Caveat: I'm not an artist nor am I an engineer...I'm a math geek.
That said I think anyone who wants to compare engineering to the arts needs to do some fact checking. At the three institutions, and I'd be willing to say at almost every institution in the US, I briefly checked if you want a B.F.A. you need to submit a portfolio. So already the high school art student(who probably needs the same types of grades in their field as engineering students) needs to have a portfolio put together before they can even apply to their school. Even better music and dance majors need to give an audition. Unfair as it may be the idea of majoring in Dance is kind of ridiculous to me, however I'm willing to punt on this one and blindly state that dance programs probably run the same distribution of difficulty that engineering/science programs due, and the idea of your average engineering student attempting dance classes definitely evokes hilarious mental images. Other than grades and academic awards do engineers need to have design portfolios or pass auditions? I've never heard of it.
Also just check your favorite college's policy on non-art majors/minors taking an art class? Usually a non-major/minor can't even take a "real" art course, I use "real" here in the same context as we talk about real calculus vs "real" calc(i.e. for business/life science majors).
So I feel pretty confident in saying this is simply a case of "the grass is greener".
Another interesting thought was just motivated by the fact that in engineering, there often is a much more definite answer than in other less "practical" degree programs. Philosophy for instance at once could be considered a pretty willy-nilly degree...however in a philosophy degree program instead of being able to manipulate formulas to get The "answer", you need to convince you professor that your answer is "right". Which is harder?...obviously this is professor/school dependent, but it does ring as an interesting take on this topic.
This whole topic exemplifies my favorite flavor of engineering arrogance when an engineer believes that they can "reason out" how to do someone else's job better than them by the fact that they are clever engineers, some engineers do this regardless of the credentials of the someone else, and thus are justified in telling someone else how to do their job. Whereas if someone else were to criticize the engineer doing his job without considering the engineer's credentials, the engineer takes great offense to this, with very little regard for the someone else's credentials. And all of this is just appealing to the simple of "do unto others...", which is doubly amusing as engineers often tout logic as one of their strengths.
Slashdot Mirror
Caveat: I'm not an artist nor am I an engineer...I'm a math geek.
...obviously this is professor/school dependent, but it does ring as an interesting take on this topic.
That said I think anyone who wants to compare engineering to the arts needs to do some fact checking. At the three institutions, and I'd be willing to say at almost every institution in the US, I briefly checked if you want a B.F.A. you need to submit a portfolio. So already the high school art student(who probably needs the same types of grades in their field as engineering students) needs to have a portfolio put together before they can even apply to their school. Even better music and dance majors need to give an audition. Unfair as it may be the idea of majoring in Dance is kind of ridiculous to me, however I'm willing to punt on this one and blindly state that dance programs probably run the same distribution of difficulty that engineering/science programs due, and the idea of your average engineering student attempting dance classes definitely evokes hilarious mental images. Other than grades and academic awards do engineers need to have design portfolios or pass auditions? I've never heard of it.
Also just check your favorite college's policy on non-art majors/minors taking an art class? Usually a non-major/minor can't even take a "real" art course, I use "real" here in the same context as we talk about real calculus vs "real" calc(i.e. for business/life science majors).
So I feel pretty confident in saying this is simply a case of "the grass is greener".
Another interesting thought was just motivated by the fact that in engineering, there often is a much more definite answer than in other less "practical" degree programs. Philosophy for instance at once could be considered a pretty willy-nilly degree...however in a philosophy degree program instead of being able to manipulate formulas to get The "answer", you need to convince you professor that your answer is "right". Which is harder?
This whole topic exemplifies my favorite flavor of engineering arrogance when an engineer believes that they can "reason out" how to do someone else's job better than them by the fact that they are clever engineers, some engineers do this regardless of the credentials of the someone else, and thus are justified in telling someone else how to do their job. Whereas if someone else were to criticize the engineer doing his job without considering the engineer's credentials, the engineer takes great offense to this, with very little regard for the someone else's credentials. And all of this is just appealing to the simple of "do unto others...", which is doubly amusing as engineers often tout logic as one of their strengths.
Well that's enough whining from a math geek.
mE