Things change and it may no longer be accurate, as the person giving the perspective formed his opinion some time ago. We have a family member who did his engineering PhD at Stanford. He was in academia for many years, eventually a department head before starting a company in the private sector. In essence he said exactly that to our son. He said if you want to do research, Stanford would be a fine place to start, but if you want to be a practicing engineer you’d be better served by attending a school known for teaching applied engineering. Then he named Iowa State as an example. One anecdote, that might be dated. No daggers please. 
The full study is at Page not found . Skimming through I didn’t see anything about “hands on” program vs theoretical. Instead it mentions other problems with the learning environment, such as issues with self-efficacy beliefs (individuals believing that engineering is too dependent on luck or innate aptitude) and unwelcoming environments to women and minorities.
However, the previously linked summary of 50 studies does list more hands-on as one of the 21 potential avenues for improve attrition. The order appears to be based on importance, suggesting hands-on is the least important suggested curricular changes. However, the related area of having a collaborative/cooperative environment instead of competitive does appear to be ranked as much more important They emphasize group projects as a way to achieve this more collaborative/cooperative environment. Stanford, MIT, and likely others make a strong effort to emphasize this type of collaborative/cooperative environment in their engineering classes. For example, professors usually encourage students to do problem sets in groups.
This fits with my general opinion. While I agree that hands-on vs theoretical can improve attrition for some students, if I was making a list of primary reasons for engineering attrition, lack of hands-learning styles would not be among my top 10. The are many factors that have a much greater contribution.
I think we’re talking about two different things.
I wasn’t suggesting that it was a primary cure for attrition. There are lots of factors driving that, the foremost is that it’s very hard and too many students are underprepared for the rigor. I’m saying that the rationale for the increase in earlier practical projects at many institutions (not necessarily at the exclusion of any theory) is to show the relevance of theory and to keep students engaged, before they drop from boredom.
Those things aren’t outlined in the 2009 publication above. It’s a “define the problem” document that seeks to solicit answers.
The solutions, and there are many, are in the 2012 document. The specifics of Curriculum and Class Enhancements are on page 12. It doesn’t talk about hands on per se, but rather “Moving design and systems courses and practical engineering laboratories earlier in the curriculum” and “Projects integrated into classes.” That’s in addition to Student Academic Enrichment Programs on p. 10 and Student Research/Work Experience on p. 11, many subsections of each could fall into the “hands on” basket.
It is for sure, but there are other things involved like the graduate programs and the business school. Google, Cisco were founded at Stanford when they were in grad school, Sun by grad and b-school students.
"capture their imagination and fascination, and has failed to provide a welcoming atmosphere to them.”
Seems like out of touch academic statement, engineering can have a lot of drudgery, not be that motivating at times nor a welcoming atmosphere. If you can’t handle boring lectures, then how are you going to handle meetings (considered boring by most engineers), documentation (considered grunt work), and the competitive nature at some companies? There are many things to change in engineering education sure, but at least the academics know they still have to keep it hard, “engineering should not be an easy major” was in the report.
Because Stanford Engineering was not mentioned in the 2012 NAE report doesn’t mean that it does not an innovative program. Having a robust graduate program and being in SV I think helps the engineering school stay on its toes
When you talk about hands-on vs traditional research-oriented, do you mean hands-on vs theory? Because there was an IEEE paper published in 2012 Five Major Shifts in 100 Years of Engineering Education | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore that says engineering curricula moved away from hands-on to engineering science in the pre-WWII to the Sputnik era. Stanford is actually mentioned as leading this change. However, I think schools have different ways of trying to teach the theory and incorporate hands-on experiences, some of which were outlined in the NAE report.
It’s not an either/or proposition. I think the sweet spot is deep theory while having some experience in knowing how to apply it before landing the first job. There might be programs that severely compromise theory because their student body they attract can’t handle the rigor. I’m not aware of any though with the advent of tech programs.
I agree too that omission of any program is not an indictment. There are lots of good programs not mentioned.
I think Stanford hits the the right balance of deep dive theory and hands-on. Collaborative working on psets and projects is normal in most CS classes. And most projects (and their associated poster sessions) are very real-world. Interestingly many start-ups begin as a few students working on a project, presenting it at a poster session where a VC sees the content and starts a conversation with students.
Being in SV is definitely a plus. SV still attracts the vast majority of VC funding in the US (I believe the 2020 numbers are $84B in California, with the next largest being NY at about $18B). With that amount of money circulating for investing, having both the theory and the know-how is a winning combination.
Seems like schools which have a secondary admission to major process that is highly competitive (e.g. Texas A&M) are going in the wrong direction here. Not only can such a competitive environment be undesirable to some students, but it can also block some students from being able to major in a desired engineering major at all.
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