Difficulty of Engineering and American Innovation

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>See article in NYTimes and blog post below- is it a stretch to say that as a force which acts to discourage students from pursuing engineering and science majors, the difficulty of said majors is actually hurting American innovation, entrepreneurship and global competitiveness?</p>

<p>Let me put it in another way:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Does the difficultly of engineering serve to increase or decrease the number of engineers?</p></li>
<li><p>If decrease (as I strongly suspect), might these lost engineers represent a loss of national utility meaning that they'd contribute more to GDP had they majored in engineering?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>On the contrary, I will also ask: </p>

<ol>
<li>Are the potential losses which I ask about in question 2 made up for by potential gains which somehow accrue (possibly through better trained engineers) from the difficulty of the major?</li>
</ol>

<p>If my suspicions that the difficulty of engineering and the subsequent losses of engineer and science majors does in fact harm the U.S. through decreased innovation, should universities act to change these factors?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?_r=1&hp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?_r=1&hp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.” Freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students. And then many wash out.</p>

<p>Studies have found that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree. That increases to as much as 60 percent when pre-medical students, who typically have the strongest SAT scores and high school science preparation, are included, according to new data from the University of California at Los Angeles. That is twice the combined attrition rate of all other majors.</p>

<p>Could it be that too many people like being the smartest one in the room? Or is it some other explanation?:</p>

<p>“But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”</p>

<p>Here is the story, here is Alex’s earlier post. Science itself is even harder.</p>

2

<p>My feeling on it is this: anybody who can’t hack their chosen engineering program, who would quit rather than taking whatever steps were necessary (including transferring to a much less prestigious institution), are not the kind of people who would have done a lot of innovating, anyway. School is hard, sure; but doing something novel that people care about is almost impossible. At the undergraduate level, at all institutions I’m aware of, you can get by if all you can do is to follow instructions and show up at the appropriate times, having taken adequate steps to prepare yourself. Maybe some of the more prestigious places require an undergraduate research project and thesis… but if that’s the only stumbling block, nobody’s making you go there.</p>

<p>STEM majors are hard because the work is hard. At least the Academy is being genuine about that. If your question is whether I want to see universities succumb to more pressure from Industry… my answer is an emphatic “NO”.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>It serves to increase the number of good engineers and weed out potential incompetent engineers. </p></li>
<li><p>See #1. The answer is no.</p></li>
</ol>

4

<p>

</p>

<p>How does it increase the number of good engineers?</p>

<p>The concern is does it also weed out potential competent engineers? Is it unnecessarily difficult? There are some things you learn in undergrad that you don’t need to know to practice in your field of engineering. I’m not convinced either way that the weeding out process does or doesn’t hurt us in the grand scheme of things.</p>

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<p>Even if we concede that truly innovative engineers are not lost, and only non all-star engineers are lost, do you think the potentially lost non-all-star engineers would better serve society as engineers or in other fields?</p>

<p>And if you look at the article, it’s not like we’re talking bout dumb kids. One of the students at Notre Dame who left engineering had an 800 on math SAT, in 700s on english, and had taken multiple AP’s including BC calc. Obviously that’s only n=1, but I’m sure that at least a few other lost engineers are of his calibre. </p>

<p>I’ll also concede that engineers lost to finance probably represents a bigger loss of talent.</p>

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<p>Is that you, Sakky???</p>

<p>I think the bigger problem is the assumption that only people who have passed an engineering curriculum can “innovate” or contribute anything worthwhile to the world. If somebody has something truly worthwhile/innovative to contribute to the world and they are passionate about it, they are going to do so with or without an engineering degree. If they cannot hack an engineering undergrad program, they will go somewhere else and figure out another way/</p>

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<p>It’s a really interesting article and I’m mulling it over in my head. </p>

<p>I went to MIT and found it really hard freshman and sophomore year. I did some undergraduate research projects sophomore year, but I really didn’t “get it”. </p>

<p>After sophomore year I got a summer coop at a real company and had an epiphany. After that I sucked it all in, theory, practice, and couldn’t get enough. </p>

<p>I can’t put my finger on what it was, but when I worked in the company, I saw other people who didn’t seem any smarter than me being engineers, and being successful, and I guess I just got some confidence. People seemed to have an operational fluency with concepts that I struggled with in school. The job was much easier than school, and concepts I had trouble with in school, were clear as day when I needed to use them on the job. </p>

<p>I can’t say why it was that I struggled initially, but I don’t think I really understood what engineering was, and what the point of all these classes were until I saw that they were actually good for something. </p>

<p>Later on in graduate school, a famous professor gave a seminar for TAs on teaching. He taught us that basically, engineering is the art of taking complex problems and breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces until you get to something you should have seen on a problem set. The problem sets, the theory if you will, are really critical to the engineering education, and I question whether the graduates of WPI get enough of it to be able to do that well. </p>

<p>On the other hand, nobody told me that until graduate school. Maybe if somebody would have told me that as a freshman, I would have known what I was looking for when trying to learn all of this stuff that I just had to take on faith was good for something. But perhaps people told me that, and I didn’t know how to understand what they were saying. I heard the words, but they didn’t mean much. </p>

<p>I think it’s a chicken and egg problem. If you do projects that don’t require you to use “theory”, then you don’t see the value in it anyway. If you try to get younger engineers to do harder problems that require that the theory be used, they can’t do it because they don’t know the theory yet. </p>

<p>So, I don’t know the answer, but I understand the issues. </p>

<p>My kids have taken AP Physics B using the Giancoli book. I really like the course and the book because they work on mathematical problem solving, but also try to take the magic out of many things kids would have experience with. I think it’s a great course for future engineers. I think it teaches a lot, but also leaves them understanding that their math is inadequate for many problems and motivates the learning of higher math. I know I didn’t appreciate just how much of engineering was mathematical tools. </p>

<p>I don’t really have an answer. Some people would be better off in the long run with the WPI approach, and some people would be better off in the long run with the more brutal approach of the top schools. Those successful at the top schools will probably have learned more, but those who got weeded out probably would have been better off with “kinder and gentler” WPI. </p>

<p>When there is a mismatch, we have lost a potential engineer by either over or under challenging them. There are opportunities for engineers at a wide range of degrees of difficulty of what they work on. I work on very difficult stuff, but there are a lot of people that work on things that just aren’t that hard, but still need people to do it. We need to produce more of both. </p>

<p>I don’t know if that answers your question.</p>

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<p>

That depends on whether or not the difficulty of the program is correlated to the quality of the engineer. That seems to be the consensus in industry, which perennially rewards graduates of the toughest programs with the highest salaries, but that could be in error.</p>

<p>Assuming that they are correct, however, means that making programs easier would produce mostly (or only) inferior engineers who would likely qualify only for lesser-paying positions. This would deflate the average engineering wage and likely depress engineering admissions, although I think it would still result in a net increase of engineering graduates. So I would say that the answer to your question is that the difficulty of engineering programs decreases the number of engineers.</p>

<p>

First of all, “national utility” is a nebulous term, and contribution to GDP is a poor measure - there are plenty of professions that contribute more to society than their paycheck suggests, and plenty more that are the reverse.</p>

<p>Second, we cannot be sure because without a study that analyzes career paths of those who transfer out of engineering, we cannot be sure what level of success they are finding in their other professions. As you noted, these are often smart people who should presumably be able to find success somewhere. If they were doing so poorly in engineering they likely would have qualified (assuming they graduated) only for poor-paying positions anyway, and if they find success in their other field they may see better job prospects as a 3.3 GPA English major than they would have found as a 2.3 GPA industrial engineer. </p>

<p>

I am not sure that there are any losses, but I would say that rigorously trained engineers generally seem (in my experience) more productive in the work place. There is nothing so frustrating as seeing someone spend weeks on a project only to find out during a presentation that they missed a point of basic physics in their design or analysis.</p>

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<p>Interesting take on the subject ClassicRockerDad. I, too, went to MIT and struggled my first two years. I attributed a lot of my struggles to poor study skills as I rarely needed to study much in high school but MIT was quite a different story. However, the first year and a half or so is taking a lot of basic skill classes; calculus, differential equations, basic chemistry, etc.; and hardly any “real” engineering. Tougher to buckle down and study the basics, much more interesting when you have a more realistic problem to solve. </p>

<p>Second half of sophomore year I got involved in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and started to get those “real” problems to solve. School became fun again and my grades went up, as well as my ability to study since it was now fun.</p>

<p>My daughter was wondering which schools to apply to. We did the tour of MIT. We also toured WPI while we were in the area (we live in SoCal but visit MA once in a while as we have family in the area). She decided not to apply to MIT but applied to WPI (as well as several west coast schools). </p>

<p>She ended up going to WPI. They encourage freshman to take one of their “seminar” classes that try to give simple “real world” problems that they can solve. I like WPI’s approach. After all, engineering is really just taking a physical system and understanding how it works to the point you can make a mathematical model of the system. You test that math model to see if it matches the known behaviour of the system, then using that math model to predict behavious under other conditions. As you stated, the sooner you learn to break the problem down into those understandable and managable bits, the quicker you understand engineering. Those seminars at WPI seemed like a good start at that. </p>

<p>I believe that engineering schools would better serve their students with seminar type classes in engineering earlier rather than later and the same with UROP type programs earlier.</p>

<p>As an aside: How many of your classmates thought about going into engineering and opted not to at MIT? My experience was very few. A lot were GPA challenged as l was at first, but most stuck it out and did fine as upperclassmen. Be interesting to see MIT’s statistics on that. I believe that they still do a straw poll of the incoming freshman as to their intended majors, having to typically only designate a major your sophomore year.</p>

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<p>I think it’s a good idea to provide more support for incoming engineering students. I imagine that there are some simple things schools can do, like providing courses that teach study skills or hiring more tutors and TAs. I also think it’s a good idea that engineering programs review and update their curriculum every once in a while. I noticed recently that my school’s computer science program had removed many of the physics and EE courses that were previously required, replacing them with a few software engineering type courses. As much as it pains me to admit it, I think it was the right move. The vast majority of my former computer science classmates work in fields that require little or no knowledge of EE or physics. The change also further differentiates the CE and CS programs whereas before, the two programs were much more similar.</p>

<p>However, I don’t 'really think the solution is to make engineering programs “easier”. Part of the problem is the rampant grade inflation at the high school level. When I was an undergrad, I knew several students who were really struggling at the college level, despite having earned high school GPA’s well above 4.0 and coming from high schools with good reputations. The solution isn’t to inflate college GPAs further – grade inflation at the college level is bad enough already. The truth is that earning a B in most college classes today – even at top ranked schools – isn’t so difficult. If a student’s GPA is hovering below 2.5 despite his or her best efforts, I think it is a good idea for that student to think about switching to another major.</p>

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<p>I think a more important question is whether or not engineering firms are willing to hire innovators who don’t have traditional engineering backgrounds. I remember an article I read shortly after Steve Jobs died asking whether a young Steve Jobs could get a hired at Apple today. Would he even get an interview? A call back?</p>

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<p>Steve Jobs might not have even gotten an interview at Apple today, but Peter Thiel might have given him money to quit college and start the next Apple.</p>

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</p>

<p>Yes, but he said that he tried to do the work in physics by memorizing equations. Seems that it may be more optimal to try to understand the concepts and theory so that the equations just naturally pop out of them, instead of being just formulas to memorize for the test.</p>

<p>Regarding difficulty of engineering degree programs in general, remember that there is a minimum standard to meet ABET accreditation, and that in certain fields like civil engineering, an ABET accredited degree is necessary or very helpful to get licensed as a Professional Engineer.</p>

<p>Regarding the high attrition rate among pre-meds, remember that getting grades below A- pretty much doom a pre-med’s chance of getting into any US medical school. So does a low score on the MCAT. That is more a function of US medical school admission standards, unless you are suggesting that pre-med courses have more grade inflation than there already is in general (of course, more grade inflation would induce medical schools to raise the cut-off GPAs more, etc.).</p>

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<p>I think the article skirts the issues. Honestly, I see there being bigger issues in the way high school operates than how our engineering curricula are structured.</p>

<p>These days, high schools seem to foster so much competition among “top students” and put so much emphasis on getting a high GPA and a great ACT/SAT so that you can get into that great school you always wanted, then many kids stress themselves out trying to do it only to get to college and find out that they are just in the middle of the pack. Meanwhile, throughout school they are bombarded by the notion that anything less than an A is simply not acceptable. They get to college and take a difficult major like the hard sciences or engineering and find out that there is so much more to know and that they aren’t even close to being prepared for it. Soon the B’s and C’s roll in and it is like their world is crashing down. No one ever tells them that you really only need a 3.0 to get a decent engineering job most of the time. I think I would have been discouraged too had I fallen into that trap.</p>

<p>Additionally, I think the model for high schools here is just plain bad as well. If a student has some idea that they want to go into a STEM field, they should be given the opportunity to forego one of those English literature classes in favor of maybe taking calculus earlier or physics earlier. Most of the time our high schools do such a terrible job of preparing students for a university mathematics or science class that it is no surprise that students start to fail and get disheartened. Personally, I feel like high schools should give students more opportunities to direct their high school educations in the last year or two towards their eventual college major. Get all the standard stuff out of the way early like usual, but then in the last year or two allow for more options for students to take extra literature- or science- or business-oriented classes as they apply to each student’s respective interests. I especially don’t think that every person in the US needs to take 13 years of English class. If by the time they are 16 they still don’t know what a subject and a predicate are and don’t know the difference between your and you’re, they probably never will anyway even if you force them to take 2 more years of it. That is at least two full-year classes that could be used preparing for college or the work force instead of learning something you either already know/will never really know and likely never will need to know.</p>

<p>Finally, many high school students have their hands held throughout their high school careers and don’t have nearly enough experience going out and learning things on their own. There are very few people, myself included, that started college with any kind of ability to go out and learn independently in a highly technical subject area. That is perhaps the biggest difference between classes in high school and college. In High School, your teacher basically holds your hand and directs you through the curriculum. In college, the professor presents the topics you need to know and learn, but any holes that you have left in your knowledge that you didn’t quite grasp from lecture are left to the student to fill (whether through office hours or reading the literature or any other number of methods). That is a daunting task for many new college students. I know that was a real adjustment for me. Adjustments to high school curricula to give at least some small taste of independent learning like that would probably go a long way toward helping students start off more prepared.</p>

<p>Engineering curricula are not perfect either, of course, but I don’t think they are too hard. On the contrary, I think many are right on and some are even too watered-down, particularly in terms of mathematics. I know I graduated from a good engineering school with a BS only to later find out just how terrible my math skills still were once I got to graduate school. Yes, you won’t often have to solve differential equations from scratch in the workforce as a BS-level engineer, but knowing that background math and the governing equations and where they come from can lead to an extraordinary degree of intuition that many engineers in my experience just don’t possess. Instead, as mentioned earlier, many engineers these days seem to just try and memorize equations and their applications rather than understanding where they come from and what they mean. That would certainly contribute to the trend of young STEM students losing sight of why they got into the major in the first place and rote memorization doesn’t lend itself to well to developing that intuition based on fundamentals either.</p>

<p>That leads me to my thoughts on what is wrong with engineering curricula. It seems to be twofold. First, many of them don’t engage students early or often enough to help keep their eyes on the end goal. By this I mean that while many (if not all) programs now have some sort of introductory engineering class your first semester that offers a preview of what is to come, they come too soon to really engage students on how the things they have learned can actually be applied. As it turns out, students have that class, then go through the grinder of all the tough classes before they hit the more interesting and applied things towards the end. What should happen, in my opinion, is that there probably ought to be a second, similar course taught during sophomore year for like 1 credit hour or something that takes what students have learned in the first few classes, such as calculus, physics and solid mechanics, and presents them with some real-world examples and projects of why they matter as part of the curriculum and eventually being a practicing engineer. Later classes would (and typically do) take care of this within the classes themselves, which is one reason why the attrition occurs almost entirely in the first two years. Keeping the students’ eyes on the big picture could help keep them from getting lost in the details of the seemingly overly-theoretical and abstract early classes. That would be a start.</p>

<p>The second thing is that many of the classes I took failed to really explain why it is that you have to learn the fundamentals and do the derivations of equations, while others just breezed through the fundamental equations and their derivations from first principles and went straight to the more applied and useful empirical equations (such as in convective heat transfer). I think that many engineering classes, especially the earlier foundational ones, ought to spend at least some time devoted to where the equations come from while making sure to be clear about why it is important to know even though practicing engineers will never have to derive the equations.</p>

<p>TL;DR?
Engineering curricula are not too difficult, and some are even probably too easy or applied than they ought to be. Instead, they just need to engage students and present the bigger picture earlier and more often than they do now. The bigger issue as far as I am concerned is in the high school preparation for college; a problem that exists for more than just STEM fields.</p>

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<p>Since high school math courses are sequenced, being able to skip a course in some other subject would not allow reaching calculus earlier, unless the school allowed taking algebra 2 and geometry concurrently the year after algebra 1 (normally 10th grade, but probably 9th for many “good at math” students, and 8th grade for the few “great at math” students). Otherwise, reaching calculus earlier would require compressing what is normally four years of high school math into three years.</p>

<p>Regarding English literature, it is common in both high school and college for English writing and communication instruction to be linked with reading about English literature, even though most writing by most people will be on other subjects. Literature may well be desirable for breadth purposes, but linking writing and communication instruction to it may cause students less interested in literature to zone out on the more fundamental writing and communication instruction.</p>

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<p>Yes, and that is exactly why the memorization of equations that the student in the article attempted to do is the wrong way to go about learning science and engineering. Knowing where an equation comes from puts one in a better position to know when and how to apply it, especially in a situation that does not look exactly like the example in the textbook.</p>

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<p><<how does="" it="" increase="" the="" number="" of="" good="" engineers?="">></how></p>

<p>Harder classes usually require more outside-the-box and complex thinking and problem solving. Teaching students how to do those will increase the number of good engineers while weeding out the inferior and incompetent ones who can’t do it.</p>

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<p>What do you guys think of engineering classes at community colleges? I bet it’s way easier to get As or Bs in classes such as Calculus I, II, III and Physics I.</p>

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<p>Given that I haven’t ever taken classes at a community college, I don’t think I can really have an opinion on that, nor can anyone else who didn’t take the same class at both places.</p>

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<p>Lots of students go to community college and then transfer to the good state universities to complete engineering degrees.</p>

<p>However, note that community colleges tend to have lower grading curves or less grade inflation than selective four year universities. And the other students in the engineering prerequisite math and physics courses may be smarter than you think, since those courses are only of interest to those intending to transfer to a four year school in an engineering, physics, or math major.</p>