<p>Is it? This is an open forum and numerous opinions regarding how to interpret the data have been voiced in this very thread. Your position runs hazardously close to censorship: that because data can be misinterpreted, it should therefore not be published. How is that not a violation of free speech? </p>
<p>I am of the opinion that more data is always good, and if your concern is that some particular pieces of data can be misinterpreted, then it is your duty to detail how that may happen. But it is entirely inappropriate to advocate censorship, for that is truly the most simplistic of views.</p>
<p>I think that’s what people mean when they discuss attrition: they’re actually discussing net attrition. Lots of people start out in engineering but find the curriculum to be too formidable and decide to switch to some cheesepuff major such as American Studies where they can graduate with little exertion, but practically nobody starts out in American Studies but finds the work too difficult and decides to switch to chemical engineering to indulge their indolence.</p>
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<p>But again, the question remains: why does it have to be that way? Why exactly do engineering programs require a full 4 years to complete when other programs of comparable rigor, such as physics or math, do not? </p>
<p>As a case in point, I would say that certainly at my old undergrad school (which shall remain unnamed but which is one of the most prestigious in the country), you could probably complete a physics major in 2.5 years. Granted, it would be a harsh 2.5 years, but it would clearly be possible. The lower-division physics sequence serves as the gateway to most of the upper-division courses, which have relatively few interdependencies among them. To be sure, there are plenty of elective upper division courses that do depend on other upper-division coursework, but since they’re electives, they aren’t actually required to complete the major. </p>
<p>Yet at the same time, I’m sure that nobody would dispute that physics is a highly rigorous major whose intellectual underpinnings are deeply structured and grounded in logic. Yet if the physics major can nevertheless be completed in 2.5 years, why can’t engineering departments follow a similar pedagogical philosophy? </p>
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<p>And therein lies another problem. Let’s be perfectly honest: putting professional vanity aside, the truth is that most engineering majors are highly similar, at least on the conceptual academic level that undergraduates are taught. Thermodynamics is thermodynamics, fluid mechanics is fluid mechanics, heat transfer is heat transfer, statics is statics, and process control is process control. There is no real reason why each engineering department needs to run its own version of each topic to the exclusion of similar courses run by other engineering departments. For example, a mechanical engineering student who wants to switch to chemical engineering may not be able to switch over the MechE coursework he has already taken on thermodynamics or fluid mechanics, because they’re not the chemical-engineering version of thermo and fluid mech. But why? Like I said, thermo is thermo, fluid mech is fluid mech. Granted, each discipline will emphasize subtopics specific to it, but not by enough of a magnitude to justify forcing students to retake a different version of the course. Such a student might have to spend time learning what a chemical potential is, but frankly, if your knowledge of thermodynamics is strong, particularly if you deeply understand the relationship of energy and entropy (as in Second Law of Thermodynamics), then adding the concept of a chemical potential to your toolkit is trivial. </p>
<p>Generally speaking, I advocate a more flexible and modular form of engineering education in which a strong general core of technical knowledge is provided to all engineers and natural science majors regardless of discipline in the first 1.5-2 years, and then additional discipline-specific knowledge can be bolted on in the remainder of the time. Managed correctly, an engineering program could potentially take 3 years or even less. </p>
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<p>Again, see above. Surely we can all agree that physics is an undeniably rigorous major - more rigorous than probably even many engineering disciplines - yet physics departments don’t implement 4-year lockstepped curricula. You can complete a physics major in 3 years, maybe even 2.5 years. What do physics educators know that engineering educators don’t know? </p>
<p>Secondly, I never once advocated that people should necessarily be, as you say, ‘entitled’ to a 4-year engineering degree or any other sort of professional degree. What I said is that they should expect to get a degree in something. Perhaps that something would be an ‘easy’ degree, but it would still be a degree. While such a person would not be able to claim to be an engineering graduate, he would still be a graduate. He could satisfy the requirements of those employers and those grad schools, of which there are many, who just want to see evidence of a bachelor’s degree and don’t care what type of degree it is.</p>
<p>Lest you find such a notion to be unsound, compare it to what is already happening right now. You admitted yourself that easy majors exist, and multitudes of people graduate from those easy majors. Let’s be perfectly honest - an engineering student who has worked diligently but still hasn’t graduated after 4 years because he switched into the major late has nevertheless almost certainly studied harder and learned more than, say, the typical Recreational Studies or Leisure Studies student who is graduating after 4 years. {To those who might object because they majored in those topics themselves, while indeed some students studied hard in those majors, you must admit that many others did not, and yet they still graduated.} So why not grant that engineering student a degree at the 4-year mark? Granted, it won’t be an engineering degree. You could call it a degree in “Technology Studies”. Perhaps you might not even provide any designation at all; MIT grants some degrees “without specification”. But it would still be a degree. The student could then opt to stay and complete the professional degree (whereupon the interim degree may be withdrawn), or immediately leave with that degree. </p>
<p>Like I said before, I think it is entirely reasonable for students and their parents, if they choose a particular school, to be able to expect to receive a degree from that school after 4 years of honest study. Granted, it may not be the specific degree that you want, but it would still be a degree. </p>
<p>Nor am I advocating that schools simply open the floodgates to anybody who wants them by reducing rigor and granting degrees to untold unworthy students. Like I’ve always said, the key process of any school lies in admissions. If a student isn’t capable enough to meet the level of rigor that a school requires, then don’t admit him. I’ve never understood why schools persistently admit students who perform poorly.</p>
<p>I wonder if the reason that so many engineering students take more than 4 years to graduate is simply because many engineering schools or those with engineering majors require more units to graduate in this major.</p>
<p>For example, both Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Purdue University require about 180 units to graduate in engineering–which, it seems, almost requires one to attend for 5 years or more.</p>
<p>Easy enough. Because the prohibition on suppression of free speech applies only to “state actors,” i.e., to local, state, and federal governments. A private person’s criticism of what someone else says, or a suggestion that it’s inappropriate to say it, is never a “violation of free speech.” It is itself a constitutionally protected speech act—not beyond criticism by other individuals, but in most circumstances beyond the power of the state to suppress.</p>
<p>You miss my point entirely. This is not about “hard” as opposed to “cheesepuff” majors. It’s about the technical requirements needed to get a degree. Lots of people switch out of out ALL majors, “hard” or “soft.” Almost no one switches into engineering, not because it’s inherently “harder” (in fact, for some people it’s probably easier), but because if you start out “undecided” or in some other major, it’s just technically impossible to graduate with an engineering degree in four years, or maybe even five. Too many required courses, too many prerequisites, too many prescribed sequences, etc, such that what’s designed as a 4-year program if all goes right just can’t be compressed into a 2- or 3-year program after transfer.</p>
<p>Look, I’m not an engineer. But my dad is an engineer, two of my brothers are engineers, and my two brothers-in-law are engineers. I know something about engineering. I also went to an undergrad school with an outstanding engineering program (Michigan). I knew lots of engineering students. Some loved it, stayed, and graduated. Some left, but none of my friends left because they found it too “hard.” Some just found it too boring, or found they had other interests that superceded their interest in engineering. No problem with that. Math majors switched to other majors; poli sci majors switched out; psych majors switched out; econ majors switched out; history majors switched out. And by and large, those changes were pretty much a wash, canceling each other out; in what I saw, there was no clear pattern of migration from “harder” to “softer” majors. In fact, I can’t think of a single person I knew as an undergrad who switched majors because their original major proved too hard (and that includes the engineers). They switched because their interests changed. But no one I knew switched into engineering, largely because it was commonly understood that if you didn’t start in engineering as a freshman you had no chance of graduating in four years. Period.</p>
<p>Could that, and should that change? I’ll leave that to the engineers to figure out. But the point is, the “attrition rate” in engineering is more about high entry barriers (required courses, prerequisites, course sequences) than it is about unusually high numbers of people opting out. Every academic field sees a lot of turnover in students between year 1 and graduation. Engineering seems almost unique in its inability to make that normal and expected flux a 2-way street.</p>
<p>I agree…and that is a practice that ought to stop post-haste. </p>
<p>Or, at least, like I said, grant the student an interim degree in ‘Technology Studies’ after the regular time frame. </p>
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<p>And by that same logic, the original post of the data is itself constitutionally protected speech and is beyond the power of anybody to suppress it. </p>
<p>But a larger principle beyond the purely legalistic justification is at stake. This is a free discussion board, and its value is maintained only if people are free to post whatever topic they want and discuss a wide range of opinions, as long as it broadly pertains to the issue of higher education. Who gives tomslawsky or anybody else the right to decide what can be discussed here? When participants believe that making certain pronouncements is somehow inappropriate such that they say nothing at all, the entire community of collegeconfidential loses. The richness of this website is precisely derived from the diversity of viewpoints that is expressed. As Evelyn Beatrice Hall once famously pronounced (and not Voltaire, to whom the saying is usually attributed): “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.</p>
<p>No, I’m quite sure that I’ve understood your point perfect, and it is actually you who is entirely missing my point(s). Trust me, I am fully aware that engineering programs, as presently constructed, are probably impossible to complete if not embarked upon from the very beginning. </p>
<p>But my question is - why do they have to be constructed in that manner? People can switch into the physics major can complete that well within the 4-year time frame, yet I’m not convinced that physics is any less rigorous or underpinned by sequential logic than is engineering. </p>
<p>Heck, if anything, I would argue that the opposite may well be true: that it is physics as a discipline that is inherently bootstrapped from first principles according to precise mathematical foundations, and it is engineering that tends to be more of an ad-hoc buffet of stand-alone equations and rules of thumb that have no fundamental logical justification (often times, because there isn’t one). For example, engineering equations will often times throw in extra factors for ‘yield’ or ‘efficiency’ to account for the imperfect nature of a real-world process or machine as opposed to a theoretical device, but the exact value of that extra factor has no fundamental justification behind it. Nor are they comparable to physical constants such as Planck’s constant or the gravitational constant of which scientific experiments have validated to great precision and seem to hold within the entire known universe. Rather, any set of engineering ‘yield factors’ are specific only to a given real-world engineering process. {I’ve always found it to be highly ironic that engineering courses will force students to perform highly exacting and rigorous calculations, and then at the very end will then just throw in a bunch of arbitrary yield factors to attempt to account for ‘real world’ results. Why did we even bother to precisely calculate those results at all if we’re just going to fudge them at the end anyway?}</p>
<p>But in any case, the question stands: why are people able to switch to physics and still graduate in 4 years, but not engineering? What does the physics department know that the engineering departments do not know? </p>
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<p>Then you’re extremely lucky, for I happen to know a lot. I First principles would dictate that there would be many. For example, at my school, perhaps around 1/3 of the students flunked (that is, earned less than the requisite C-minus necessary to continue to other coursework) the introductory gateway (weeder) engineering course and hence were forced to leave the major. Now, granted, some of those who flunked probably would have left the major anyway because they didn’t like it. But some of them did still like it. Heck, I happen to know some people who did and who wanted to stay in the major, but they couldn’t. They flunked, and so the rule of the department dictated that they were out of the major. </p>
<p>Nor am I the only one saying so. Numerous engineering educators have denoted the problems of retention that have plagued engineering programs for decades through weeder programs that seem deliberately aimed at eliminating a certain percentage of students. Many students therefore leave not because they’re not interested in the material, but because they were weeded out. </p>
<p>* Dr. David Hayhurst, the dean of the engineering college at San Diego State University, says faculty members began using entry- level calculus, physics and chemistry classes as “weed-out” courses as early as 40 years ago. He contends that student retention was not a high priority for many schools at the time.</p>
<p>Hayhurst recalls his own days as an engineering student in the 1960s, saying the boot camp approach drove scores of students out of the program… Dr. Gary May, the chair of the electrical and computer engineering school at his alma mater, the Georgia Institute of Technology, says the boot camp environment was also predominant there when he was an undergraduate.</p>
<p>“When I was an undergraduate here in the early 1980s, it was more of a boot camp, sink-or-swim mentality. The thinking was, you do this the same way the military does it. You bring a bunch of people in and you put them through some difficult times and the ones that come out the other side are ready,” says May. *</p>
<p>Heck, I’ll give you the anecdote of my friend who is a star software developer (which I consider to be a form of engineering). He never majored in CS or any other type of engineering - rather, he majored in English. But he learned computer programming on the side, first as a hobby, then as a way to earn extra money during the school year through part-time jobs, then as a foundation for his full-time career. Now he’s a highly paid senior developer at a leading firm. He says he’s glad he never tried to major in CS at our old school because he suspects he would not have been able to survive the weeders. Computer Science as an academic discipline is really a subdiscipline of mathematics combined with logic, and he freely admits that his math and pure logic skills are not that strong. For example, he freely admits that he doesn’t really understand recursion, and he certainly doesn’t understand digital logic or complexity/computability theory - you don’t really need to know that stuff to be a successful software developer. Similarly, I can tell you that you don’t really need to know the Maxwell Relations to be a perfectly capable chemical engineer - nobody actually uses them in the real world. {Heck, most real-world chemical engineers don’t even understand what the M.R.'s even mean in any real-world practical sense.}</p>
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<p>And like I said, if that is indeed the problem, then one way to solve it is to offer those students an interim degree in ‘Technology Studies’ after 4 years. Like I said, it wouldn’t be a fully fledged engineering degree. But it would still be a degree. </p>
<p>Such a degree would be no worse than earning a degree in “Recreational Studies”, of which I know plenty of students earned who, frankly, barely lifted a finger during college and who seemed to actually be ‘majoring’ in drinking, partying, and dating. If those people can earn a degree after 4 years of minimal effort, I see no reason why the engineers who can’t finish their programs in the proper time frame can’t nevertheless be provided with some sort of interim degree after 4 years.</p>
<p>Haverford’s 4 and 6 year grad rates are the same
Wesleyan’s FR and 6Y grad rates are the same</p>
<p>The two school 6Y grad rates are almost the same, yet how they get there is very different. Wesleyan loses its 10% in year one - while Haverford loses its 10% in years 2-4.</p>
<p>While the two LAC’s above add little or no grads in years 5 and 6, all three ivies bump their grad rates in those two years by another 10%. Particularly interesting is that Harvard has a higher 6Y grad rate than FR rate.</p>
<p>Is it? This is an open forum and numerous opinions regarding how to interpret the data have been voiced in this very thread. Your position runs hazardously close to censorship: that because data can be misinterpreted, it should therefore not be published. How is that not a violation of free speech? "</p>
<p>wow, Sakky, while you were patting yourself on the back about your Very Rigorous and Hardest Engineering major, you clearly weren’t listening in those “easy” history classes. Clue: the right of free speech applies to government suppressing it, not the opinions of private individuals.</p>
<p>Wow, pizzagirl, while you were patting yourself on the back about your supposed knowledge of our constitutional perquisites, you clearly didn’t bother to read what I actually wrote.</p>
<p>Clue: what I am talking about is the general principle underlying a discussion board. Now, obviously, one can choose, as a matter of private enterprise, to censor a discussion board, but that would only serve to devalue it as a forum. Why even have a discussion board at all if people are not allowed to voice their opinions freely? </p>
<p>You can also look at it another way. Even if we can accept the notion that a discussion board should be censored, who’s to say that any one of us should be the one performing the censoring? What gives tomslawsky or anybody else here the right to tell others what they can and cannot post here? Last time I checked, he did not own collegeconfidential. None of us do. We are all equal participants here.</p>
<p>What an overall snotty attitude in general. Ooooh, ooh, I’m a big strong engineer, and so very much more important and so very much smarter than non-engineers. And then engineers wonder why they have the stereotypical reputation of nerds who are incapable of having social lives, lol.</p>
<p>Here’s a thought. Maybe all fields of study are important, but just different? And only an insecure person needs to pat himself on the back that he studied The Very Hardest?</p>
<p>"Is it? This is an open forum and numerous opinions regarding how to interpret the data have been voiced in this very thread. Your position runs hazardously close to censorship: that because data can be misinterpreted, it should therefore not be published. How is that not a violation of free speech? </p>
<p>I am of the opinion that more data is always good, and if your concern is that some particular pieces of data can be misinterpreted, then it is your duty to detail how that may happen. But it is entirely inappropriate to advocate censorship, for that is truly the most simplistic of views"</p>
<p>Sakky, first, you can’t apply the same rules to government and private entities, we play by different rules.</p>
<p>Second, I never said the data shouldn’t be presented. My point is that pesenting it in a vacuum is just wrong. I’m guessing that you haven’t been reading my posts all along- you know the ones where I justify my stance by saying that the data would be helpful if it were “adjusted”, normalized or tweaked to normalize for factors that naturally increase graduation rates. Or are you just being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative?</p>
<p>^^ @tomslawsky,
I don’t put much stock in this stuff myself, but according to your own sources post #92) philosophers are “smarter” than engineers, whether measured by IQ or by GRE, GMAT, and LSAT scores.</p>
<p>What an overall naive attitude in general. Ooooh, ooh, no majors are ever harder than others; all of the majors are exactly the same in terms of difficulty. And then people wonder why people who insist on denying reality ought not to be trusted with important decisions. </p>
<p>Besides, I don’t take any pride in the difficulty of engineering - indeed, I have advocated numerous times that engineering ought to be easier. Like I said, I suspect there are numerous aspects of engineering education that are extremely difficult that, frankly, the students don’t really need to know. </p>
<p>But that said, the truth remains that there are some majors that are harder than others, and there are indeed cheesepuff majors where you can pass while doing very little work at all. Denying that truth helps nobody. I suspect even more American Studies majors would concede that their major isn’t that hard if all you want to do is simply pass. It may be hard to get A’s, but simply passing is not particularly difficult. </p>
<p>Are you going to seriously argue that American Studies really is as difficult as engineering? </p>
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<p>This is has nothing to do with the inherent importance of the various majors. I have nothing against American Studies or Rec Studies as a particular course of study. What I do have a problem with is the fact that it has become a dumping ground for unmotivated students who are, frankly, not really interested in studying at all. </p>
<p>But the larger point is a matter of equity. What’s fair is fair. If the American Studies students should be able to obtain a degree after 4 years of study, then the engineering student should as well. Note, it may not necessarily be an engineering degree. But at least it will be a degree.</p>
<p>Then by those ‘different rules’, hawkette could just as easily argue that you should not be allowed to post. Your demands for censorship of others is no different for others’ demands for censorship of you. </p>
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<p>It’s not the poster’s job to normalize or adjust the data in a manner that you would prefer. He can do that, but he doesn’t have to. The data is just the data, and no rule exists to ‘prohibit’ the publication of raw data. If you want the data to be adjusted, then you should be the one to provide that adjustment. </p>
<p>The central governing tenet of any discussion board is that nobody can tell anybody else what they can or cannot post. If somebody wants to post raw data, they are perfectly within their rights to do so, and nobody should claim otherwise. Or perhaps you haven’t been reading my posts all along - or are you just being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative?</p>
<p>Look, tomslawsky, you just have to accept - as a member of a free society - that some people are going to state things of which you may not agree. You may not like hawkette’s raw data, and even if she adjusted it, you may not like her adjustments. But that’s not her job. You’re not her father and you’re not the owner of this discussion board - so you can’t tell her what she can and cannot post or how.</p>
<p>“I don’t put much stock in this stuff myself, but according to your own sources post #92) philosophers are “smarter” than engineers, whether measured by IQ or by GRE, GMAT, and LSAT scores”</p>
<p>I specfied “in terms of IQ” in my statement. I made no claims that IQ captures all of what makes someone smart. Sonce these exams are all thinly vailed IQ exams, what I said is still true. If you don’t put stock in IQ scores eing an indicator of brains, then test scores wouldn’t mean much to you either.</p>
<p>Many engineering majors are very heavy on the math side and relatively lower in the verbal abiliy, so in the balance, they may be higher in one aptitude and not the highest overall.</p>
<p>It is like the college rankings, the difference between #5 and 8 isn’t signifigant, but the difference between the second ranked and the penultimate ranked is VERY signifigant (again, only in the aggregate).</p>
<p>“Then by those ‘different rules’, hawkette could just as easily argue that you should not be allowed to post. Your demands for censorship of others is no different for others’ demands for censorship of you”</p>
<p>this is exactly what you are doing to me, Sakky. You don’t see this?</p>
<p>Sakky,
I didn’t say the data shouldn’t have been presented. I am calling Hawkette out on presenting it in a vacuum. You should accept that calling someone out on something that you feel needs an added perspective is just as much a part of a free and open society and just as much my right as is the poster’s right to post the data. Period.</p>
<p>And this is exactly what you were doing to others. You don’t see this? </p>
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<p>Again, it’s not hawkette’s job to present the data in the manner that you prefer. If you want the data modified in a certain way, then you can do the modification. </p>
<p>You should accept that demanding that somebody post data in a manner to your liking is clearly not conducive to a free and open society. I certainly agree that you have the right to say anything you want, but on the other hand, hawkette is perfectly within her rights to ignore you. Period.</p>
<p>Geeze- you eally aren’t readding my posts. I never DEMANDED anything. I called her out on presenting non adjusted data. </p>
<p>The references to first “censorship”, and now “demanding” are Sakky fabrications-generated so you could just argue. Actually, the only person suggesting censorship here is you, of me.</p>