Why can't engineering be more relaxed?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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You point to MIT and Stanford as examples of (top) schools with forgiving engineering departments. You ask why other schools can't follow suit, when you've all but already answered the question yourself!</p>

<p>It is because MIT and Stanford are so selective, so recognized, and so highly-regarded that they can make their engineering departments more relaxed. The result of these policies? MIT graduates a few extra engineers, engineers who, as you said, very likely would have made it at a less prestigious institution and become engineers anyway. No harm done.

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<p>Uh, I never used MIT as an example. I used Stanford. In fact, MIT is one of the schools that I criticize. </p>

<p>But what you are getting at gets to my basic point that I raised in post #112. Engineering programs could be more relaxed. They just ** don't want ** to become more relaxed. The path is there, they just choose not to take it. So it's a choice on their part. There is a big difference between being unable to do something and choosing not to do something. There is a big difference between "can't" and "don't want to". </p>

<p>What you have said, first of all calls into question the entire notion of schools flunking people out for public safety. For example, if MIT flunks people out, one might argue (as has been done on this thread) that that has to do with public safety. I believe that is false, because, as you and I have both pointed out, those flunkouts are probably still better than the engineers coming out of no-name schools. If we were really so worried about public safety, then we shouldn't be allowing those no-name grads out into the market either. But we do allow them. Hence, that proves that the fact that MIT flunked those people out really had nothing to do with public safety. It has to do with ** preserving the MIT brand name **. That is what it is really all about. </p>

<p>But if preserving the brand name is what it is really all about, then I have pointed the way to an alternative. Look at Stanford. Stanford has a KILLER brand name. Yet Stanford engineering is relatively mild in terms of grading. So if Stanford can do that, other schools can do that too. Other schools don't do it because they don't WANT to do it. Not because they can't. It's because they don't want to. </p>

<p>Let's use Caltech as an example, which is another school which I deeply criticize for the grading. Caltech is, if anything, even more selective than Stanford is. Yet, Caltech has very harsh grading (shadow grading notwithstanding). Why? Do Caltech engineers really get better engineering jobs than Stanford engineers do? Is Caltech really more prestigious than Stanford is? I don't think so. So why can't Caltech lighten up? The answer seems to be that Caltech just doesn't WANT to lighten up. </p>

<p>All of this gets down to a simple basic tenet. Engineering does not have to be a painful experience. It just happens to be because of arbitrary institutional choices. What makes ths situation worse is that a lot of people buy into drinking this Koolaid and think that it is actually a GOOD thing for engineering to be painful, deliberately ignoring the Stanford model. I can only surmise that the reason that these people want it to be painful is because it was so painful for them that they want to make sure that it is painful for everybody else too, again deliberately ignoring the Stanford model. This is a trend that I am deeply opposed to. There are ways for engineering to be far more humane. The problem is institutional inertia - that institutions just don't WANT engineering to be humane. </p>

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When engineers screw up, a bolt is missing from a plane, and causes that plane falls out of the sky from 37,000ft and kills 100+ people.</p>

<p>If you think about it, engineers and doctors are pretty much the only majors that when they screw up, you're life could end. Only humans are built to live and die naturally, so does this place engineers as the most important majors in the world?
Then again, every major has some relation to engineering. Engineers are simply problem solvers, and everyday, every major is faced with a problem.

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<p>See, there it is again, somebody always seems to come back with 'public safety'. Like I have said countless times on this thread, this seems to just be a convenient excuse. A guy who flunks out of Caltech could have probably easily graduated from some no-name engineering school. So does the fact that he flunked out of Caltech really have anything to do with public safety, or is it just a matter of brand-name preservation? For the many reasons I have exposited here, I believe it is the latter. </p>

<p>So, I'll say it again. Much of the harshness of contemporary engineering programs has nothing to do with public safety. After all, I would argue that the guy who got a 1.9 GPA from Caltech (and thus flunked out) is a far better engineer than the guy who got a 2.1 from, say, SouthEast Missouri State. So why is the former guy not allowed to be an engineer, but the latter guy is allowed? If public safety dictates that we get rid of the former guy, then public safety also ought to dictate that we get rid of the latter guy too. Otherwise, we shouldn't get rid of either of them. Or ,at the very least, if we get rid of the former guy, we should at least admit to ourselves that it had nothing to do with public safety.</p>

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I suspect that the people who flunk out of Caltech are probably better than the people who graduate from no-name schools. So if the issue is eliminating "substandard" people, then let's get rid of ALL of the substandard people.

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<p>That has got to be one of the most ridiculous statements I've read on here in quite a while. </p>

<p>I'm sure my school (Louisiana Tech University) would make your list of "no-name" schools, but I can guarantee that the students who graduate with an engineering degree from Tech are certainly much better engineers than the morons that can't even manage to pass their classes at a top school.</p>

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<p>I wouldn't be so quick as to attack CalTech dropouts as "morons." I know quite a few Cal Tech students and their accomplishments. Anyone who is admitted into Cal Tech is very very unlikely a real "moron" and certainly many people who drop out from Cal Tech are not. It's a very respectable institution with a very rigorous courseload that even some of the top students struggle with.</p>

<p>Look, no one is trying to attack your school or no-name schools. I think some people just believe that students who get Ds at Cal Tech and flunk out would do better at a no-name school than a student at the same no-name school who is receiving straight Cs but graduating.</p>

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Many schools, like Berkeley, already restrict the entry of students who want to switch into engineering. For example, if you come into Berkeley as a Lettters & Science student and decide that you'd rather do EECS, you don't just get to switch over just 'like that'. You have to apply for entry into the EECS program via an internal transfer process, with no assurance that you will get in. In fact, most of these internal transfer applicants are denied entry. The flaw that I see is that the process uses lower-division grades to determine whether can switch in. I believe things would be better run via an entrance exam instead.

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<p>You know sakky, I don't like either solutions, because it seems to me like in either case, the student needs to take at least several lower-division classes in engineering and do well in them. The problem is, as you have said, there is no guarantee that students will get in. Hence, there will invariably be students who take several engineering courses, do mediocre in them, and are denied transfer, and have to major in something else (non-engineering). Well, now all those engineering courses are essentially wasted as they do not fulfill non-engineering prereqs or breadth requirements. I would like a system in which if a student takes courses in engineering, and doesn't do horribly bad, that he is at least somewhat guaranteed a spot in an engineering majors. Otherwise, it's a huge risk to even try to transfer into the college of engineering, and many students who are interested and may become great engineerers are turned-off.</p>

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<p>Actually this happened to my friend at Berkeley. He was rejected at EECS department twice and he finally transferred to UIUC to get his Comp eng degree.</p>

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<p>Whether it was meant to be or not, someone claiming that "no-name schools" don't produce great engineers is an attack on my school, everyone that has earned their degree from Tech, and everyone here now. </p>

<p>The moron comment was a slip-up because I was irritated, though. </p>

<p>Anyway, I definitely agree that some schools are more challenging than others, but to say that someone who can't even pass their courses at one school is (or is probably) a better engineer than all the people making straight As at all "no-name schools" is ridiculous...especially when many of us have actually turned down higher ranked schools.</p>

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That has got to be one of the most ridiculous statements I've read on here in quite a while. </p>

<p>I'm sure my school (Louisiana Tech University) would make your list of "no-name" schools, but I can guarantee that the students who graduate with an engineering degree from Tech are certainly much better engineers than the morons that can't even manage to pass their classes at a top school.

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<p>Then perhaps you'd like to TRY OUT one of these tough schools and just see how difficult it really is to pass classes there, before you go around labeling people as morons. Some of the most brilliant people I know did extremely poorly at places like MIT and Caltech. The truth is, you can be an absolutely genius, and work extremely hard, and STILL flunk out of schools like that. </p>

<p>Vicissitudes said it quite well. Compare a guy who gets a 1.99 at Caltech (and hence, flunks out because he has less than a 2.0), to a guy who gets a 2.00 at a no-name school, and thus graduates. Who is probably better? </p>

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Anyway, I definitely agree that some schools are more challenging than others, but to say that someone who can't even pass their courses at one school is (or is probably) a better engineer than all the people making straight As at all "no-name schools" is ridiculous...especially when many of us have actually turned down higher ranked schools.

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<p>I never said anything about people who get straight A's at a no-name school. If you go through the thread, you will see that I am talking about people who just graduate, and specifically, those people who BARELY graduate from a no-name school. Like I said, if you get a 2.00 GPA from a no-name school, you're probably no better than a guy who flunked out of Caltech. Yet you still get to be a practicing engineer whereas the Caltech flunkie does not. </p>

<p>It all gets down to the notion of public safety, a notion that I have been knocking down ever since it was proposed on this thread. Let's be honest. How does conferring a engineering degree upon a guy who gets a 2.00 from a no-name school really serve the cause of public safety? We all know that this guy isn't a particularly good engineer, and might well cause disasters in the future. Yet the school conferrred an engineering degree upon him anyway. So if the guy who gets a 1.99 from Caltech engineering needs to get kicked out of engineering because he is not a 'safe' engineer, then the guy with a 2.00 from a no-name school should ALSO be kicked out because he is also not a safe engineer.</p>

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You know sakky, I don't like either solutions, because it seems to me like in either case, the student needs to take at least several lower-division classes in engineering and do well in them. The problem is, as you have said, there is no guarantee that students will get in. Hence, there will invariably be students who take several engineering courses, do mediocre in them, and are denied transfer, and have to major in something else (non-engineering). Well, now all those engineering courses are essentially wasted as they do not fulfill non-engineering prereqs or breadth requirements. I would like a system in which if a student takes courses in engineering, and doesn't do horribly bad, that he is at least somewhat guaranteed a spot in an engineering majors. Otherwise, it's a huge risk to even try to transfer into the college of engineering, and many students who are interested and may become great engineerers are turned-off.

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<p>Hey, I don't like either situation either. In fact, if it was up to me, I would make ALL engineering schools be like Stanford i.e. extremely selective in the beginning, but with relaxed grading. In fact, that has actually been one of my common themese throughout this thread - that engineering programs could do this, especially the ones that are already extremely selective (i.e. Caltech, MIT). They just don't WANT to do this. It's a conscious choice on their part. Nobody is forcing them to be harsh. They are harsh because they WANT to be harsh. </p>

<p>But, anyway, if we have to choose between the lesser of 2 evils, then I will choose to have people enter engineering via an entrance exam. Is it a perfect solution? Of course not. But I think it's still better than having the admissions decision based on grades.</p>

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I'm sure my school (Louisiana Tech University) would make your list of "no-name" schools, but I can guarantee that the students who graduate with an engineering degree from Tech are certainly much better engineers than the morons that can't even manage to pass their classes at a top school.

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As someone who goes to Caltech, I would contend that even those with 4.0s at Louisiana Tech University would have trouble passing certain classes at Caltech. I do not think you are justified in calling anyone here a moron when you do not realize the difference in difficulty level between your school and mine.</p>

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I'm sure my school (Louisiana Tech University) would make your list of "no-name" schools, but I can guarantee that the students who graduate with an engineering degree from Tech are certainly much better engineers than the morons that can't even manage to pass their classes at a top school.

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<p>As someone who went to a top 50 school and got a 4.0, and now at a top 10 school, I can say that I probably wouldn't be able to pass some of the undergrad classes here. There's a reason why some schools are considered "no-name" and why some are considered top tier.</p>

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<p>lets be serious guys, Engineering at a state school/tech school and a big name school, is not really any different, both will produce viable engineers. Possibly the big name school will have better resources, professors and better students, but that doesn't mean that the engineer from a lesser know school is going to do a worse job, it could turn out that that engineer is phenomenal. While a Graduate from a Big Name school could really really mess up.</p>

<p>What it comes down to is who says MIT or Cal Tech is better than Louisiana Tech University, maybe the people who attend or have attend these schools. Also possibly employers know about who they hire. But ive been to a ton of career fairs, talking with companies such as Lockheed, Boeing, Rolls Royce, GM and many many more. What they have all said is they love great engineers from big name schools, but find they ar4e just to hard to mold into functioning engineers, while graduates from general schools tend to have the exact same education and aren't as cocky.</p>

<p>The fact is there is no need to put yourself through hell when Mr. Cal Tech and Mr. Louisiana Tech University will probably have the same Salary.</p>

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<p>UB-Vinny77, if you subscribe to the theory that both big-name schools and no-name schools produce viable engineering graduates, then you should agree that neither should attempt to be harsher when it comes to flunking people out, at least from a public safety aspect. For example, why is a guy who gets a 1.99 GPA from Caltech (and thus is unable to graduate because he doesn't mean the 2.0 graduate threshold) unable to be an engineer, but a guy with a 2.00 GPA from a no-name school able to become an engineer? Does this have anything to do with public safety? If the former guy should be barred from engineering because he is supposedly a threat to pulic safety, then I would contend that the latter guy is also a threat to public safety and should also be barred from the field. So why flunk out one but not the other? Does it really have anything to do with public safety?</p>

<p>It has been my common theme throughout this thread that that has little to do with public safety and more to do with simply preserving the school's brand name. The guy with the 1.99 from Caltech could probably be a decent engineer. It's just that Caltech has arbitrarily decided that he should not be allowed to have a Caltech engineering degree. </p>

<p>Hey, I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with that. All I'm saying is that we should admit to ourselves that that's what's really going on. I certainly agree that a few students really do flunk out because they really are threats to public safety. But that's generally not what happens at the top schools. Most eng students who flunk out of the top schools flunk out not because they are unsafe but because the school is attempting to preserve its brand name, and we should admit to ourselves that that's the reality of the situation.</p>

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<p>I’ve stayed out of this thread up to now, but I’ll go ahead and offer my theory on why college engineering programs are not more “relaxed”. It has some similarities to sakky’s point of view.</p>

<p>First, consider other professions, such as medicine, law, accounting, architecture, or surveying. In all of these fields, the right to practice professionally is tightly controlled by state licensing boards. The boards – not the universities – make the ultimate decision regarding your entry into the field. They weed out the incompetent and unprepared with rigorous licensing exams after graduation. And the boards continue to monitor you throughout your career; they enforce continuing education requirements, they evaluate complaints that are filed against you, and they can strip you of your professional powers if they deem it necessary. Bottom line: other professional fields have strong quality control systems that function outside the universities. </p>

<p>But engineering doesn’t. Yes, there are licensing boards for engineers in every state, but the vast majority of engineers are exempt from licensing requirements, and can safely ignore them. Prospective engineers don’t get weeded out by rigorous standardized tests before school (like the LSAT or the MCAT), and they don’t get weeded out by rigorous standardized tests after school (like the Bar Exam or CPA exam). So if any weeding out is to occur, it has to happen during school. </p>

<p>Now there is one branch of engineering where licensure is important: it is, of course, civil. According to my theory, CE departments shouldn’t have to make special efforts to weed out prospective engineers, because they know that the state boards will handle this unpleasant chore after graduation. </p>

<p>So if my theory is correct, then CE should have more “relaxed” grading than other branches of engineering -- even though civil engineers also face more significant public safety issues than other engineers.</p>

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<p>I've already said that I only called them morons because I was irritated and that I shouldn't have. </p>

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I never said anything about people who get straight A's at a no-name school. If you go through the thread, you will see that I am talking about people who just graduate, and specifically, those people who BARELY graduate from a no-name school. Like I said, if you get a 2.00 GPA from a no-name school, you're probably no better than a guy who flunked out of Caltech. Yet you still get to be a practicing engineer whereas the Caltech flunkie does not.

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<p>I was under the impression that you meant that kids who couldn't pass at a top school could easily make great grades at a no-name school. My fault. </p>

<p>I don't see why you'd even bring up no-name schools in that situation, though. The folks making 1.9/2.0s probably aren't going to make very good engineers regardless, so what's the point of saying one's better than the other based on which school they attended? There has to be a cut-off somewhere, you know, and it would be ridiculous for schools to only graduate engineering students with 3.0s and higher just because the school isn't ranked as high as another is.</p>

<p>Anyway, I haven't gone through a top school's engineering curriculum (though I did have the opportunity to attend two well respected schools), but I doubt you guys have been through a no-name school's curriculum, either...so you're really not in any better position than I am to compare the two experiences. I can only point out that the engineering students at my school certainly aren't given grades that they didn't earn.</p>

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But engineering doesn’t. Yes, there are licensing boards for engineers in every state, but the vast majority of engineers are exempt from licensing requirements, and can safely ignore them. Prospective engineers don’t get weeded out by rigorous standardized tests before school (like the LSAT or the MCAT), and they don’t get weeded out by rigorous standardized tests after school (like the Bar Exam or CPA exam). So if any weeding out is to occur, it has to happen during school. </p>

<p>Now there is one branch of engineering where licensure is important: it is, of course, civil. According to my theory, CE departments shouldn’t have to make special efforts to weed out prospective engineers, because they know that the state boards will handle this unpleasant chore after graduation. </p>

<p>So if my theory is correct, then CE should have more “relaxed” grading than other branches of engineering -- even though civil engineers also face more significant public safety issues than other engineers.

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<p>Corbett, I had thought about this also. I have 5 things to say about that.</p>

<h1>1) If you have to 'weed', why not do so by using tough admissions criteria in the first place? That is precisely what Stanford does. I am convinced that Stanford can get away with relaxed grading PRECISELY because it is so hard to get admitted into Stanford in the first place. That means that other schools can do the same thing, if they wanted to. The issue is that they don't want to. And that's exactly my point all throughout this thread - if schools feel that they have to weed, they have alternatives to tough grading. They just don't want to use them.</h1>

<p>It also doesn't account for why other schools are both tough to get into AND tough in grading. For example, Caltech admissions is arguably even tougher than Stanford is. So does Caltech still need to use rough grading anyway? I doubt it. Like I said, I think it is more that Caltech just WANTS to be rough. They don't need to be rough, they WANT to be rough. It's a deliberate choice on their part. Frankly, it's "unnecessary roughness", just like the foul that gets penalized in football. </p>

<h1>2) Why do schools even need to weed at all? Like I said, nobody goes around harshly weeding out bus drivers, yet one wrong move by them can kill hundreds.</h1>

<p>Personally, I think it has to do with engineering employer laziness. The employers could do the weeding through a tough hiring process. That is what the investment banking and consulting firms do. Their hiring process is quite tough, which essentially means that through the hiring process, they are the ones doing the 'weeding'. If these employers can do it, engineering employers could do it too. The issue is that they don't want to do it, so they lazily rely on the schools to do it for them. Problems can also be mitigated by training. The standards to become an enlisted soldier in the miliary are not that high (and in fact, have been lowered lately as the country has needed more soldiers for Iraq) - as basically, almost any able-bodied young American can get into the Army. There is not much of a weedout process to get into the Army. But once you're there, you get trained intensely to become a good soldier. That's a necessary thing because bad soldiers cab cause just as many problems as bad engineers - as through mistakes, they could blow up not only themselves, but also their entire unit.</p>

<p>But the point is that the fact that the weedout in the engineering process has to happen in the schools was an entirely arbitrary choice. It could have happened elsewhere in the process. Nowhere is it set in stone that it is the schools that have to be the ones to perform the weedout. It didn't have to be this way. There are many ways to skin this cat.</p>

<h1>3) Why does general weeding have to occur at all? Like I said, not all engineers work on projects that have to do with public safety. If the Google search algorithm is degraded such that itr give you less relevant search results, honestly, who cares? That doesn't hurt anybody. If YouTube goes down for an hour, again, who cares? If people can't update their profiles on Myspace, again, who cares?</h1>

<p>So if the real issue is public safety, then we should have only those particular engineers who are going to work on projects that have to do with public safety be weeded out. Why do ALL engineers have to be weeded, including those who end up working on projects that have nothing to do with public safety? It is more appropriate for those people to be dealt with via the mechanism of the free market. If Facebook hires a bunch of mediocre engineers who crash the website, then that's Facebook's problem. The rest of us shouldn't be getting involved in a transaction between those engineers and Facebook. Engineers who work on non-public-safety projects (like Internet sites) should be free to sell their services, and Internet companies should be free to hire or not hire them, all according to the tenets of the free market. We don't need to regulate that. We don't need to interfere with the workings of the Invisible Hand. </p>

<h1>4) If the issue is really public safety, then why not weed out ALL people that have a hand in public safety? I already mentioned my example of bus drivers. Plenty of other examples exist. For example, what about all of those scientists that work for pharmaceutical companies making drugs? Some of these compounds turn out to be dangerous. For example, thalidomide caused about 10,000 birth defects in the late 50's and early 60's. That wasn't the fault of the engineers who manufactured the compounds - as those engineers manufactured it EXACTLY the way the R&D scientists wanted them to. Rather, it was the SCIENTISTS THEMSELVES who screwed up, in that they didn't properly assess the compound's pharmacological role in fetal safety.</h1>

<p>Yet, why doesn't anybody ever talk about 'certifying' scientists, particularly scientists who work in pharmaceutical or biotech firms? As demonstrated by the thalidomide incident, a scientific screwup can hurt just as many people as an engineering screwup could. </p>

<h1>5) Finally, the question to which I have still not received a satisfactory answer - if the guy gets weeded out of engineering anyway, then who cares what his engineering grades are? Just delete them from his transcript. Why not? He's not going to be an engineer, so he's not going to threaten public safety with badly engineering products. So what does it matter what his engineering grades were? The notion of orcing people who got bad engineering grades such that they are no longer engineers to still carry around their bad engineering grades - what does that have to do with public safety? From what I can tell, nothing. That is just sadism on the part of engineering departments. Seriously, if a guy is not even going to be an engineer anymore, why do engineering departments still want to interfere with his future? Stop hassling him and leave him alone.</h1>

<p>The bottom line is that I don't particularly believe that the reason why engineering students are weeded so harshly really has that much to do with public safety. If public safety were really the issue, there are far more targeted methods to use to ensure public safety. The issue is that engineering programs seem mostly uninterested in these methods. So it seems to me that safety is not the real issue at hand. Like I said, I think the issue is 'unnecessary roughness'.</p>

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I don't see why you'd even bring up no-name schools in that situation, though. The folks making 1.9/2.0s probably aren't going to make very good engineers regardless, so what's the point of saying one's better than the other based on which school they attended? There has to be a cut-off somewhere, you know, and it would be ridiculous for schools to only graduate engineering students with 3.0s and higher just because the school isn't ranked as high as another is.

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<p>What I am saying is that the cutoff is ENTIRELY ARBITRARY. Those guys with the 1.99GPA at Caltech don't HAVE to be thrown out. Caltech just CHOOSES to throw them out. It's an arbitrary choice made by Caltech. Caltech tosses this person out for reasons that have little to do with public safety. Like I said, a guy with a 2.00 GPA from a no-name school is probably not going to be a good engineer either, yet he still manages to get an engineering degree. </p>

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so you're really not in any better position than I am to compare the two experiences. I can only point out that the engineering students at my school certainly aren't given grades that they didn't earn.

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<p>I may not personally be in a position, but I know enough people who flunked out of (or were about to flunk out of ) top engineering programs who then later went to no-name schools and absolutely cruised. I know one guy who did terrible at Caltech and so dropped out and then later went to a no-name state school who said that he was getting top grades while putting in a small fraction of the time he was putting in at Caltech. That's a telling statement.</p>

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<p>Responses to sakky:

[quote]

1) If you have to 'weed', why not do so by using tough admissions criteria in the first place?

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I agree; in theory you could do that. For example, there could be pre-engineering screening tests, like the LSAT for lawyers or the MCAT for doctors. But no such tests exist, possibly because engineering school -- unlike law or medical school -- traditionally starts at the undergraduate level. You would be screening teenagers. This approach would make more sense if the professional degree was the MS, rather than the BS (and some engineering societies would like to move in that direction).</p>

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2) Why do schools even need to weed at all? Like I said, nobody goes around harshly weeding out bus drivers, yet one wrong move by them can kill hundreds.

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Because then there would be too many engineers, and they would get paid like bus drivers.
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3) Why does general weeding have to occur at all?

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See #2
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4) If the issue is really public safety, then why not weed out ALL people that have a hand in public safety…why doesn't anybody ever talk about 'certifying' scientists, particularly scientists who work in pharmaceutical or biotech firms?

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If there are real public safety issues associated with a particular occupation, then there probably are special testing requirements. It wouldn't surprise me if bus drivers (for example) need a special driver's license, have to pass special driving tests, and are subject to random drug and alcohol tests.</p>

<p>Licensure requirements don’t apply to most scientists, for the exact same reason that they don’t apply to most engineers: for mass-produced products (like cars, airplanes, or drugs), it generally makes more sense to regulate the product itself, rather than the individuals behind the products. There are obviously legitimate public safety concerns regarding things like cars, airplanes, and drugs, and there are in fact plenty of applicable regulations. But they generally focus on the product itself -- not the producers. </p>

<p>States do, in fact, "certify" scientists, if their work addresses unique, site-specific issues -- just as they do for civil engineers. For example, most states license Professional Geologists (PGs), using a system similar to that for Professional Engineers (PEs). Geologists who address public safety issues (such as earthquake faults, slope stability, groundwater contamination, or water supply wells) at specific sites generally are state licensed, just like the civil engineers and surveyors that they commonly work with. </p>

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The bottom line is that I don't particularly believe that the reason why engineering students are weeded so harshly really has that much to do with public safety. If public safety were really the issue, there are far more targeted methods to use to ensure public safety.

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I agree. If there was a compelling public interest to ensure professional standards in engineering, then all engineers (not just civils) would be tightly regulated after graduation by state licensing boards -- just as doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants, and surveyors are.</p>

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Responses to sakky:</p>

<p>Quote:</p>

<h1>1) If you have to 'weed', why not do so by using tough admissions criteria in the first place?</h1>

<p>I agree; in theory you could do that. For example, there could be pre-engineering screening tests, like the LSAT for lawyers or the MCAT for doctors. But no such tests exist, possibly because engineering school -- unlike law or medical school -- traditionally starts at the undergraduate level. You would be screening teenagers.

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</p>

<p>I don't see this as a problem. The top engineering schools, such as Stanford, MIT, and Caltech, are extremely selective amongst the teenagers who apply there. Hence, that means that other schools could do the same. They just don't WANT to. </p>

<p>My question has always been simply that why should a program admit people who aren't going to graduate from that program anyway? Instead of just admitting people who aren't going to graduate, and then weed them out, why not simply reject them in the first place? That way, those students can find something else that they are more suited for, and the program doesn't have to go around policing its program for 'unworthy' students. Seems like a win-win to me. </p>

<p>
[quote]

2) Why do schools even need to weed at all? Like I said, nobody goes around harshly weeding out bus drivers, yet one wrong move by them can kill hundreds. </p>

<p>Because then there would be too many engineers, and they would get paid like bus drivers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Not necessarily. Like I said, investment bankers get paid extremely well, yet there is no 'certification' process for Ibankers, and no 'weeding process'. Rather, the employers take it upon themselves to do the weeding, through the hiring process. </p>

<p>The point is, the weeding process could have been performed at many different points in the process. It just happened, through a quirk in history, that engineering weeding occurs during coursework. But it could have easily turned out to have occurred at some other point in time. In other words, there are multiple equilibria to this particular social dynamic. For example, in the case of investment banking, the 'weeding' occurs during the hiring phase, not during the coursework phase. </p>

<p>What that means is that there is no INHERENT reason for weeding to occur during the coursework phase. Many people on this thread have asserted that engineering "needs" to weed people out during the coursework. I believe I have demonstrated that no such "need" exists, and that the present state of affairs is just a twist of fate in history. Things could have easily turned out to be quite different. It furthermore means that if society wants things to change, things can change. There is nothing inevitable about the current state of affairs. </p>

<p>
[quote]
If there are real public safety issues associated with a particular occupation, then there probably are special testing requirements. It wouldn't surprise me if bus drivers (for example) need a special driver's license, have to pass special driving tests, and are subject to random drug and alcohol tests.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then that leads to yet another possibility. In the case of bus-drivers, there are indeed a set of driving and licensing/testing requirements necessary. But anybody can just keep taking those tests over and over again until he finally passes. There is nothing that would stop somebody from taking the bus-driver license exam 20 times before finally passing. But that's not really the case in engineering. Flunk out of engineering once, and you're basically out. Maybe you might get a 2nd chance. But you certainly aren't going to get 20 chances. </p>

<p>But if bus drivers can take their relevant professional exam over and over again before finally passing, then why can't engineers do the same? For example, if we as a society want to use an exam to allow only 'worthy' people to become bus drivers (but allow this exam to be taken multiple times), then perhaps we can devise an exam to allow only 'worthy' peopel to become engineers too (but allow this exam to also be taken multiple times). Then we wouldn't need to weed. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Licensure requirements don’t apply to most scientists, for the exact same reason that they don’t apply to most engineers: for mass-produced products (like cars, airplanes, or drugs), it generally makes more sense to regulate the product itself, rather than the individuals behind the products. There are obviously legitimate public safety concerns regarding things like cars, airplanes, and drugs, and there are in fact plenty of applicable regulations. But they generally focus on the product itself -- not the producers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Exactly right, which is why I think the present state of affairs of weeding engineering students through coursework has nothing to do with public safety, but rather has to do with institutional inertia and downright rearguard reactionism amongst former graduates. In fact, we have seen it here in this thread - people who have gone through hell in the past when they were engineering students now want to make sure that everybody else goes through the same hell in the future, under the notion of 'chronological fairness'. I can appreciate the unfairness of changing the system now, but sometimes you have to change the system in order to move the process forward. Otherwise, the issue of few Americans wanting to study engineering is going to persist.</p>

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<p>If a student gets 1.99 gpa at cal-tech and another student gets a 2.0 at another school(no matter what school), then that student should take a class over and get a 2.0, not to difficult.</p>

<p>I do not see a engineering student with a 1.99 to be a better engineer than a student at Louisiana tech or another unknown school, I see them as exact equals. I see that the guy from cal tech if he want to Louisiana tech he would most likely still have a 1.99. I dont see a 1.99 cal tech gpa as a 3.5 gpa st Louisiana tech, if thats what you guys think, I guess you guys do thogh.</p>

139

<p>
[quote]
What that means is that there is no INHERENT reason for weeding to occur during the coursework phase. Many people on this thread have asserted that engineering "needs" to weed people out during the coursework. I believe I have demonstrated that no such "need" exists, and that the present state of affairs is just a twist of fate in history.

[/quote]
I agree. It should be obvious that there are practical alternative approaches for weeding out engineers, because some engineering disciplines actually use them.</p>

<p>For example, suppose you want to design public schools or hospitals in California. In that case, you need a Structural Engineer's license, and you need to pass a total of six different licensing exams, representing a total of 37 hours of testing. Each exam has an overall pass rate below 50%. Nobody doubts that this process weeds out prospective SEs. But it occurs completely independently of your academic career (in fact, you could theoretically qualify as an SE in California with no engineering degree at all, although this must be extremely rare or nonexistent in practice). </p>

<p>
[quote]
But if bus drivers can take their relevant professional exam over and over again before finally passing, then why can't engineers do the same? For example, if we as a society want to use an exam to allow only 'worthy' people to become bus drivers (but allow this exam to be taken multiple times), then perhaps we can devise an exam to allow only 'worthy' peopel to become engineers too (but allow this exam to also be taken multiple times). Then we wouldn't need to weed.

[/quote]
You make it sound like a hypothetical situation, but in fact, the PE community has been grappling with this exact issue for years. Some states limit the number of times you can take the PE exam; others do not. NCEES (the national coordinating body) has proposed a limit of three PE exam attempts. Under the recommended policy, you could still reapply for the exam after striking out three times, but you would have to convince your state board that you've taken steps (such as additional education) to improve your chances of passing.</p>

140

<p>
[quote]
If a student gets 1.99 gpa at cal-tech and another student gets a 2.0 at another school(no matter what school), then that student should take a class over and get a 2.0, not to difficult.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If he's already been kicked out, then he has no chance to take a class over. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I do not see a engineering student with a 1.99 to be a better engineer than a student at Louisiana tech or another unknown school, I see them as exact equals. I see that the guy from cal tech if he want to Louisiana tech he would most likely still have a 1.99.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then I think it's quite clear that you are all by yourself on this one. I think the vast majority of poeple would agree that certain schools are more difficult than others. If you really think that every school out there is of exactly the same difficulty, then I really don't know what to tell you. Perhaps you'd like to try out a class at Caltech or MIT and then come back and tell us how it is exactly the same as a class at a no-name school.</p>