Slashdot Mirror
Engineering School Grads - Tradesmen or Thinkers?
El Cubano asks: "ITworld is carrying a story (sorry, no printable version) saying that John Seely Brown (former chief scientist at Xerox and director of PARC, currently teaching at the University of Southern California) is encouraging engineering schools to change the way they educate. The article, quotes Mr. Brown saying the following: 'Training someone for a career makes no sense. At best, you can train someone for a career trajectory...'. What do you think? Should engineering schools be producing tradesmen (like an apprenticeship program) or should they be producing 'thinkers' (people who can cope with a wide variety of problem inside and outside their area of expertise)?"
More hands on training would be nice. I find a tradional engineering program is more books than experience.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
thinkers - it's in darn short supply in the real world.
I am not sure the question makes sense. Engineering is about solving problems. That isn't a rote field, but teaching the solving of problems is done by example. Ideally you want to educate somebody able to solve a novel problem.
It takes both. Producing "thinkers" gives us people who understand what is going on, and can analyze situations.
Problem is, they tend to over complicate somethings.
For example. Who would you hire to do the wiring in your house, and electrician or an electrical engineer?
Granted this is an extreme situation, but in theory, shouldn't both be able to do the task? Yes. However, an electrician has done it many times before and has the benefit of experience.
Now, who do you wanted designing a NASA space vehicle?
College should be about creating thinkers. It's just like CS majors vs programmers at a tech school.
Sure both can program but who develops the sophisticated software that run super computer simulations?
The CS major. The other programming just write the supporting code usually. There are exceptions just
like everything else though.
The college part of educating engineers boils down to quickly teaching basics and cram assloads of math, both which are needed. The training and specialization happens on the job in usually an apprentice like manner. In many cases, co-ops or internships are very similar to apprenticeships, and in my case, I had 2 years experience working on electronics under an engineer before I got serious and started college. My boss taught me many practical things, however to learn everything that college could have taught me under my boss would've taken a million bajillion years. If the education part of it does need to be changed slightly, then I'd require engineers to take a course or work alongside the construction workers or assembly line workers or machinists for a short period of time.
I agree that most engineering grads aren't sufficiently equiped. My solution was to go to a local college first and get a diploma in Computer Engineering Technology, which was almost all hands on. Then through a transfer program I went into 3rd year Engineering and will finish that in a year or so. Not to mention that school I'm at requires at least four 4 month coop work terms in order to graduate.
Without the trade education, you'll never get that first job.
Beyond that, there isn't much the school can do. Either you're a thinker, or you're not a thinker. This isn't something for a school to teach.
The best you can ask is that high-reputation schools simply discard all the non-thinkers, so that a degree from one of those schools indicates that you are a thinker.
I went to physics grad school and work in an engineering school. The engineers are not thinkers compared with physicists and mathematicians.
As a grad student at USC and someone who has studied under Mr. Brown, I'll say that I have to agree. Atleast as far I am concerned, I wouldn't want my professors to be teaching me a specific technology or system. I want them to teach me to think at a higher level. I mean if you really want to learn a technology well, do you really need a classroom and a professor? Can't you just pick up a few books, download some tools/compilers/etc. and learn it yourself?
On the other hand, what professor's teach you isn't so much how to code in Java or write PHP. What a professor teaches you (atleast the ones I've studied under here at USC) is how they (or other experts) tackled/approached engineering problems in the past, which IMO is more valuable.. in other words.. they impart more wisdom than knowledge. I think most good engineering schools would follow a similar pattern of teaching.
- Tempestdata
What makes you think universities can change people that much? People who are going to be thinkers aren't going to be ruined by learning specific technologies. People who can't think creatively will find ways to learn by rote no matter what you test them on.
So, we were doing it 25 years ago, we still need to do it today, what have the schools been doing in the time in between?
See what I've been reading.
I graduated from an engineering university that focused on real-world hands on engineering. It has been my general observation that when it comes to taking a project from design to field implementation, engineers from theoretical schools tend to:
1. Not know where to start
2. Over design the project
3. Have a general disconnect between paper engineering and field engineering.
It may be a bit of envy, I still have to go back to my text book for the requisite math, but the hands-on guys seem to have an advantage.
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
If every man were a f*****g Jack of All Trades, then I'd lose my job as a handyman!
In my 20's I was largely a waste of time. Only perused the things I had an interest in. Partied a lot. Campus was as much social as intellectual pursuit. This is not what I would call my "thinkers" phase. Now that I am in my 40's I have more perspective and more maturity and more self-control and self-direction. Campus might actually be of more use to me now than ever before.
In any case, now I realize that big-picture knowledge growth is a constant and can come from self-study, so better start with tradesmen approach to pay enough bills early to get to the maturity of the 'thinkers' phase.
As a university (Engineering school) graduate, I can say that employers today (with the exception of a handful of big utility companies) want employees trained on: the exact technology they will be working on, the latest and up to date tools and projects using specific technology. The whole thinking aspect or training employees on something specific -- hiring proven generalists such as those produced by engineering schools (someone trained for a career) is something from a time past.
From the employer side, competition these days is as bad as it ever was, particularly from overseas, and justifies the need to think short term (someone who can fill a particular position NOW, rather than someone who can fill it a little later but arguably might be a better long term investment for the company).
This is not putting down trade-type training, and to those thinking of being critical of my stance... Consider this: Would you want a high school graduate fresh out of school installing the electrical wiring in your house? Wouldn't you want a trade with some education doing it? Wouldn't you want a well educated doctor operating on you that has had an additional two years of specialty training in some obscure area rather than a GP? Would you rather have someone who is trained to think in terms of more basic principles and math rather than someone educated only on the latest technology and gizmos?
The answer is that it ultimately depends on need: if a tradesperson will do, don't hire an engineer! And if you need to look beyond the current technology but need some serious thinking, don't hire a tradeperson!
Duh!
The question is hardly new but it's just one of the many unsolved problems in education. How to test? How to teach effectively? How to motivate students? How to train teachers properly? Have any of these been properly addressed yet?
people who can cope with a wide variety of problem inside and outside their area of expertise
They much more likely to find innovative solutions (though not "pretty" ones) and be innovators.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Employers?
Leave them alone for a moment, think of the people themselves.
Most do not want to think for themselves and would rather do something mundane that pays the bills.
The percentage of people that actually want to think for their living is quite dismal in the grand scheme of things.
Secondly, look at who is more respected/has more resources in the society -- a "pop" star or a mathematician?
While the mathematician may be content with what s/he may have, society for the most part does not care about its "thinkers".
If we did, there would be far more folks out there doing things like pure mathematics, theoretical physics and other abstract areas that genuinely require thinking (not to discount the thinking in engineering and applied sciences, but pure sciences generally require more of a deidication than applied sciences and engineering).
So while engineering schools may be geared towards thinking, the question boils down to how many jobs out there require you to think as opposed to obey? How many people out there like people that think rather than do as they are told (while doing as you are told is certainly an important part of your learning experience, how many folks here have felt that they could find a better solution than the ones they have been asked to implement?).
No, if you want thinkers you need a society that encourages thinking.
I really like the ideas presented in the article. I'd love to go to a school where independent projects were the norm and lectures weren't. But even if all schools were like this, nothing would change. Colleges, professors, schools, and most institutions don't have as much influence on people as they like to believe.
For a "thinker" that's motivated to become an engineer, the vast amount of learning will be outside of the classroom, and would probably take place whether that classroom was there or not. True, the right program will facilitate the development of such a person, but in the end, these people are naturally curious self-starters, and would probably succeed without a formal education anyway.
Then you have the people who go to school to put a check in a box, and who hope that getting the right qualifications on paper will land them a job. These people will do whatever is necessary to get the qualification, whether it be going to lectures, doing projects, what have you. In the end, they'll also likely succeed in getting a job, but they'll likely never be the creative types with new ideas, no matter how they were taught.
The difference is one of personality and attitude. It doesn't matter how you teach. Changing the curriculum won't change the people.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
You need a balance. An engineering program should still be rich in Math, Literature, Science and other things that require the brain to think in different ways.
But at the end of the program, it would be nice if you weren't completely useless to potential employeers. Part of that is going to be something approaching vocational training - learning a commonly used programming language in a computer science program. But to have both good thinkers produced and be vocationally useful, you need those programming classes to address hard problems.
Now, at the time I was getting my degree I thought the study of state machines and other theory was useless and wanted more vocational stuff. In retrospec, that kind of class taught me more ways to think about problems and was quite valuable.
My chosen career path is architecture, not engineering, but there's a lot in common. My education was very theoretical, much more concerned with spatial theory, aesthetic concerns, useability isues, etc. We very lightly brushed on the physical realities of architecture (structures classes were a joke, materials and methods stuff was very simple). I enjoyed it, and learned a lot, but when I got a job in the profession, I was very unprepared for the day to day stuff that I have to handle. Basically in school I really only learned how to design buildings at a more schematic level, while the majority of real architecture work is much more technical, detailed, and client oriented.
I found it very frustrating while in school, and it's definitely been annoying to have to learn so much just to be useful in my job. Hopefully one day I'll get to design a museum or something, and more of my education will be useful. Basically, it felt like they were teaching us like we'd all end up being superstar designers, the ones who just sketch out crazy shapes and have their underlings turn it into a building. In the real world, that's not how most architects work, and I wish I had been a little more prepared for what I do all day now.
It would also put new graduates in a better position than being basically worthless to a firm at the beginning, and maybe let them demand a more reasonable salary.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
I think some public schools might disagree.
My vote is for someone who understands the fundamentals and how to extend them -- thinkers, in other words. Education, not training. The well-trained monkeys start out with a few months head start in knowing tools (if they're lucky) and after that fall behind for the rest of their careers. Before you know it their only options are Marketing and Management.
I'll second the unanimous opinion of the professors we spoke with at quite a few Universities when the boys were deciding where to go: "You can never get too much math or physics." It didn't matter whether they were professors in engineering, CS, physics, ...
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I know Tufts is addressing it by asking engineering students to take classes outside their chosen area - to broaden them a little, but mostly offering courses that might help future grads benefit and or profit from their innovations instead of letting their employer take all credit and profit. (Things like learning a little about IP laws, how patents work, and how to apply.. ) All stuff designed to help the little guy.
Daniel Pink also addresses this issue from another angle in his book "A whole new mind" he asserts we will only move forward by combining both left-brain and right-brain skills. While I'm not 100% on board with all the things he talks about, I think his direction is right on point.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
The short article talks a lot about 'social interactions' and such. It makes reference to things like the linux development model. All good ways to apply science. Learning applied science, (which is what my degree in engineering is technically called) comes first. You can't design a bridge without understanding shear stress, bending moments etc. And speaking from experience, you don't learn that stuff unless you are in the class, listening to the lectures and then doing a lot of problems.
I suspect the guy quoted is one of these people that learns easily and can't see that for most people his method is MUCH harder.
Cheers
JE
I think in Australia traditionally you had technical colleges (such as TAFE) and Universities providing a clear difference in the direction of things being taught. Technical colleges producing "tradesmen" and Universities producing "thinkers".
The problem has been that increasingly universities have been seen by consumers as a way of getting a job rather than as a pathway to higher learning as academia and thus there is expection by them, to be taught "practical" skills. I think a reason for this is there is a small stigma attached to technical and trade colleges as being "dumber" than their uni counterparts. I think in this way, the problem is that consumers do not really understand what the function of universities are.
How about letting some schools do it one way and other schools can do it the other way. There could even be schools that exist somewhere in between on the same spectrum. Then, individuals can choose whatever they think is the most appropriate for them when deciding where to study.
;-)
Nah. Lets just force everybody to do it the same way.
They'll think I've lost control again and leave it all to evolution. -- Supreme Being, Time Bandits
and hopefully our education system in the future will reflect some of these truisms. Whether it be private industry or public education that adopts to these changes does not matter. What does matter is that the idea of going to college and getting a degree and then intellectually vegetating at some cushy job the rest of your life is sooooooooooooo 20th century. In the new millenium people will have to take the personal initiative to keep learning and keep themselves educated whether they are in their 20's or their 80's. In addition, the idea of "retirement" will become an outmoded concept as competition for limited resources among a growing world population will not allow many people to live a "life of leisure" for a third of their lives (assuming people retire in their 60's and die in their 90's).
I personally never graduated from college due to financial problems I had with financial aid, coupled with the fact that I thought at the time (and still do) that college is mostly a high-priced scam that exploits the amazingly inelastic demand for an inconsequential piece of paper which I did not want to spend my entire life paying off in the form of student loans. Some people would be bitter about not finishing school, but I am happy that I did not because it taught me that education should be a non-stop process throughout life and that an expensive piece of paper you have framed on your office wall would of been better spent on a framed piece of tasteful art since fine art generally appreciates in value over time, while diplomas quickly devalue at about the rate of a new car.
It is also amazing how people I know who have graduated from college a decade or more ago and who didn't keep their minds occupied with learning seem like dinosaurs today. I also sometimes wonder how they will fit into the new global economy in the near future when people in other nations where people are hungrier for success will be competing against these college grads who feel entitled to a well paid job, just because they successfully navigated some high-price rat race in their early 20's.
That doesn't mean that there is no place for formal education in this world anymore as some professions absolutely demand it (practicing medicine comes to mind), however, for the vast majority of jobs out there I think college education has become obsolete. The sooner our education systems adapt to this new reality, the better prepared people will be for a world economy that will be even more dynamic and exciting than it is today.
The problem is that engineering students are spoon-fed book-learning in the traditional system but they are rarely forced to apply that learning to solving a real problem that accurately simulates what they'll be expected to do when they start working for a living. Engineering studies should try to compromise between the traditional spoon-feeding of knowledge and some way of simulating what you will do most of the time in the real world which is solving problems using the book-knowledge but in an economical way that results in low costs and labor times but still incorporates enough inspired design work to make the product easy to maintain and scalable when it is time to develop it further. I'm a software developer myself and I see all to many engineers who threw away all sorts of things they learned in design classes in school such as UML, in favor of (badly) writing undocumented crap-code; and keep in mind that writing crappy code *badly* is quite an achievement. I'd for example like to see a teaching system in say, Software Engineering or Comp. Sci. where students are made to develop some software during the first term and then develop it further the second term adding features and complexity. They would quickly realize as the project becomes more complex why things like clean, well structured code UML diagrams code documentation and good initial design are important. That way if they wrote a crappy app during first term just to pass the term it would come back to bite them. That's what happens in the real world if you do bad design it bites you in the balls later.
The problem of spoon-feeding people knowledge is actually much more widespread than just Engineering courses. Even at primary school level kids are spoon-fed mathematics and physics knowledge but rarely given the task of solving real world problems that would make them realize that this knowledge is actually good for something. I served mathematics like a jail sentence until my first year of Engineering school when I was finally put in a position where I had to actually use it to do interesting things which made me realize that this 'boring crap' was actually pretty useful stuff that's used absolutely everywhere.
</rant>
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
From my experience they are already doing both. I studied biomedical engineering, and to a fair degree the kind of education one received depended on what one sought. There were those that rote learned the material (and did too damn well, in my opinion), and those that tried to understand it.
Then there were those that did neither. A year or two ago, I had one graduate ask me to "clarify" the difference between AC and DC... There should be a mechanism to revoke degrees...
The problem is theoretical educations leaves out the implementation stage of the equation entirely. This is the more important stage and involves rational thinking, business understanding, and experience.
The problem with teaching only a trade is that everything cannot be covered and even if it could be covered it would be obsolete before the student graduated.
What is needed is a happy medium where students get lots of theory but then are shown how to implement something real and tangible so these students have experience to draw from when they get into the real world.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
How about combination of the two. Like so many things, it's not so clear cut. Engineers need hands on experience, such as an "apprenticeship" (aka co-op) could provide, but that's not sufficient. There is a strong need for diversified thinkers. For example, MechE's don't just deal with gears and engines and such; they need to understand the electroncs that control those things, and be able to cope with the way they'll be controlled in the future. Diversity of knowledge is required, and a tradesmen approach can't provide that future coping ability; however the hands on part is needed for the present.
This is the same question that been asked for many years. Back in the 1980s, the Department of Education released a study called "A Nation at Risk" which made recommendations for education. Many of those recommendations were put into the Bush "No Child Left Behind" act. Basically, it was a call to return to the good old days of teaching the basics and all that. Let's get our test scores up!
What's notable about the the Department of Education's "A Nation At Risk" report isn't so much the conclusions. We've seen those conclusions over and over again each election cycle. No, the notable thing was another report that didn't get much publicity. This was done by the Department of Labor (I believe) which asked HR professionals and corporate CEOs what they wanted out of the education system. The answers were the opposite of the "A Nation at Risk" report. Business wanted individuals who knew how to learn, not individuals who already had learned. They wanted individuals who could solve problems, not individuals who had been taught the answers. They wanted thinking skills, not memory skills.
So, basically it comes down to what we want our schools to be doing. Do we want them to teach skills (such as thinking and problem solving) that will prepare students for the needs of the workforce, or do we want schools to be teaching students to do well on tests?
The CS major. Does it need lots of people who develop super computer simulations?
How's about a modular approach? Let students choose what they think they need.
Deleted
Do you want to live in a world full of tradesmen or a world full of thinkers?
The easy part: Trade schools graduate technicians, universities graduate engineers.
The hard part: Getting people to respect a good technician more than a bad engineer. Getting people to pay technicians what they're worth.
The likely outcome: Universities will continue to slouch towards vocational teaching that could have been done at the trades or in highschool. People will spend 4 years at mediocre state Us to avoid the stigma of not having a BS, which is the new highschool diploma. The masters will become the new BS.
My father had a GED. I've got a BS. If I ever have a kid, he'll probably need a masters to match his old man's career.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Olin College of Engineering was built to address this issue. Other schools like WPI have followed suit. The word is out there, especially to the ASEE, and it's being implemented. However, even as a graduate of Olin, I've gotten crap from people at more traditional engineering schools telling me I'll never be worth anything because I haven't been "trained" enough. There's some social change that needs to happen, not just at the university level, before this will really take off.
You need WD-40, too. If it moves and it shouldn't, use the duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use the WD-40. (I've forgotten where I lifted that from.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If the education of engineers was not regulated the market would make this decision for you. It's a balance of both. If the course isn't directed at providing the training needed to perform a job, then the money they are paying for this education will not provide the benefits required and you should see a decline in people undertaking it.
I believe this is part of a large common problem in the United States, where people pay too much money for something which is not going to pay off, and isn't economical for them. In this case people are paying to undertake more theoretical study which they most likely wont experience in real life, and not on what the job would entail. Which isn't to say that you need to have 1000 courses tailored to 1000 jobs.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I left engineering school because I was more interested in the conceptual underpinnings than in the number-crunching. I very quickly realized that no one was interested in "thinkers". At least not where I went to school. When I further realized that at many schools (of which my major state research-oriented institution was one) the primary purpose of undergraduate engineering programs is to manufacture more grad students to support the research ... I left.
... but I believe the pendulum these days has swung too far in the "number-cruncher" direction.
IMNSHO, most of the academic & work worlds are FAR too oriented around "technical specialists" as opposed to "thinkers". (This is true in many fields, not just those traditionally thought of as "technical".) I agree with the above poster who said "it takes both"
See you space cowboy
that's a joke. senator's sons and daughters don't go there
I have to say I've witnessed this problem/challenge from multiple standpoints - as someone looking to hire a programmer, and as a self taught programmer looking at going to get a formal degree. As someone responsible for hiring programmers to assist me with my work I was somewhat surprised that the vast majority of CS graduates (engineers) knew the technicalities of the programming languages, but with no real world experience still had to be spoon fed exactly how to use those skills to solve a problem. As a self taught programmer looking to go back to school to get a degree in engineering I quickly realized that the advantage of such a degree would be the mathematics and theory I would learn. At some point programmers run into systems that are too large or complex to be hacked. And that's where I see the self taught programmers glass ceiling - the hack. Self taught programmers learn to make languages work for them, but they rarely understand the vast complexities behind the language (down to the binary). Getting a formal education may not make you the best suited person to actually write a specific application, but it will make you the kind of developer that can see beyond the immediate challenges of an application. Also, in terms of larger applications, without the theory and mathematics it simply isn't feasible. There's no way to hack a distributed program operating over multiple machines, networks and clients. While a self trained programmer might be able to pull it off, without the mathematical and theoretical background the product just won't be very efficient. This is where the formal training comes in, where it separates the trained engineers from the self taught hackers. Schools should realize that the hackers may be able to out pace their grads in simple or fairly straightforward programming tasks, but when it comes to something like systems design, their grads should stand well above the hackers.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I see engineering people in two ways: those who can "think" and those who can "follow". Both types of people can either have engineering degrees, or simply have experience in the field. Honestly? It doesn't seem to matter. Some people are born thinkers. University can perhaps tell the non-thinkers how to logically work through a problem; however, I believe it's superficial and they cannot operate outside of the scope of their book training. This is evident in the IT field especially. The "go-to" people who can fix any problem or come up with the best designs are often non-degree holders these days.
I take the attidude that universities should teach students both. In CS we should be teaching students real world job skills, from basic cable monkeying and system setup/maintenance to programming, while at the same time teaching them to use those skills to solve novel problems.
It isn't that the situation is either or. Universities have to teach students real job skills, as the minimum standards of education go up, and employee training time goes down universities have to give their students something they can demonstratably do that is useful before they graduate. But that's first and second year, there are still 2 more years. The university students should be going through the same material faster than their college/tradeschool counterparts and secondly they are at school longer, and that extra time is where you differentiate your programme by giving them more novel problem solving problems.
As another poster said, who do you want doing your wiring an electrician or an electrical engineer. Comming straight out of school they ought to both know HOW to do it, the electrical engineer should also know why the house wiring code is the way it is, and be able to apply that to making a space shuttle, rail gun or lighting in a bridge, whereas the electrician is focused soley on the skill of house wiring (or whichever type of wiring they care about).
They were asking something like the same question when I was in school back in the seventies. I think we came up with the right answer and prospered thereby. When we compared our students with those in Japanese and German schools, ours were seriously underskilled. Of course, the Germans and the Japanese had the creativity educated right out of them. Given that the only thing that is going to save our economy is innovation, it seems obvious that we should be educating thinkers.
Having said the above, however, learning skills and content are absolutely necessary. You might compare skills to a gun and creativity to bullets. If you lack either, you're doomed.
For $100,000+ for an education, I should think the need to do both!
C+ average at Princeton = daddy was an alum and donated a lot of money while his son/daughter partied/sat around all through college.
Top engineering schools in the US (in '05 cuz it was the first I found): #5 University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (public state school), #18 Princeton. If an A average at UIUC is worth a C+ average at Princeton, why is the ranking higher? Actually, don't answer that because I know about all the complications with school rankings.
I went to Pomona College and took computer science classes at Harvey Mudd, which is consistently ranked as one of the top non-graduate engineering programs. I didn't like the atmosphere out there and transferred to UIUC which is near my home. I have gotten good grades at both schools and can honestly say that it is more difficult to get an A at UIUC compared to the smaller private Harvey Mudd. The main reason for this is that the teachers are much more available and willing to help at smaller schools, while you generally have to figure everything out on your own at large schools. Larger schools are also much more likely to have classes that are intended to kill off the weaker students, usually by making the class very difficult, which again makes it hard to get an A.
That really doesn't matter that much though. The point is that you sounded like a jack ass. Troll me if you want, I just have a problem with people who think they are better because they go to a private school.
Well, there is also the difference between Practical vs. Theoretical in class room training. I kept having to take math classes that were taught "Theoretical" for all the math majors in the class. I talked to people who took the same math class from a University specializing the math classes for engineers, thus stressing the "Practical". The theoretical is good for teaching engineering professors and researchers at University, whereas the practical is typically a much better application if you enter the normal engineering job force.
Derivatives and Integrals are good for all engineers, but proofs are the food for the theoretical engineer.
"A proof? Why would I want to go backwards again?"
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
The article stresses that schools should focus more on life time learning rather than specific skills. This is great in theory but IMO an interest in life long learning comes down to your own motivation and enthusiasm. There are lots of people who just don't want to spend time learning after school.
On the subject of "thinker" vs "tradesman", this is a somewhat silly argument. Any good engineering school will help you learn how to use your basic skills to attack problems while also giving you the tools to learn about the real life engineering projects.
Spot on. Having an engineering degree, and having taught some subjects in the same, it's not always easy; made worse when the intake contains a lot of students from a rote-learning background.
Poor use of the word "career" though. Its origins already mean trajectory or heading, rather than "job".
Merriam Webster:
Career
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French carriere, from Old Occitan carriera street, from Medieval Latin carraria road for vehicles, from Latin carrus car
1 a : speed in a course b : COURSE, PASSAGE
-- All your bass are below two Hz
If someone is training an engineer shouldnt they train someone how not to kill vast swaths of people with their building/product?
The main reason for this is that the teachers are much more available and willing to help at smaller schools, while you generally have to figure everything out on your own at large schools.
At Cornell I found this was a function of the size of the department. The small departments tended to have professors who went out of their way to make themselves avaible, while the larger departments tended to make you work for it.
In my job, I spend a large amount of time at many different companies. I've worked with dozens of engineers over the years, and my experience is that the majority of them are not good problem solvers.
They've been taught the basics of engineering (general and the details for their fields), but most couldn't handle anything beyond a simple troubleshooting problem. What's really frustrating are those who have supposedly been trained in things like six sigma yet can't even throw together the simplest experiment to learn something new.
The best engineers I've worked with are problem solvers. It doesn't matter the field. If it's outside his/her area of expertise or training, he/she will research the information, ask intelligent questions, pose experiments or tests, and properly analyze and document the results.
I had an engineering professor who once stated that he could solve any problem. All he needed to do was apply the same basic principles and then take the time to look up and learn the specifics. That is what they should be teaching. Interdisciplinary work helps, but it should be mostly open ended. Throw a problem at a group of engineers like one would get at work, mainly opened ended with lofty goals assigned by someone who doesn't know voltage from resistance, alkalinity from acidity.
Side note: Part of this problem is due to the fact that companies usually don't let engineers be engineers. They make them act as "supplier managers." Got a problem? Call your supplier. Need to cut costs? Ask the supplier to reduce his/her price. Need to improve quality? Ask your supplier to do everything for you. Automotive companies are notorious for this. As a result, many of their engineers are no better than uneducated purchasing managers.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Given that education works on quarters or semesters, it's tough to really make all that much progress in a 10 or 15 week course, if it's all about collaboration. Plus, with college scheduling, it's awfully tough with the given time blocks.
I will say, I had a fairly "theoretical" based education -- BS in Physics and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. Now the EE program at Stanford was *very* hands-off... I spent a day or two calculating (on paper) what an optimal caching strategy was for L1, L2, and L3 caches... just math. And at the end of things... I don't know that I really understood computers all that well, despite getting a degree in EE with a computer hardware focus.
This compares to people I knew that got undergrad degrees in EE from MIT, who basically as a senior project were told to go build something much like an Apple II. Grab processors, logic, wire it all together, funge some microcode, get it to boot and write a program. Those folks with a BS could absoutely run circles around me when it came to practical experience. And I think it was a good education for them, because 5 years on I'm *sure* they could adapt it towards building something more complicated. Me... I could be a "consultant" and wave a nice high-powered degree in front of people, but build something myself? Er, no.
Anyway, the article is too light on specifics to really say *how* education should be changed. My opinion though is that college as it is (in the US at least) is pretty darned good -- it is markedly different to primary education in that pounding the books and doing the work isn't sufficient to do well -- to an extent you have to be able to "get it." At least, in math, science, and engineering for the most part you do. History may be a different kettle of fish.
university training these days doesn't produce thinkers. period. the engineers i've dealt with have trouble working out how to open a cardboard box let alone build a bridge.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Education is not about filling a role. It's also not about setting a trajectory whatever that means.
Education is about inspiring each student to do their best. Point out the flaws in their work and challenge them to go beyond what they and others have done before.
That's almost hilarious. What universe are you from?
In the universe I am from, public universities have no problem failing one's sorry ass unlike the more frequently soft private universities.
It would be nice if there was a site/group that analyzed the teaching pricnicples and strategies that each architecture school used. So that you would have a better idea what sort of degree you were ending up with.
For example, I find that Archictural Engineer can mean five or more things. An engineer with building design (looks) experience, and architecht with some structure training, an usability expert, a lighting designer, or an (commonly) interior decorator. Something I think would be good if they clarified and set standards for each with a proper title.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
But thinkers is not what most employers want in the freshly graduated engineers they hire. They want someone they can put onto project x using software y or tool z on day one, no matter how much their CEOs might talk about how they want "thinker" and "pioneers". There are some exceptions, but "I can layout amplifier circuits in ORCAD, program in Matlab and have never looked at anything except radar" will get you into the door at, say, Raytheon much faster than "I learned that I am good at problem solving". Now, it's a different story for engineering masters or PhD grads, but still most HR people prefer the skills match, be it Matlab or AutoCad, over the intangible qualities. This is at least partly due to the fact that you can't easily judge them in a resume and a short interview, but also because the engineering manager tells them "I need someone who can fill the place of the AutoCAD monkey who quit last week.
Creativity and "thinking" probably makes you advance faster once you have a job, or when you apply for your second job, but out of college, it's not the most looked for quality.
Disclaimer: I got a software job immediately after graduating in nuclear physics.
With a proper respect for their betters (Physicists). Best to beat all that curiosity out of them, and geld them. Once their skills become obsolete, it's off to the Soylent Green plant for them.
Then, once you get into upper level classes, you use those tools that you've acquired -- from classes or from elsewhere -- to accomplish tasks.
At least, from what I've seen. Who's taken a design class and been told what language they must write in? Unless you're forced to use an existing tool (ie, you MUST do your Computer Architecture work by extending simplescalar) or limited by the architecture (you can only choose between C and Assembly on most microcontrollers).
When I took my computer architecture class, we did trace-driven pipeline and cache models. I did mine in python; I was familiar with it from friends and I enjoyed using it. (I still do.) Other people used languages like Perl and Java, because that is what they were familiar with.
When I took video game design & programming, my group used Java for the client and C for the server. Other groups used tools like Visual Somethingorother or the Unreal engine (which was state of the art at the time). They chose tools that got them the product they wanted in the time they had. The team that wanted to do a "FPS Ultimate Frisbee" had great success with the Unreal engine. We had great success doing a multiplayer 2D board game using Java for the clients and C for the server. Partly because we were familiar with the tools and didn't have to fight them. Similarly, the person using Visual Studio wanted to make a DirectX game... and that was the right tool for the job. Writing a FPS from scratch in Java was clearly not the right option, nor was writing a 2D board game in the unreal engine. But the point was classical engineering of the kind that is most useful: given a set of resources (10 weeks in the quarter, a few University students with other classes, and only so many tools in the bucket), come up with a feasible idea and implement it.
Other schools have "computer science" programs where you learn linked lists and C++ pretty far along in your schooling (Junior year?), and you rarely (if ever) get free enough to design projects from the start. The difference is one of philosophy: using whatever tools available to accomplish the task you want to do, versus knowing tools to make things that someone else has mostly planned out.
It takes some of both kinds of people to make the world go around.
Most skilled trades (law, medicine) have secondary post-college programs entirely on top of arbitrary undergraduate degrees. It's a shame in a way that engineering gets crammed in with everything else; I think the secondary programs confer more respect on the people that go through them -- and a higher salary. If you had to get a Degree of Engineering on top of your undergraduate degree of choice, maybe engineers would have the respect they (IMNSHO) deserve.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
That makes a lot of sense, and can be scaled up or down. In my case, scaling up from departments to universities shows a similar trend. As another example, you could scale down to classrooms where most students have experienced that they get more attention in small classes compared to larger ones. I have to admit that I have had a few CS classes at UIUC with teachers that are very available and helpful. Usually those are small classes, although occasionally its just because the teacher is really really good.
> For example. Who would you hire to do the wiring in your house, and electrician or an electrical engineer?
Probably my brother, an electrical engineer, who made sure that all the wiring in the house he bought got brought up to snuff and who brought in another 10A circuit. The home is nice, but it was originally something one guy who was something like a handyman built & wired himself, so all outlets were at different heights, the wiring was screwy, etc.
Honestly, I'd be more inclined to have a few tradesmen do the work and have at least one engineer to manage them, making sure they do things according to code.
I thought this was the job of business schools, no??
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
In my humble opinion, I think that engineering programs should focus on giving students a strong base which they can use to help educate themselves better once they enter a narrower field. I graduated with my BS in mechanical engineering in 2005, after which I went to work as a petroleum engineer and am now currently working on a masters in economics. While mine is probably not the typical engineer path, most will work at some point in an area that they are not specifically trained for in school. Schools should focus more on giving engineers the tools to adapt to those unique changes in their work environment as they arise.
When I got my BSME, they had a great program called the Engineering Coop program (a quick Google suggests that its alive and well and available at various schools) that alternated semesters of school with semesters of work. I heartily recommend engineering students look into it. It does delay graduation, but the experience is great and the pay can be very good.
Getting some type of engineering-related job while going to school really helps balance the book learning.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Below is something I originally wrote for a discussion on a local LUG. It's Computer Science-centric, but I believe the same arguments apply.
This has been hashed out many, many times, but I'll jump into the fray again. If you want a foundation in computer science, and the ability to learn: get a CS degree. If you just want the skills you need for a job, take a class for it (or read it on the web, or find some certification courses). But as to practical skills, the CS program does offer many. If you want to program, take Operating Systems as well as Assembly Language. Computer Architecture is a good one too. Those classes will make understanding your programming so much easier, because you'll understand what the system is doing as your program executes. If you want to be a network guru, take a network theory class. Will it teach you to set up a windows AD network and configure roaming profiles? No, but it will give you a base-line knowledge level that will make understanding how that network works, and troubleshooting that network, so much easier.
I've taken the full complement of CS classes to earn my BS, and almost my MS.There are classes I may never use again. But I'm glad I had CS 201/202 (I've used C/C++ since in job and school); 301 (Assembly Language: understanding of a computer's operation); 331/631 (Programming Languages: better understanding of how compilers work, and the complexities thereof); 401 (Senior Project: better understanding of process and project management); Computer Architecture (gives me a good idea of how all the hardware fits together so I understand the system better when working on it); 311 (Algorithms: will I being doing heavy algorithm design, maybe, but I also know I can evaluate possible algorithms for efficiency and the load they will put on the system); 321 (Operating Systems: especially helps when running on "sane" systems such as Linux); 447 & 647 (Software Engineering: gave me so much insight into the proper ways to go about designing programs. Something I'm about to put into heavy use at my current job); and there are others.
Among the things I've learned on my own or via "on the job training": Perl; Python; SQL; Visual Basic; Linux administration; Apache administration; Postfix administration; a little Sendmail too; General system administration; Network setup, with some routing; hardware/software troubleshooting/assembly; Qt programming; CGI/web programming; Bind (DNS Server); HTML; VMWare Server; Bacula (backup server); as well as other skills I've probably failed to mention. I'm not bragging, I'm simply pointing out that taking classes in all those would have been prohibitively expensive, and taken a LOT of time.
For another example of what all that theory got me, see this paper. Careful design and development led to a successful election with software that was designed, coded, and debugged (very little debugging, due to careful coding) in 80 hours.
My point is, with a CS degree from my college (or another college that is more on the theory side), you will be able to drop into any job and pick up the skills quickly. With a purely skills-based degree, if you do not have the learn-on-your-own-itude that is needed in this industry, you will be totally lost when faced with a new paradigm or language.
Bottom line: if one requires a university class to learn a job skill, then a degree won't do one much good in the real world, whether theoretical or practical.
Joshua J. Kugler
Just because it is now fashionable to call people who are not engineers OR tradespeople by the name engineer is no reason to try to dumb it all down.
Teach thinking, but draw from the current business world for the choice of languages, design paradigms (OO, Aspect-oriented, etc).
He's acting like an ignoramus.
Calculus was developed by Newton, while working on PRACTICAL things.
Joseph Fourier made his discoveries while working on practical things as well.
Try wikipedia.
I got degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and currently work for a consulting Engineering firm. I found that the best engineers coming out of schools got theoretical knowledge from the classroom then gained practical experience from doing extracurricular activities such as joining robotic teams or teacher related research. Only truly inspired students go the extra mile and do the extracurricular activities. Its a clear indication of a good student and future engineer. That what I look for when hiring new guys.
Technical colleges/apprenticeships are for learning how to do.
Universities are for learning how to think.
Real world experience is for figuring out how to apply whichever path you took to get halfway to the other.
Sure, you can start as a grunt in a construction site, say, and work your way up to foreman, and you'll learn a whole lot.
Or start as an engineer and work your way down to the nitty gritty of the job, and you'll also learn a lot.
Neither path is the cure-all panaecea. It's the ability to effectively apply what you learn in a new way that's important. It's what allows us to grow in whatever careerpath is chosen. And that can be (and should be) taught either way.
Engineers are educated and not trained. Obviously you do need to be able to connect it to physical situations but you don't need to be the best welder on site to design and build a blast furnace.
As someone who has just started down the road of getting degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering I sure hope that the money I pay in tuition ends up giving my the ability to both think (read design),implement and build (machiningg is fun!). I know of a few schools that offer quite a bit of hands on experience for engineering majors and in my opinion this is a good thing.
In my previous job (at GM) I dealt with many engineers from a number of different engineering fields. The ones who were the best to work with were the ones who had an understanding of how to implement their ideas instead of just having some abstract idea. While being purely a thinker could have some advantages and being purely a tradesman other, combining both will in the end give you the most skill and hopefully end up with the student being more qualified for any job they may get.
It also depends on what sort of engineering you're getting into and if you specialize within that field.
I didn't realise thinking and being part of a trade were mutually exclusive.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If you want to be doing the same thing for 20 years, the trade school approach to engineering will suit you fine. You may also find yourself forced into management or unemployment because of technical obsolesence.
I'm a research scientist. I very briefly enrolled in engineering classes, but couldn't stand the rote repetition and dropped it to continue as an English lit major. Later as a grad student in the sciences I was told by an engineering student I'd never pass my physics class because "this was where they weeded out the engineers". On the final exam (e-mag) I had the high score at TWICE the class average. I didn't even have time to study for the exam because it was the day after my final in a class taught by my thesis supervisor.
It's not that I'm some genius. All through the semester I hammered on physics homework 10-20 hours a week and really learned the subject. I could do this because I only took 12 hours rather than the 15+ the engineers were taking. They learned to solve specific problems. I learned basic principles and solved the exam problems by rederiving the solutions during the exam.
I value having a job that constantly explores new subjects. Almost nothing I have done in the last 20 years was something I studied in school. I was able to learn it and get paid handsomely in the process because what I learned gave me the tools to learn new things quickly w/ little or no assistance. In a contest w/ a group of equally ignorant people I'll win almost everytime by having a solid understanding of the basic principles and being able to identify and eliminate my areas of ignorance faster.
"You pays your money and takes your chances!"
rhb
Here's one of the rubrics that's making its rounds around my workplace:
If you're doing something that's never been done before, you're an engineer. Otherwise, you're "just" a technician.
Engineering should involve exploring the solution space a bit, performing experiments and measurements to determine the optimum design when not all of the elements are known. If you're just "plugging-n-chugging" (also a popular concept during engineering classes) you're not exactly performing any sort of engineering science.
Not to look down on technicians. Technicians can do very professional, amazing work, putting attention to detail (such as clean cable management, etc.) that an engineer would overlook or just get bored or inconsistent with with after a few attempts. Unfortunately, tradesmen and technicians tend to be looked down upon in the US education system (unlike other systems such as those in Germany), where the relative "failures" of the public school systems end up in third-rate technical or vocational colleges instead of universities.
If we think that both aspects - tradesmen and thinkers - are important, then we should train for both. I think the problem is that people focus far too much on what can be done in a 4-year program. Why are we limiting ourselves to those 4 years? An M.D. spends 3-4 years in a pre-med program, then 4 years in a medical school and then 3-7 years in residency. Why don't we increase the requirements to become a professional engineer?
We could keep a 4-year program at a University for the general background edcuation and any breadth requirements and then throw in a 2 year specialization program where you would learn the specifics of your engineering discipline. Once completed, you would go work at an engineering firm and complete a multi-year internship/residency/experiential program. This would allow a focus on "thinking" in university and picking up the tradesmen aspect at the engineering firm. I admit this would make education more expensive, and reduce the number of engineers, but it would probably create better engineers at the end of the program.
We could also change the titles so that completing the 4-year program makes you a General Engineer, the 2-year specialization a Engineer, (Computer Engineer, Chemical Engineer, etc.), and then a Professional Engineer.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
The best engineers understand systems, have an innate curiosity, never stop learning and have worked outside of an engineering department.
In may case it took me some 20 years to understand that I'd never be a top engineer because I wasn't detail oriented enough but I really like and had a knack for systems. The systems I currently work with are: computers, networks, software, people and business systems. I'm having a blast as an enterprise architect but couldn't credibly do the job without the trajectory and having made a few detours along the way to sales, marketing, a failed startup, management and project management.
While I don't exactly use my BSEE it has provided me with a solid background. It's nice to be able to talk to the electrician about the 3-phase power in our computer room or to be able to calculate how many BTU/hr. a piece of equipment will need or why cables need to be terminated.
I'd have to say I agree with the "trajectory" approach as it has worked for me.
Larry
UC Berkeley is not a private school. So much for that discussion.
It takes both, and only 5% of the engineers will probably be the creative ones who can see the big picture well enough to innovate and get great solutions, sort of like any industry.
Advice: Things are changing fast enough to where any creative engineer is going to have to commit himself/herself to never ever stop learning and asking question, even if it makes them look foolish.
Schools: "Shop" classes still put reality in front of young ideas that forge capabilities.
I'll just throw in my experience. I went to Kettering University in Flint, MI. It's a top Mechanical Engineering school and I believe #1 for Industrial Engineering, so logically, I went there for Computer Science.
The bachelors program is Co-Op, so you go to school for 3 months, then work in your field for 3 months. I can't speak for the Engineering students, but my curriculum was almost completely based on theory. I envied my friends at other schools because they were doing stuff with GUI's while I learned advanced algorithms in Java and did Y2K conversions at my job.
To graduate, you have to write a thesis that incorporates what you have learned at school with a major project at your employer.
All in all, I think this is best way to get an education in any field. School should give you the theory that you can then apply in the real world.
The only down sides? Living in the ghettos of Flint and going to school where the guy:girl ration is around 8:1.
well, everyone dings bush about a C- average at Yale, which is pretty good.
the truth is, engineering at UIUC isn't the same as it is at princeton. princeton is ten times harder. i've seen some things from other friends at state school, and they just don't compare.
As a current college student, when I toured schools, there were some that advertised theory based studies, and others that advertised hands-on experience. It seems to me that the Hands-on schools are producing more thinkers than tradesmen, but this is not garunteed.
-- There is a fine line betwen genius and insanity, i have erased that line.
as a person who hires CS and EE engineers, i agree that an apprenticeship is absolutely instrumental in my hiring decision. I would definitely like to see (at least) one semester of mandatory internship.
www.RoombaDevTools.com
The particular emphasis of some engineering programs are probably the least of their worries now. Countires that don't make things, don't need many engineers. It seems that our governing class has decided that the United States is to become a country thet doesn't make things. For example, electronics manufacturing has all but vanished in the US. There's plenty of electronic stuff being manufactured in other countries but not here. Few have expressed surprise as the design jobs have followed the manufacturing jobs.
Jobs Update: The Death of US Engineering
Need an experienced engineer with hands on experience? Why fixate on what kinds the schools are turning out? There are legions of unemployed and underemployed engineers. Yes, they are older guys but the hands-on issue is moot. They have that. Not quite as cheap but then the young ones will be making their mistakes and learning. These guys have already made theirs. See, the difference between a 50 year old engineer and a 25 year old enginer is the 50 year old engineer has been 25. Oh yeah, I've known a few who became set in their ways but the vast majority were eager to learn and use new technologies. So instead of spewing forth more warm bodies, why not use some ones we already have?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
You'll learn a ton of practical engineering. Equipment operation and repair, designing and fabbing your own tools, soils and forestry management, erosion control, construction and repair from the smallest toolsheds to some pretty large specialised production buildings, advanced plumbing and irrigation, electrical wiring up to heavy duty three phase, alternative energy production and distribution, systems integration with computers and GPS, project management and budgeting, and a host of other et ceteras and so on. And you get paid, it's practical and useful work (hard but practical, useful and the demand will never poof on you), and you get to go out in the big room with the large yellow light bulb a lot. Fun. And during your occassional off time you can engage in first person shooter stuff, with real guns and not video game guns and go sport around in the mud on your ATV 4 wheeler or ride a horse. Full range of tech experience, mixed in with making some cash. What's not to like??
I thought this distinction is already made. By their nature, the pure sciences are geared toward thinking, and are more focused on 'why' rather than 'what can I do with this.' Coming from a physics background, this has always been the impression from our field. Engineers learn a more narrow spectrum of science with intended applications. The scientists have a broader education and are taught to think from first principles.
If you want to be a tinkerer, go into engineering.
If you want to be a thinker, go into physics.
----------------- Oink. Moo. rarr! -----------------
Let engineering extend to all areas in life, If there is a Male reproductive engineering, For school Grads is a qualified level of learning and studying, Bachelor is the degree you get, then Bachelor = Grads. Because in school, learning are being told by experinced and studies are observing examples, and Bachelor mean unmarried man(could marry leagally, yet not married), then reproductive engineering is sex, learning is reproducted(own parents are for sure reproductable) have teached them how and study is watching porn, So we got: Bachelor = Engineer school grads, and spawn into: Male adults who is not married have parents told what sex(normal,rational way) is and watched some porn. Until they practice(dating?) or have product that affect others(marry? babies?), in this case, its best to have a care(stick to the rules) and rich(strong foundation) guy whoes is also attractive(innovative). However IRL such a being is highly unwelcomed period
Well, it seems most of you have missed the major point of the article. It seems this prof wants to pitch his particular brand of online replacement for the traditional classroom and lecture (by making all the material available online, and giving students the ability to collaborate there). I think it's a terrible idea. Personally, ive found that whenever a prof uses a lot of powerpoint, makes the coursework available online, or encourages outside study groups for questions rather than direct questions during class, it is the first indication that a) this particular class is their lowest priority and they don't plan on doing a particularly great job of lecturing or conveying the coursework in another way or b) this particular professor knows s/he isn't good at teaching this particular class, but since you have other options than to learn from then, you should still be able to pass the class. I've found the best learning experiences in my college coursework (EE from CU) were primarily lectures with some socratic seminars mixed in. Online replacements have never been much use for me. I hope profs dont take this kind of crap too seriously and recognize that not all of their students learn in the same way, and a variety of options is probably the best way to really teach the material.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Back in the day I went to Drexel because I thought co-ops would help me pay for school. They did, somewhat, but they also taught me how the corporate world works.
You can also learn a lot of theory during co-op. I had a friend who was in constant danger of flunking out of EE; but got a good co-op with the Philadelphia Navy Yard. He'd flunk a class two terms straight, go on co-op, come back and fly through the class. Dealing with the circuits IRL taught him more than the books did.
Clear, Dark Skies
Anyone who isn't a thinker at the START of Engineering School should consider a different career.
I won't say "thinkers are born not made" but relatively few people change from non-thinkers to thinkers after their high school years.
Anyone with a brain can learn a craft.
It takes a heart and soul to be creative. By age 18, almost everyone knows they have it or they don't.
Engineering is a mix of both.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I graduated recently from the University of Canberra here in Australia. I must say that I found the teachings that I got from there to be both practical (I.E. tradesmen like in qualification) and theoretical (taught me to think outside the box as it where). The reason I got such a great experience was that the majority of my lecturers where people who had either left the industry or recently retired. In fact our head of engineering was a physicist turned engineer, and he had some great examples of practical applications of the theory he was teaching us. It really all comes down to the philosophy of engineering, which is creating solutions to complicated problems. We need people who are able to look at a problem, see a fix for it and then dive right into implementing it. You're not going to get that kind of response from a pure thinker or tradesman. A good engineer balances both his theoretical skills with a sound grasp of pratical implementations.
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
At least as far as the job market is concerned.
If you want to be a "thinker" you can always do what I did, and get a worthless degree in math.
Engineering is a profession, and requires education not training. Let me rephrase that: a technical engineer deals with difficult equations. A good technical engineer deals with difficult analogies.
My main gripes with engineering education are two-fold:
- Only engineering design is taught, not engineering discipline.
- Writing skills are neither taught nor tested.
Real-world engineering requires the ability to communicate succinctly and, invariably, a very large amount of documentation.
If you want to develop as an engineer, you will need to understand how engineering, as group of people working together, works. This is where the discipline or practise of engineering comes in. (Sometimes knon as systems engineering) Unfortunately, very few undergraduate courses teach it and even fewer academics believe in it.
There are some notable exceptions (eg. Carnegie Mellon University), but that exception merely proves the rule.
-- Butlerian Jihad NOW!
Is it just me or aren't we supposed to be taught to think in grade school? I mean, whats the point of going to grade school if we aren't going to be taught to think for ourselves? That's when I learned. Though I guess is shouldn't give any of my schools credit. It was all my parents fault that i can now think for myself.
or just douchebags?
The problem that exists now in engineering school is that we have a large subset of faculty that were brought up on the slide rule and deeply feel that their educations are superior to those of today because of the sheer grittiness. The pedagogy in engineering is in dire need of evolution. I think there is a significant disconnect between many current engineering students, who are generally aspiring thinkers, and their professors, who were generally given a tradesman education. One such example of this is that engineering schools have pretty much phased out drafting classes. Using engineering schools to cultivate more thinkers adds far far far more value than training tradesman. Quite simply, if our society wants progress in SciTech, we need more thinkers before we need tradesman. However, both are necessary.
theory XOR practice?
As ~2% of the posters wisely noted, the two major skill set classes are neither mutually exclusive, nor sufficient.
"Both" is a partially correct answer, but "Both and then some" is a more nearly sufficient approximation.
Emotional Intelligence, common sense, a firm grasp of the underlying economic realities, the ability to finely parse a marginal ethical dilemma into multiple shades of grey, the ability to communicate complex concepts with clarity to non-technical audiences, and many, many more aptitudes and attitudes are all relevant and contribute to the production of seasoned engineers, in any specialty. The existing academic establishment struggles with subject areas not math- or science-based. Rigor is not the exclusive province of the physical sciences, math, and engineering ( e.g.: cognitive neuro-linguistics ), but there are relatively few exceptional scholars in the liberal arts or social 'sciences'.
An irrepressible sense of humor wouldn't hoit, either.
Technical Comedy 483: "Ratbert as Doppelganger" MWF 0800-0815 3 cr.
(T)he (O)ld (M)an
I thought they said Tinkers.
I'll just go back to the shed now.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
I think its not about being thinkers or tradesman its more about learning to learn. I think the biggest thing I learned in college was how to learn new things fast, whether you get it from using things which force you to be a thinker or tradesman is almost irrelevant. Being able to learn new stuff fast is what has given me most of my advantages at work.
I'm definitely a "thinker," and have the utmost respect for roll-up-yer sleeve types.
There's a book out there called "Young Geniuses and Old Masters," which talks about two roads to accomplishment.
Some people have flashes of brilliance early on, good for them.
Available to the rest of us is the development of mastery.
Mastery does not come from getting an MEng, it takes developing a skill for a full decade. The people that dive right in to make it work, that will get their hands dirty and have the work ethic to get it done, I'd hire them bottom to top over chalkboard wonders like me.
I'm currently taking an Environmental Engineering degree at BCIT in British Columbia. Five years ago, I took the Mechanical Engineering Technology diploma there. During my first program, we always joked that the difference between a mechanical engineer fresh out of university and a mechanical technologist fresh out of BCIT was that, although both could design a machine, the former could understand exactly why every part of it functioned, down to the quantum level, while the BCIT grad could find the ON switch.
When I got out of school, I was productive from day one. Not as productive as I was after six months, by any means, but I understood enough theory to do any design work the company needed me to, but I could also talk to the shop guys on their terms, understanding why they disagreed with the engineers on certain matters--and why one or the other was right in each case.
My current degree is proving to be much the same. We're not learning as much in-depth theory as a Masters student in Environmental Engineering would (even though this is a Bachelor's degree, the general level compares to the Master's-level studies two of my classmates have taken in other countries), but we're learning skills that we will be able to apply immediately when we graduate--mainly because our instructors are current industry professionals (more P.Eng's than Ph.D's) who take time away from work to come teach a class.
So what's the route to a high-quality Engineering education?
You don't have to make a binary choice between being a master engineer and being a wrench monkey. There are schools out there that will turn you into a competent designer (in whatever discipline they specialize) without requiring a third mortgage and a second brain implant. If you're in Canada, polytechnic institutes are becoming more common as technical colleges start offering more degree-level programs. The only problem, of course, is that enrollment tends to be limited, so you need a good combination of marks and experience just to get in. But that's really no different than getting into a prestigious university.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
College training for engineerin is, in most cases (and software engineering is a glaring exception), just training for a de facto apprenticeship.
In the US, and I think in most western countries there is a 3-5 year apprenticeship program.
In the US it is the EIT procress. An 'engineer' in the US takes an EIT exam, usually before graduation. This qualifies the engineer to do engineeringwork under supervision. It is generally acknowledged that a college degree without experience is not sufficient. You need to work in a supervised environment (under a project engineer) is responsible for your work and therefore will flog you into line.
The goal is conservatism, so that people do not die. This is not doing research but applications. After taing the PE exam, an EIT is then a project engineer and will then be able to do actual design work while being civily and possibly criminaly liable for failures. We do not want people experimenting with bridges or any other life critical application. Creativity may be a major liability.
To do the 'cool stuff' you need at least an MS or a Phd. This is where creativity comes in. But engineering is about maing things useful in a safe manner. So we do not need cowboys or goobers in engineering.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
i've seen some things from other friends at state school
And I've actually been in classes from a school like Princeton, and I can say that it isn't 10 times harder. But who am I to tell you that Princeton isn't better than every state school in the country.
I must have missed something, what does UC Berkeley have to do with what I said?
Yeah right! Especially with the grade inflation they have...
Science for Southern Baptists. All of the fun of science and none of that frustrating icky stuff that doesn't jive with the Bible.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
1. Quit school
2. use the money you were going to spend on school (to pick a number out of the air, $3000 a semester x 8 semesters = $24,000) and spend that money on buying the fastest damn computer you can get your hands on, use your student discount which will be valid for the next 8 weeks to buy the software you want to learn, and then spend a pile of money on "how to" books.
3. use those books to learn how to do what you want to do.
4. Put together a kick ass portfolio, intern at the best company you can find nearby, and LEARN.
Do that, and you will learn all the button pushing you need to know. Remember, your portfolio speaks better than you do.
Now, if you want to LEARN SOMETHING, like CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS, and a REASON to do what you do, giving your life things like MEANING AND DIRECTION, then shut up, sit down and pay attention.
We will now learn our first three words in Turkish.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
This is yet another case of a company not willing to train their employees. I am going to university because I want to learn the theory for the job. I didn't go to university to become an expert in one program and not think about what I was doing.
Years back companies used to create apprenticeships and train their employees, you would be taught your basic programming and work related theory through there. It was a company's job to train you not the university's because universities and Colleges are for different things. Already (in the UK) the value of a degree has fallen a BSC degree puts you at technician level of jobs, a BEng will make you and Engineer and a MEng is for a charted engineer.
If you want 'tradesmen' then create an apprenticeship in your company for that trade, Universities exist to tech thinking and to further knowledge. I'm sick and tired of companies who won't invest in their employees (or prospective employees) and demanding the state do the job for them.
For the price it had better be thinkers able to solve the problems. Otherwise we'll be pretty screwed if we ever have a career change. By the way, most people have a career change at least once in their life.
The real answer is of course, both. But to be honest the hands-on material is something that you either have to learn before you get into college (at least the basics out of interest for your subject) or you will be picked it up (hopefully) as your work experience.
There is a limited amount of valuable hands on experience the academics can give you considering the wide range of options any career might provide. But there are always some basics in familiarity that are important.
On the same note, I prefer to think of physicists as mental mastrubators.
The compiler will only be able to do so much. In order to use 80 cores efficiently, you're going to have code differently than you would for single core execution. Some current techniques for this include using libraries designed for C, Fortran, etc., and I have no doubt that improved libraries/compilers will help, but you still have to think of the problem differently. Skills developed thinking about concurrent processing on supercomputers will definitely come in handy. I'm counting on it! :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Giving people the skills to acquire skills is a nice idea and should certainly be the goal of a University course. Other people have already mentioned the distinction between a graduate who knows computer science and one who knows how to program. However, it may not be too common for employers to be aware of the importance of this meta-skill. Very few programming jobs beyond entry level will say "don't worry if you don't know this language as long as you would be able to learn it." Is engineering any different?
This is even more true for post-grads. A PhD usually trains you to be an independent thinker, self motivated and able to acquite new skills quickly but certainly in the UK, it's rare to find a corporate computing house that will take having a PhD as a proof of any of that.
Peter
I graduated as a Computer Engineer in 2003, having gone through a hands-off theory heavy program. In our second to last year, our class was joined by local technical college students who, having received their diplomas, had the option to take an extra year to earn degrees.
The difference in general understanding and comprehension between the theory-heavy students and the hands-on tech college students was staggering. Time and time again, we theory-based guys would get our asses handed to us when it came time to actually apply our knowledge.
As other posters have stated before, the theory-kids had an incredibly difficult time bridging the gap between theory and application - whereas the tech school guys, already having a solid understanding of the real-world basics, were able to ramp up on the theory far quicker - and with a greater comprehension to boot.
At the end of the day, I think my university would have produced far better thinkers if they had taken the time to have us apply our knowledge as a means of driving home the points they were trying to teach us on the blackboard.
There seems to me somewhat of a disconnect between the article cited and the summary. Having said that, I've felt for a long time that engineering education needs to fork into "practical" and "research" branches. I have worked at various times in both the mechanical and civil fields and have rarely found a reason to use differetial equations to solve everyday problems. (Note I am not an engineer, my work just sometimes encompasses or requires inclusion of some of those skills to get my work done). Yet in most college curriculas differtial equations is at least two semesters. I'm not so crazy about the appenticeship idea. It will end the apprentice doing the work while the credentialed engineer makes the big money. That's pretty much what I've experienced and I don't really like it.
Thinkers who are taught to problem solve can learn just about anything they put their mind to. Tradespeople can do 1 thing well.
When applying for a job, do not let on that you can think. Your prospective supervisor will be threatened by this and find some excuse to hire the robot instead.
Maybe my school (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institue) was an exception to the rule, but it prepared me very well in the general thinking sense. In fact, that is about all it did. I got very little hands on experience, but as soon as I hit the working world and got my first job I found it very easy to adapt to my new environment because of the knowledge I had gained.
ALL schools should be producing thinkers. If you're in college part of why you're there should be to hone your mental abilities to cope with and master change around you. You go to college, supposedly, because you're smart and want to be smarter.
An engineering school needs to add practical abilities in engineering to that mix. So someone comes out with the skills to be an engineer, and hopefully the smarts to cope with change well.
Then again I am also a firm believer that any technical task or work can be accomplished by any sufficiently intelligent person with the right books/training.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Professors should emphasize imparting their wisdom before the latest and greatest (programming language or technology-specific) knowledge. Agreed. However, they should tailor that effort towards providing a healthy dose of marketable expertise in the process. This is very important to help grads land that first job. Some students are passionate enough about their field to gain real-world knowledge on the side (geeking, internships), but others may have more diverse interests (or rank other interests high enough that recreational pursuits are directed towards unrelated activities). Students are quite occupied with curricula and I believe that lessons learned therein should be aimed at both requirements.
A friend of mine graduated from a local Tech college with a degree in Electrical Engineering. His degree, being from a tech college, was much more geared towards tradesman work.
He recently was hired on with a company doing bleeding edge work with lasers and microscopic imagery. Everyone one of his co-workers had Electrical Engineering degrees from local Universities (all very focused on theory). The other engineers were capable of creating amazing machines, but the problem was that each machine had to be hand built, each had custom configured PC hardware and software, each was made up of a number of boxes and excessive amounts of wire. While my friend may not have been able to create such a machine from scratch, he was able to greatly reduce the feet of wire used, reduce interference, implement a single box solution, standardize the PC hardware and software, and greatly improve the quality, timeliness, and appearance of the units.
So, I would want BOTH designing a NASA space vehicle. The Thinkers to make it great, and the Tradesmen to make it practical.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
They should train engineers to teach others how to do their jobs. So Indian languages should be a must.
It occurs to me that there is a category that is missing here; The Utilitarian (Thinker and Tradesman in one)
For any problem, you need someone to think about how to solve the problem, and you need someone to implement the solution. There are utilitarians (most of us) who can perform both thinking and doing well, but there is always someone out there who can do either the thinking, or the doing, more efficiently. That being said:
If you ask the tradesman to solve the problem, then implement it, you will likely see an "okay" solution. The implementation of the solution will go quickly, but might take several revisits to the thinking stage to account for the situations where the solution proved to be inadequate.
If you ask the thinker to solve the problem, then implement it, you will likely see a "perfect" solution. However, the implementation will likely be performed in an inefficient manner as the thinker lacks the experience to implement the solution quickly.
If you ask the utilitarian to solve the problem, then implement it, you will see a compromise, as the utilitarian is neither bad, nor outstanding, at either part of the job. The implementation of the solution to the problem will be "good enough".
What should be taught from universities (actually all levels of education), is that all three types of people are needed. When there is an important problem that needs to be solved, then it needs to go to the thinkers, and the solution given to the tradesmen to implement. When the problem isn't so important, but still needs to be done, then it should be given to the utilitarian. Everyone should be given the basics on how to do all three things, and then make their decision on which that they would like to focus on.
Personally, I like being a utilitarian!
1. School
2. Graduate
2a. Post-Graduate (optional, delays Step 4)
3. Five years field practice
4. P.E. Licensure
5. MBA
6. Hire interns for ALL calcs
7. Stamp drawings
8. Profit
Spending Resources on Defense leaves Less to defend.
Why they can't do both. I personally went to a lib arts school, but a lot of the work I do is technical, and I got plenty of hands on experience while doing it. On the flip side, I worked in an engineering school's theatre for a while, and those kids seemed to be able to apply their various technical fields to what we were doing on, above, below, or behind the stage. Saying that students can't handle learning to be both artisans and artists is a gross underestimation of their capabilities.
When I last attended a university (early 90s), I remember having the opinion that there was shift away from "learning" and toward "career preparation". Of course the universities can do whatever they want, and I would imagine the shift is influenced by the students' plans and expectations. Personally, I think if you are only interested in getting a good-paying job, a university education is way over-priced.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
The two choices here are broad and ambiguous. For 'thinkers', do we mean people who can initiate new problems to solve? People who can clearly define the problems to solve? People who can find an optimal solution to the problem? People who can cross-pollinate and bring different insights to the problem? People who can turn solutions into profit? People who can master diverse disciplines of designs? People who can delineate the process and facilitate the problem-solving? People who can retain and recall the cumulative lessons learned over the lifespan of projects?
And what about 'doers'? Do we mean people who can complete the milestone assigned? People who can fast-prototype a solution (but not necessarily see it to fruition)? People who can memorize the design rules and syntax to be useful when we need quick fixes? People who know the best tools to use for a specific task, and are quick to learn the tool and make it productive? People who can give a rough solution fine touch before close-ups? People who can spend ungodly hours finding the critical faults in a system and correct/debug them? Highly specialized technicians? Mass producers (quality not accounted for)? General multitasked interns?
The truth is, the industry really wants munchkins, but most engineers can never be all the above sans the deficiencies. (Those who can - well, they come at premiums that the industry is usually unwilling to pay for.) Unlike management, legal or medical disciplines, engineering schools do not crank out people knowing what they will be used for, so they created Lego blocks and play-doh. This is exactly how an engineer would approach the problem: unit design that is probably not very useful at the factory shipping dock. In fact, most graduates in engineering are bewildered about the paths they will take afterwards, and this inherent insecurity is no small cause to the career choice of our younger generations.
What an engineering graduate finds is not two roads in a wood, not 'thinker' or 'doer', but a plethora of companies that want munchkins with low pays. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the HR mandate of '10+ years in C++, DSP, FPGA, plus 5+ years in communication devices design', or 'Experience working with F-22 engine design and Mil-Spec X'.
In a sense there is indeed a disconnect of the engineer schools providing books and not practical skills. An increasing number of graduates had only one course in theoretical structural design before they headed into workplace. A graduate might have taken the basics of every field in his/her major, e.g., aerodynamics, robotics, CFD, biomechanics, etc., but this only improves employability of the newly minted grad and hardly makes anybody useful. In other words, the graduates have maximized their utility to best cope with an industry that is too diverse for the education system.
I think this is a tragedy. By turning the engineering schools into a talent search, the industry forces the schools to become trade schools that offer JAVA and web design courses. By graduating students who are novices of all trades, the schools leaves the real education to the industry. Companies that once expected to find qualified graduates are now cautious in examining candidate profiles - because there are those who took microprocessing courses and never even programmed one. The engineering schools in turn provides even more specialized courses that are geared toward industry, e.g., medical imaging or high frequency microelectronic devices, so that the graduates are better qualified for HR scrutiny. Here is a vicious cycle that the schools and the industry jointly created.
And the results for the students are: 1) an abundance of courses to confuse a freshman engineering student, 2) a need for students to spread butter thin, 3) a sacrifice of enthusiasm for industrial advantage. I fear #3 is the worst of the outcomes, because beyond 'thinker' and 'doer', an engineer really needs a spark, a curiosity, a fervor to dive into a spe
I went to college at Northeastern University in Boston. The program has changed a little bit since I graduated but the gist is still the same. I went to college for 5 years, mostly year round. Year one was all classroom learning. From there on I spent 6 months with classroom learning and 6 months with real world learning. The whole idea was to get you the theory and all that bullshit during your 5 years but then give you a chance to go out and see how it actually applies. So i graduated with my degree in hand and an actual resume to go with it.
There's a huge return to the ability to think in the financial industry.
An intelligent, practical graduate with masters in CS, or physics, or OR
can expect to make $250k in 2 years and $500k+ in 5 years...
First, lets think about how the engineers are treated after graduation and then put more demand on them. Nowadays, engineering is the most pathetic program one can choose I believe. You get the least amount of respect in the university for being a nerd a geek a social outcast and yet you have to go trough the torment of taking the most difficult courses. No fun, no ladies, no nights out only studying! What is the reward of this ? After graduation you are lucky if you get a job for 40K CAD in a company, working in a 1m x 1m cubical trying to convince your manager that you are better than his favorite high school graduate douche-bag who codes with one hand and pops his pimples with the other. When I was in grad school I fell into a conversation with one of the janitors at the school, their union has had secured them about 60+K CAD salary more than anything a fresh masters student out of the most respectable university in Canada can dream about, the guy had put a down payment for a BMW while I was looking for someone to borrow a couple of hundred dollars to buy a bike. I have had 20 years of education under my belt and he hadn't even finish grade 5. Even when our beloved companies that we are so loyal to get into trouble, we are the first group of fellows that have to pack and say goodbye.
Engineering is a profession. I was told this when I joined Engineering college, back in India, Engineering is much more than a trade. So, the trade part has to be included in Engineering. Its a superset. They HAVE to teach skills to do stuff (programming, designing ciruits etc) and knowledge why we do the stuff, so we can change it as needed. Its like being between a tradesman and a Scientist. I would like to quote my Physics teacher - a tailor or carpenter can measure length, only a physicist can measure the length of molecules and distance between the stars.
i noticed the tag for this post - ED - i also saw it recently attached to a job description - ED - early development but all that came to mind in both instances was the constant commercials pandering me about erectile disfunction. beware the - ED - shorthand
ps if that is the short for education...i will stand tall...unedgemakated
From the article: "The skills you learn here won't last more than three or four years. The best you can do is retain some meta-skills about how to continue your education."
The (mechanical) engineering education that I recieved in the last 10 years is the same fundamental education that MEs recieved a decade or two ago. I expect that the education I recieved will be good for another 30+ years. The fundamental science taught to MEs -fluid thermal systems, machine design, and HVACR- are not likely to undergo major changes in less than a 40 year time span.
If an engineering education is said to last only 3-4 years, then the education is probably not an engineering education but a technical one.
Simple people talk of people, better people talk of events, great people talk of ideas.
into a bar...
.. Something like that? :P
Physicist says "Planck was here."
Mathematician says "I'll conjugate you!"
Engineer says "I need a beer!"
I've seen some engineering interns used to do inventory work.
I've seen others given actual software development tasks.
Many of those in the second category eventually came to work for us.
For some reason, those in the first category didn't seem too interested in being hired by us....
Rather than have students exposed to advanced mathematics and the sciences only at college, if they were to start earlier, this would produce far more useful engineers. I had a fairly good understanding of calculus, classical physics at a level comparable to a junior at college by the time I was out of high school. It made me a better thinker than my peers in college, better prepared to absorb the density of education that I received in 4 years of a bachelors degree. Much of the concepts taught in college take longer than a semester to really understand and apply in the real world. I think a 6 year college degree starting out at the beginning of high school interspersed with apprenticeship is better than the traditional 4 years we have today. At 13 or 14 you may not have developed the mental ability to grasp the concepts involved but repeated learning of the concepts up until the time you graduate at 21 will surely help in molding your thinking enough for you to be able to apply it for the rest of your life. This is how it was in ancient Greece and medieval schools of learning. I think this was a good system. Identify what you want to do with your life early and follow through with as little distraction as possible.
When I went to engineering school, the average student took 5 1/2 years to complete their BS in engineering. My school was one of the largest in the country with 19 different engineering degrees offered. We had precious little time for any hands on work or for any "senior projects." There wasn't enough time to cover everything that needed to be covered in that time. This approach seems to have been a good investment, I don't know of anyone in my graduating class that had less than two job offers (this includes my room mate who had the lowest gpa allowed for graduation).
I have heard many say that engineers need more "hands on" training, but I have seen both the "hands on" and the "hard theory" trained engineers over the last 28 years. In general the "hands on" come out of the gate faster, but the "hard theory" engineers develop a wider more valuable set of skills.
I have also found that the engineers who had a wide exposure to "hard theory" are better able to analyze and understand complex problems. The "hard theory" engineers also tend to be able to work in more areas of technology and are therefore more likely to be hired after 40.
My son just started engineering school and I am glad he chose a school that will require him to have a broad "hard theory" EE background before calling him a computer engineer.
Frank W. Olin College of Engineering ( http://www.olin.edu/ ) near Boston just graducated their first class last spring. They are acredited now. The big thing they have done is to re-engineer the process of training engineers. They focus on the core engineering diciplines, mechanical, electrical, and civil, and only work with undergraduates.
For the most part, they start doing 'hands on' engineeering, and support it with theory as it makes sense. They also put in a focus on being well rounded, with some reasonable liberal arts requirements and business.
From what I see, they are looking at putting out engineering entrepenurs that can work in any kind of environment.
Even when I was in college 30+ years ago now, the emphasis was more on teaching people how to think and learn on their own as technology changes. rather than just how to get it done with todays technology.
From what I have seen, focusing on 'certifications' and 'classes' for industrial training, only teaches people how to work now and take home a paycheck. Not how to learn.
IMHO, College should prime the pump to give you a supply of knowlege for life, not just give you a tub of knowlege to use that will drain, then you must be religated to a materially empty life, rather than refilling your understanding and knowlege continuously for life.
It goes back to the old maxum of 'Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.'
I have run into many people that still percieve much education as 'wasteful' because it doesn't focus on the latest 'technology' but teaches a method of thinking. I still believe they are missing the boat.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
they should aim to develop more Leonardos...then again, someone has to do the blocking and tackling of getting the basic stuff done. Grow a brain at brain.com
The world needs people with "knowledge", "skills" AND "experience".
:)
These factors together form a triangle that defines the overall 'value' of the individual to an employer.
Universities often focus on the "knowledge" and claim exclusivity on the ability to think -- but offer virtually no immediately usable skills.
Does the world need philosophers? People who sit and think but otherwise do nothing?
Does the world need robots? People who have fixed and limited skills but who are inflexible and disposable?
Does the world need theorists? People with theoretical knowledge and unpracticed skills, but who have never applied either in the real world?
No, I would suggest that the world needs people who can hit the ground running. People with a FOUNDATION of knowledge upon which to build and an ability to learn as required. People who also have valuable, current, real-world skills and some experience in actually using those skills.
Our educational systems are streamed in two directions -- Universities, supposedly producing thinkers, who should manage and run the world -- Colleges, supposedly producing skilled, ready-to-use employees.
Neither system actually WORKS as advertised.
Both institutions are dinosaurs -- unable to move fast enough to adapt to the changing world and the techologies being developed every day.
Many professors spent their entire life in the theoretical, sterile educational system and have never done an honest day's work anywhere else.
You have government control and mountains of paperwork needed to institute new programs that ensure "new" programs coming on-line are already oboslete.
Educational systems must EVOLVE and MERGE so that people receive ALL that they need to become successful and achieve their full potential.
Greed plays a large role. Professors worry about their own careers and 'tenure' -- to the exclusion of students, learning and building programs around new tools, techniques and technologies. Graduates expect to start at the top, with entry-level salary demands exceeding those of CEOs in less developed countries. The concept of "paying your dues" to increase your salary (and your 'value') seems to have been forgotten.
My vision would be a 6-year program. Two years of 'basics' like math, English, business skills, people skills followed by 4 years of work-related courses and training intermixed with paid apprenticeship.
How could it be possible? People can't even manage 4 years of education now without incurring huge student loans that take tens of years to pay off -- let alone extend the educational process to 6 years...
Well, it CAN and IS possible but requires the cooperation of the educational institutions, government AND business.
Business (who has the money) must fund education -- but right now, they won't do it because the graduates are virtually worthless without a huge investment in further training and experience. They already incur this additional cost both by the rediculous salaries the new graduates demand, but also by the months of non-productivity it takes to bring them up to speed as well as the internal training and cost and lost productivity associated with people to give the training and mentoring.
(In the military, you are instructed to wound someone rather than kill them. A dead enemy is only one, but a wounded one takes down two to carry the stretcher and others to attend to him.) Much like planting a new graduation with no skills or experience into a busy business.
Business WOULD fund education if they could CUT these additional costs. If they were GUARANTEED access to graduates HAVE EXACTLY the knowledge, skills and experience they need to BE productive from day one -- they would pay happily!
However, this would involve a contract between all parties:
The institution -- who accepts funding and support from business in exchange for producing the graduates they want.
The graduates -- who promise to work
Let the technicians and tradesmen get their education at schools such as ECPI, DeVry, ITT Tech, &c.
Engineers should be educated for career trajectories, not specific jobs. Engineer != technician!
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I am an engineering student who enjoys lifelong learning and truly believes in it. At the end of the day, however, it comes down to what gets you a job. From my experience with both graduate school and company recruiters, no one's interested in that. The only things they seem to care about are: 1 - GPA 2 - Project/employment experience (For companies the priority of the above is switched) None of my hires/acceptances to any institution beyond undergrad seem to have been based on what classes I took or what I could show I learned in a formal academic setting. I know this roughly because the instances in which I've emphasized the above 2 things have gone a LOT better than those in which I've emphasized my coursework. This PARC fellow's an idealist, but he's a bit removed from reality in my experience.
It seems like job distinctions have blurred a lot in the IS field. I used to think a scientist was someone who explored the theoretical and figured out how to take what they learned and apply it in new ways. I thought an engineer was someone who took what scientists learned and got it working in real-world applications. I thought the technician took these applications and kept them working, fixing them when they broke.
I'm a technician. It seems that more often than not, I have to do a lot of the engineering work when something new comes along. I suspect that the engineers have to do a lot of the science work too. What I am trying to say is that I think there is a lot of overlap. It is likely to continue in this direction as long as things keep getting more and more complex.
How many of us haven't taken some idea and made it work for something entirely different than its intended purpose? Who hasn't made something that didn't quite work out like we wanted? Both of those things are opposite ends of the same concept, the concept that brings us engineering.