example, at least half the class would understand what he had been trying to explain for 15 minutes. And often, the understanding was like "Oh my god- that's so easy, why was he saying it so complicated?"
Sometimes, all you need is just to comprehend a little edge or corner of the problem and suddenly the entire problem just peels open for you. The professors are speaking in jargon that you barely comprehend- if you can get them to drop the jargon and give an easy example in english, it may help.
Good luck!
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yup, a lot of state schools are absolutely horrendous, even the ones with supposedly good reputations.
My undergraduate degree was from Cornell University - Most of my professors were top-notch, and my worst were nowhere near as bad as what the author of the linked article describes. I loved what I was doing, and didn't find things to be that difficult.
I am now finishing up my masters' degree at Rutgers University - While there are also some stellar professors there, the average and minimum quality of the professors is utterly horrendous, as is the quality of the academic facilities on the engineering campus. The roofs leak, half the desks in classrooms are broken, the bathrooms flood on a daily basis, and in one of the bathrooms a stall door has been broken without repair for over a year. These facts are especially sad given the $60 million state-of-the-art football stadium a half mile away which is in utterly perfect condition.
I have also had to change my definition of a bad professor since coming here - Before they were the boring ones that droned on in a monotone, but I've had professors here who would spend 20 minutes trying to work out a mistake they'd made in one equation, IF they even bothered to show up to class. My first semester here, one of my professors failed to show up to a quarter of the lectures, and did not even notify us.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
hear my story, and learn why the United States lacks engineers.
There is no complex cause for the engineering shortage. It's all right here, in his story. Only in his story. Hear it and learn.
Remember: Kern = real good at math and science.
Just because he got a 43 on a physics final, don't think he's dumb. Oh no! It was the system. The bad TAs. The ignorant teaching he got. He's quite smart, you see. Why? Well, because he says so right there.
"Discreet Mathematics" is "how Kern dropped that class along with the rest of his engineering course load and signed into liberal arts classes, all on the last day he was eligible to do so, because he couldn't stand the stress, abuse, and lack of comprehension anymore."
Apparently, getting a 2.7 GPA is considered abuse. Maybe he should be calling his lawyer. We don't want his inner child stressed any more.
I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. She was as American as I am. Spoke perfect colloquial English.
It seems that if someone can't communicate with him, we are to immediately assume that she's not a native English speaker, because, well, it couldn't be HIM that's the problem, right? After all, Kern is smart.
If you want more engineers in the United States, you must find a way for America's engineering programs to retain students like, well, me
No explanation for the self-centerdness needed here.
Personal note: I say these things as a man who went through something similar. I graduated High School with honors, got scholarships to college to study engineering, then found it exceedingly harder than I had ever imagined school could be. I matched Mr Kern's 2.7 GPA my first semester. I endured for a few years before Engineering school kicked my ass, and I flunked out. Not just the engineering program, but college entirely.
And I moped.
Then, six months later, I decided I was going to finish what I started, and I worked for three years just to earn enough money to pay my way back to finish college. Three years after I re-enrolled, I graduated with a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering.
I graduated. I didn't bitch that the System wasn't to *MY* liking. I didn't whine that education had to change to keep more students like *ME*. I didn't complain when I had bad TAs as instructors. I didn't automatically assume that when an instructor and I couldn't communicate, it was due to their lack of mastery over the English language. I persevered.
That's what *I* did.
I didn't write an article blaming my quitting engineering on the system that didn't adapt itself to keep students like *me* around.
That's for a certain liberal arts major to do.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
It's funny how corporations love economics right up until the point where it involves paying intelligent people higher wages.
I have noticed this. They especially do not want to pay intelligent honest people! They will bribe congressmen to bring in more people from overseas. They will "outsource".
Where I work they are trying to create bureaucratic process as substitute for Engineering knowledge and experience. This is not working but the main players do not have the experience or knowledge to know it is not working.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
Most (good) engineering schools take a bit longer than 4 years. Ga Tech (where I happened to go for Mech. E) generally takes 5 years, and thats only for undergrad. The engineers in charge of engineering stuff that has potential to kill people/destroy stuff are usually required by law to get a PE (Professional Engineer) certification. To get that, you have to first get an EIT (Engineer In Training) certification by passing the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) test, and getting some work experience under another PE, just as medical students are required to do their residency under supervision of other doctors before becoming doctors. Going through this process can easily take as long or longer than finishing med school.
The difference being alot of jobs are available for engineers that do not go through all (or any) of the above steps. Simply obtaining a BS is good enough for alot of jobs, they just do not have as high a pay rate, nor the serious consequences for screwing something up. Its generally suggested to get EIT and at least a masters degree to get a successfull job of the type most people go to engineering school to get. It takes 6-7 years of engineering school (not taking summers or overloading your schedule...and passing everything the first time around), which most people (like myself) are burned out from after the first round. For now Im stuck in a lower paying job, doing mostly non-engineering type work (of the mechanical type, at least), waiting and telling myself Ill continue on and get a real engineering job soon...
tm
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I am the opposite person. I have my PhD. I love teaching. I think I am good at it. I have always received exceptional reviews and comments from my students. I wish I had a dollar for everytime I heard "You are the best TA I have ever had!" variants I have heard.
Yet I will not teach. Why?
Because I do not love research enough to enslave myself to the professor's life, which frankly put, is 80% grubbing for money so one's graduate student/post-doc army can spew out more papers. Teaching is completely an afterthought. Of course, I could teach at a community college or even a high school, but I would be paid only half what I would make working in the corporate world. As much as I love teaching, the difference between $40k and $80k is too much too pass up.
Hence, though I want to teach, and it would be to the obvious benefit of my students that I teach, the system forces in another direction.
Teaching and research are different skills. We should quit pretending otherwise.
You know, you're right. It is foolish to assume that everyone else the same experiences as you. So what makes it foolish when he does it but not you?
... um... not exactly." was his half-minute long reply. Insert more periods and "uh"s, "ah"s and "um"s to get the full unabridged half-minute version.
What he described sounds suspiciously like the Computer Science department at my alma mater. Though we did have additional joys of professors asssigning problems that they haven't even bothered to look at first, which frequently resulted in professors who COULD NOT SOLVE THEIR OWN PROBLEM. Now, they'd be happy to give you the final answer, read out of the list of solutions provided by the author, but go ahead and ask them how to solve it. Ummm... errr....
I even took one course where it was the professor's first year teaching that course (not teaching a CS course at all, just this one) and all he did was use the lecture notes left from the previous professor. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Well, imagine going in EVERY DAY and having your lecture consist of reading from the notes used by the previous professor for that day --whatever they are. You can't be bothered to glance at them beforehand to see what they're about before you walk into class, let alone actually READ them beforehand! You're a busy man, right? And yes, this even extended to our midterm. After which, a friend of mine confronted him in the hall and asked if our dear professor even wrote that midterm himself. "I...uh...
I don't know, is a 75-90% drop-out rate in EACH class normal? I don't mind tough courses, but at least be able to teach the course. All I got out of university was what I taught myself while trying to wade through this mess.
Yes, I graduated. Yes, I got a good GPA --thanks to the wonderful grading curve. Perhaps my mind is still stuck in my public school years, but if the highest grade I received in a class was a 53%, shouldn't I fail? No, instead I pass the class with flying colors because everyone else is just as lost as I am and the grading curve saves the day, doesn't that mean there's something very, very broken here? You can blame the professor, you can blame the students, you can blame the system, but can you really say that there's nothing WRONG?
"If you were smart, you would be the one doing the science and calling the shots."
It has been my experience that very, very few engineers actually understand business. I'm not going to defend The Suits, I'm just saying that as a person with a Business degree who works as a technical designer (PCB's to be precise) I have often been amused by engineers who offer naive opinions of what is going on in the business or what the managers should do in a way that makes it clear that they don't grasp all the fundamental concepts. And whats more, I'd have to teach them the terms first before I could even begin to explain why they were wrong.
See, just being smart or having common sense or mastering something that is really hard, doesn't mean you can just pick up something else you don't understand and figure it out. Not without the fundamentals.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.