You need to open you eyes a little more. Either that or you are only exposed to engineers from very low ranked programs.
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Or you are seeing only what you want to see.
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Stereotype much?
I know a lot of people in science careers and doing well in them. They’re as much a mix of humanity personality-wise as any other field. Doctors too.
And yes, engineers need labs. They usually love labs.
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Oh, low and middling. That’s a heckuva lot of BS engineers, btw. There’s no reason to bristle about it. I mean it’s not a good thing that this is the case, but…well, you’d need to take it up with the programs, and in the end they’d be talking about enrollments and retention.
I’m sure they do. But taking a lab and writing any lab reports, let alone competent lab reports – these are not one and the same.
You’d probably be surprised how many reports H (a Civil Engineer) has to write on his job. They may not be what he had to do back in Chem Lab, but how many of us out there have to do Chem Lab reports on our jobs today?
I would not be at all surprised. Unfortunately, a whole lotta students are woefully unprepared. This is academic territory I know pretty well. I’ll add: when you see a program or school advertising robust training in communication: scratch that surface and ask for syllabi.
Name the programs that u see as lacking. I’ll name several that are stellar. Lab reports? How about published research papers.
Actually, I think you’re just having a little fun, because your statements are very out of touch.
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I wish they were out of touch, Rivet. I sit in too, too many meetings about these problems, and see them spinning around, doing nothing, nothing, nothing, year after year.
Enrollments, credit hours, retention, D/W/F, finding and paying report graders, oh, the litany. I am happy to believe there are programs that do better. If you find one that’s really good at it, though, hold on tight.
You sit where you sit and I can’t help but think that you are exposed only to a lower ranked university. Top engineering schools have students that shine in just about everything they touch.
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Oh, on the contrary. It’s not a good thing. Not for students, not for employers, not for anyone. I’ve sunk too much time into trying to change it to put in much more, but I am painfully aware of the contours of the problem.
I prefer to look at people doing the jobs. Those aren’t always the best ones at school TBH. H graduated with a 2.0 from college, but he’s a super highly regarded engineer. His problem in college was he liked ECs too much, not that he wasn’t smart.
Those who aren’t good at their jobs usually don’t progress far in them. They may know a lot in theory, but it’s putting theory into practice that matters when one is getting a paycheck from it.
I’ve seen plenty of new teachers come and go over my 20 years at school too - and a fair number who student teach only to discover they should have chosen a different field.
If you’re seeing so many apparent failures (to your standards), perhaps you should look in the real world to see what folks are doing. There will still be some on the lower end of the bell curve, but many at the upper end too.
And it doesn’t change what I pointed out that you are stereotyping way too much. There’s a lot of personality variances in STEM - just like in society.
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That would be most universities, Rivet.
There’s a persistent top-school/program bias on CC, of course, but it’s important to remember that most of the students in the country are not being trained in such places, and they’re going to be most of the workforce. Engineering and all. Keep in mind, btw, that this thread is not really about whether your program taught you to write a good report or not, and that the conversation about mass shifts from non-STEM to STEM disciplines isn’t really about that, either.
Which is why stereotyping all engineers is so curious. Perhaps you should work on your analysis 
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And this thread is about whether one’s undergrad school was sufficient for them to feel satisfied with their career.
When students are looking at various schools I tell them to ask where recent grads in their program/field have gone post college. If they’re seeing students go where they’d like to be, then that school should work for them too assuming they put in the work necessary to reach that point. If not, it’s a caution flag. Look deeper and/or look elsewhere.
You seem to feel every student should reach your bar for certain fields. Not everyone needs to reach that bar for every field. Some on here talk about math deficiencies. Should I set the bar high because I was a Physics major/Math minor? Hardly. It’s ok if people are different. We’re created differently to fill different niches (reader’s choice to give credit to God or Nature, the differences are there either way). I’ll teach Alg/Geometry/Stats or Bio/Chem/Physics and someone else can teach the Classics if that’s their preference. Then too, we have all the engineers, doctors, businessmen and more. Let’s not forget those gifted in trades. Diversity of where our “high bars” are is a good thing, not bad.
Want to know if a school will get you to where you want to go? Ask what recent grads are doing and where they’ve gone.
One can also ask folks hiring for positions you’d like to have what colleges they recommend. It’s certainly not always Top 50.
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I’ll ask the several users above that are having a sidebar conversation to continue it via PM, if it needs to continue at all.
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Grad school matters more. I do have a good life despite the instability from my constant move as an expat/int’l student/immigrant. What matters is quality education. The education from law school and business school how to be independent and be in charge of my financial life. I was ready to retire ten years ago and live a cushy life despite the humble bachelor’s degree university root.
That is my take on it.
I have for years wondered pretty much the opposite of the question asked at the top of this thread: Should I have attended a lower ranked university for my bachelor’s degree? If I had, then I probably would have had a bit more time for other activities that I did not get to do because I went to a very academically demanding university.
However, I am glad that I went to an academically challenging university for my master’s degree. I was ready to do it, and I wanted to do it. When I was in graduate school the lack of other outside activities did not bother me. I was there to study and I wanted to study.
To a large extent other than getting accepted and being able to afford the cost the other big question might be: Do you want to do it? I do not think that you attend MIT or Stanford for the job opportunities. I think that you attend MIT or Stanford for yourself. If you want to do it, and have the opportunity to do it, then you might do it just to show yourself that you can.
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I think a good undergraduate education is important for many students even if they go on to grad schools, just as a good high school education is important for students who go to college. In grad schools, one can often tell some students are better prepared, as just one can often tell some students in colleges are better prepared because of their high schools. Such better preparation isn’t universal and is far from guaranteed, however.
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