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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?
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.
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
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?