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.
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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.