Why is engineering so hard?

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Am I the only one who thinks engineers just like to complain. I mean common guys, its not that bad.

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<p>Look, the OP's question is 'why is engineering so hard'. My answer is that engineering programs force you to learn difficult things that, frankly, you don't really need to know, and I have given several examples that demonstrate this. </p>

<p>However, on this thread, I seem to be continually misinterpreted or misunderstood (I suspect, in some cases, deliberately so). To enumerate just a few points of contention.</p>

<p>**I never said that engineering students should never have to learn difficult topics.* </p>

<p>What I have said is that we need to make sure that students really are truly learning those topics. Again, after my thermo class, and even to this day, I still don't really understand what the M.R.'s actually mean in any real world sense. I don't know anybody who does. So, what exactly did we really 'learn'? Just how to manipulate math?</p>

<p>Furthermore, those topics ought to be related to real-world engineering, and that relationship should be clearly demonstrated. That is to say, an engineering course is supposed to give you a toolkit with which you can actually go out and build real world technologies. If it doesn't have any real-world application (or if nobody knows what that application is), then it's not a useful tool. </p>

<p>The bottom line is that you just end up making things difficult just for the sake of difficulty. The upshot is that students then begin to treat the process like a cynical game. They quickly figure out that they don't really need to know what is happening. All they need is to do what it takes to pass the screens. </p>

<p>I'll give you an analogy. Let's say that a football team implements a rule where, on one particular day, every player has to bench twice their body weight, or else they'll be cut from the team. {Benching twice your body weight is extremely difficult: I would surmise that most NFL players couldn't do it.} I think we all know what would happen. People would game the system. For example, everybody would surely buy those special 'bench press shirts' that bind your upper body tightly and hence (artificially) increase your lifting force due to the stretch of the textile fibers. Many guys would deliberately starve themselves in order to reduce their body weight so that they would have less to bench. They would probably also neglect training every other muscle part, and hence lose muscle, so as to lose body weight. And of course many guys would almost certainly begin taking performance enhancing drugs. Yet after that day is over, after they have passed the tests, they can all revert back to their normal lives. Those who starved themselves can gain the weight right back. Those who stopped training other body parts will start up again. Those who took doped will stop (hopefully). Everybody will pack their bench shirts away, because you can't actually use them to play ball (they reduce your flexibility). </p>

<p>**I have never said that we don't need screens*.</p>

<p>But like I said, my preferred screen, far and away, should be the screen of admissions. When over half of the incoming engineering students won't actually complete engineering degrees, that leaves a lot of room for tightening up your admissions. Just don't admit those people who you can predict are not going to be able to survive the program anyway. It's better for the program and better for those students. </p>

<p>Now will you be able to predictably screen every student perfect? Of course not, and I am not asking for perfection. I am simply asking you to do better than the status quo. I don't think it's that hard to beat the status quo, for the status quo is, frankly, terrible. </p>

<p>The other screen you can use is the screen of actual engineering ability. Like I said, why not just have the students actually build something? Those who can do that can stay. Those who can't should leave. Similarly, if you are going to cut people from your football team, you should cut those people who actually don't play football well. In other words, the screen that you are using must be as highly correlated with the actual metric you are trying to measure as it can possibly be.</p>

<p>**I have never said that it isn't useful to 'learn how to learn', a.k.a. the weightlifting/football metaphor that was discussed. *</p>

<p>But you need to make sure that you the students really are 'learning how to learn'. Your football players lift in order to perform better on the football field. It is simply a means to an ends. The problem is when it becomes the ends in itself: i.e. when players lift just for the sake of lifting and no longer care whether they can actually play football. For example, some players become such heavy lifters that their footwork agility and quickness degraded. That's why players are constantly judged on their ability to actually play. Not on how strong they are in the weight room. You don't pick your starting team on who can bench the most. This is football, not a powerlifting competition. </p>

<p>The greatest danger that I see is what I said above: if you make students undergo difficult tasks just for the sake of difficulty, then students inevitably become cynical about the entire process. They start to see the whole process as a game. Just learn these math derivations in order to survive the screen. Why should you learn those derivations? What do they even mean? Who knows? Who cares? Just do what you gotta do to survive the screen. In other words, students may emerge from the process with less ability to learn how to learn, not greater ability, because their attitudes towards learning have been poisoned. The engineering department has lost credibility in their eyes. So, later, when the engineering department does actually try to teach something that really does enhance the ability to learn how to learn, the students are again going to treat the process as just another game they have to play.</p>

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I'll give you an analogy. Let's say that a football team implements a rule where, on one particular day, every player has to bench twice their body weight, or else they'll be cut from the team. {Benching twice your body weight is extremely difficult: I would surmise that most NFL players couldn't do it.}

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<p>Yet being able to use the Maxwell Relations as an engineering student is not at all like benching twice your body weight as a football player. It is not a nearly impossible task. You don't have to truly understand them to use them and to pass the class with a decent grade. </p>

<p>It seems like this whole thread has just become a large complaint about the Maxwell Relations.</p>

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Yet being able to use the Maxwell Relations as an engineering student is not at all like benching twice your body weight as a football player. It is not a nearly impossible task. You don't have to truly understand them to use them and to pass the class with a decent grade.

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<p>But what's the point of learning/teaching something that has no apparent applications? Especially in an engineering curriculum. Whenever I write course evaluations, that is always one of the factors I use in my critique: applications.</p>

<p>sakky i haven't even read one of your posts on this thread. That post you replied to was not directed at you. I truly feel Engineering is not that hard. Compared to all the other crap liberal arts majors need to put up with like foreign language and speech, all the rest of the crap. I think engineers have it pretty nice.</p>

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Similarly, if engineering programs place such a keen emphasis on deriving math equations (i.e. 'math gymnastics'), but with little emphasis on what the math actually means, then you end up with lots of graduates who are really good at math, but don't actually understand what the equations mean. The students are just following their rational incentives, for they're just trying to avoid getting weeded out.. In other words, you basically end up producing mathematicians, not engineers.

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<p>I may not know what I am talking about, after all, I'm only a second-year EE student, but I think you exaggerate how mathematical engineering courses are. In my experience with the calculus/DE series, and an introductory course in signals and systems I didn't spend a lot of time wading through theory. In those courses I learned some mathematical machinery useful for talking about things EE's care about: E&M, and circuits. Almost always, I was given a useful interpretation of these mathematical objects and operations, but a lot of the time the professor avoided investigating the theory behind them (which is fine--some ideas I've learned about require a lot of high-powered mathematics to truly understand them). In short, I spent very little time engaging in what you might call "theoretical wankery".</p>

<p>Maybe I'm just being picking on a silly detail in your argument, but really, compared to the classes in a graduate prep. course in mathematics, engineering classes have little mathematical content. Engineering is way less theoretical than CS/math/physics. Engineering students don't really graduate as math majors. Now is the theory they learn more than what is necessary for the average engineer? Maybe, I don't know. I'm only a student.</p>

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Compared to all the other crap liberal arts majors need to put up with like foreign language and speech, all the rest of the crap. I think engineers have it pretty nice.

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<p>Yeah, liberal arts majors have to do all of those readings and write all of those papers. yuck. I think that I have it pretty good in engineering : )</p>

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But what's the point of learning/teaching something that has no apparent applications? Especially in an engineering curriculum. Whenever I write course evaluations, that is always one of the factors I use in my critique: applications.

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<p>Hmm..., sometimes that's not very fair. I imagine that some stories in engineering are long ones, and you need to be patient and wade through some theory before you can get a good answer to the question "how does this technology work?" Without the theory, the answer you get to that question is superficial and can be had by reading a popular science magazine article. I can see how engineering students can be short-sighted and dismiss difficult topics as being not useful. I don't know, maybe I trust the engineering departments and curriculum planners too much.</p>

<p>I like the underlying message that sakky is trying to convey. Sakky is trying to say, I think, that engineering is definitely a vital part of ensuring America's success in the future and sakky is worried because the way the engineering curriculum is going now, future generations may very well be discouraged to go into engineering.</p>

<p>I think it is evident with America's current economic crisis that having a lot of business people or lawyers does no good for the overall strength, durability, and foundation of the economy. Those that are good with money may be able to make the market grow at an insane rate when everything is good, but without a strong basis for that economic growth, it will all come tumbling down to its realistic rate like it has in these past several months. Imagine if America wasn't a leader in the aerospace industry, or a major player in the auto industry, or the leading innovator of computer technology; America will have little to back its economy on other than the service economy (which relies heavily on the products produced by engineers for the most part), agriculture, and several other things. Without a renewed emphasis in engineering and engineering education, that shift may very well occur within the next couple of decades.</p>

<p>The only issue I have is that sakky is stating that there is a big problem out there and the solution is making material that is irrelevant to the industry into electives for the most part. I agree some changes must be made and that times have changed, but I can't fully agree that some theories that SEEM to have no relevance to the industry NOW should become an elective. If America is supposed to become a leader in engineering innovation, it seems to me that putting an emphasis on theories and concepts is a necessary step to take. Before the concept of current and all that other good stuff was discovered, what use did engineers/scientists have with the theories behind electricity and magnetism? Should engineers have continued to focus on fire because that was the best technology of the time? It was the hard work of the scientists and engineers to make new theories and new technologies that helped make electricity come to life and all the other applications that followed, like induction, shielding, etc. Most engineers will make the technology of now and the near future for the most part, but making something an elective will only limit the opportunity for drastic innovation to occur.</p>

<p>I don't know, maybe Maxwell's Relations might be used to create a vastly improved fuel source/engine or whatever. Maybe it's all a load of bull. We might as well throw the Carnot Engine (easier but useless) into that elective class too because it has no realistic applications. Throw all that useless junk into that elective thermo course. Of course, for political reasons, teach the material in a general class but don't really test the students on any of that stuff, because it's not like the students will pass the exam if it was on it anyways. I guess it would be nice if engineers could use easier concepts like pressure and enthalpy to develop the next steam engine like invention, maybe where the internal energy, enthalpy, Helmhotz free energy, and gibbs free energy is used.</p>

<p>Also, I understand that having the majority of the class receive a 30% on an exam is pretty ridiculous because that means 70% of the material for the average student was not understood. But that seems to be a matter of teaching and learning. Just because a majority of the class did not get 70% of the material should not mean that only the ones that want to learn the subject should take a totally separate elective course. I agree that it is a shame that this occurs, but it's outrageous to say something does not belong as part of the main curriculum just because the majority do not understand it well enough to get over 30%. There is a problem for sure and I don't have the answer to how to fix the problem, but I don't feel like the solution is to make something an elective because the majority struggle with the material. In a way, the problem probably starts in K-12, but again finding a solution to fix K-12 education is pretty difficult too.</p>

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Hmm..., sometimes that's not very fair. I imagine that some stories in engineering are long ones, and you need to be patient and wade through some theory before you can get a good answer to the question "how does this technology work?" Without the theory, the answer you get to that question is superficial and can be had by reading a popular science magazine article. I can see how engineering students can be short-sighted and dismiss difficult topics as being not useful. I don't know, maybe I trust the engineering departments and curriculum planners too much.

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<p>I understand your point, but if you ask your professor what are the reasons you're learning a particular topic, he or she should have an answer. My civil engineering class asked our modern physics professor why we're taking this course. He was silent was for 30 seconds and then shrugged his shoulders. </p>

<p>When will we even touch modern physics in our civil engineering careers? How does it even remotely relate? How did taking that course help us in any way? Other courses at least have some relevance to either our major or our everyday lives. Modern physics...? Ehh....</p>

<p>I have no problem learning theory before the "how does this technology work?" question is answered. But the theory must lead to that question at some point in time. There must be a good reason for learning the material. As long as there is, I don't have a problem, but when the professor shrugs his shoulders...</p>

<p>Haha most engineers won't really need modern physics but I think it is an interesting course regardless.</p>

<p>I don't know, stuff in your modern physics class has a lot applications--electronic devices today exploit some of the phenomena you probably talked about in your class. Modern physics allows us to make fast, small, and cheap circuits. That's a huge application. </p>

<p>But yeah, you are right. It probably isn't something civil engineers care about. It does seem silly that civil engineers have to take that course. I guess it's kind of like an engineering gen-ed. I don't know about your school, but at mine, modern physics is only a half-semester course, so it isn't really a huge chunk of your schedule.</p>

<p>In short, I agree, it is fair to complain that you have to take that course.</p>

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Yet being able to use the Maxwell Relations as an engineering student is not at all like benching twice your body weight as a football player. It is not a nearly impossible task. You don't have to truly understand them to use them and to pass the class with a decent grade.

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<p>In this case, I am not comparing just using the M.R.'s to benching double your weight. I am comparing understanding the M.R.'s to benching double your weight. Like I said, I don't know anybody who actually understands the M.R.'s. I certainly don't. </p>

<p>Now, I agree with you that you don't really need to understand the M.R.'s to use them and get a decent grade in the class. In fact, that is precisely what I did! But that simply illustrates my entire point: what's the point of teaching something if your students are not going to be able to actually understand what you are teaching? Or, put another way, what goal is really served if the students end up 'using' the equations just to pass the class without actually understanding what the equations mean? Is this just a game? Should we just be given a bunch of equations and just be asked to manipulate them without understanding what the equations actually mean? Does that sound like a useful education to you? Again, if I just wanted to manipulate a bunch of math equations that don't mean anything (or whose meaning I don't understand), I would have been a math major. </p>

<p>I don't think it is such a radical notion for engineering students to be provided with equations whose meaning they can actually understand. Again, we are not math majors. We are engineers. Math is just supposed to be a tool to help us to understand engineering phenomenon. It is a means to an ends. The problem is when math becomes the ends in itself: when even your very best students are relegated to just manipulating and deriving a bunch of equations without actually understanding what they mean. </p>

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It seems like this whole thread has just become a large complaint about the Maxwell Relations.

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<p>People keep misunderstanding my point regarding the M.R.'s, which is why I have to keep coming back to that example over and over again. But the M.R.'s are hardly my only example. There are plenty of other cases where math was taught just for the sake of math, with no clear connection to actual engineering problems. </p>

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Maybe I'm just being picking on a silly detail in your argument, but really, compared to the classes in a graduate prep. course in mathematics, engineering classes have little mathematical content. Engineering is way less theoretical than CS/math/physics.

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<p>Nobody is disputing that the CS/math/physics majors have to deal with more math than do the engineers. The question is, is the math content in engineering programs appropriate, regardless of how much math other majors may have. I would argue that the answer in many cases is 'no'.</p>

<p>In your case, you seem to be in a program that does not stress mathematical theory so heavily, and for that, I am happy for you. However, I am simply pointing out that not all of us had it so lucky. </p>

<p>More importantly, I am asking are we really graduating the right kind of engineering student - that is, somebody who actually knows how to build technologies? The fact is, many (probably most) engineering programs don't really teach you much about real-world engineering. You don't really design very much (if anything at all) until perhaps your senior design course, and even then, you may not end up designing very much. For example, if you are put on a student team where other students want to complete most of the design then your individual design responsibilities may be quite low and in fact, may end up dealing with non-design features such as the project budget (which is really a finance task, not a design task). Most engineering courses do not actually require you to build anything, yet that is probably the best way to teach actual engineering skills. </p>

<p>Like I said, I am objecting to the idea of teaching topics like the M.R.'s. What I am saying is that you should then immediately afterwards show the students why they are useful, preferably through hands-on tasks. For example, teach the M.R.'s and the Bridgman's Equations and the Arrow of Time - and then have the students try to build a working heat engine. Teach the N.S. equations - and then have your students run some actual fluid mechanics experiments. Let them try to build an efficient hydrofoil. Let them try to manipulate a system that demonstrates laminar vs. turbulent flow.</p>

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Hmm..., sometimes that's not very fair. I imagine that some stories in engineering are long ones, and you need to be patient and wade through some theory before you can get a good answer to the question "how does this technology work?" Without the theory, the answer you get to that question is superficial and can be had by reading a popular science magazine article. I can see how engineering students can be short-sighted and dismiss difficult topics as being not useful.

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<p>Nobody is saying that all difficult topics aren't useful. For example, I haven't said a single discouraging word about control theory, which is also a fiendishly difficult topic. But it is a difficult topic that is not only clearly useful, but more importantly, the students finished the course knowing full well what the uses were. What helped immensely was that the course was coupled with a lab where students gained hands-on experience in building real-world control systems. </p>

<p>But that simply illustrates what I have been saying all along. Engineering courses need to be useful, meaning not only does the topic itself have useful applications, but that the students should be taught what those applications are. When students are never shown why they are learning something, they tend not to learn very much and inevitably begin to treat the process as nothing more than a game. </p>

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Also, I understand that having the majority of the class receive a 30% on an exam is pretty ridiculous because that means 70% of the material for the average student was not understood.

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<p>Actually, I was the one who got the 30%. The mean of the class was a 25%. Hence, I did "very well" on that exam, because I clearly beat the average student. But I still had barely any idea of what was going on. But that doesn't matter, right? All that matters is that the average student knew even less than I did. </p>

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I agree that it is a shame that this occurs, but it's outrageous to say something does not belong as part of the main curriculum just because the majority do not understand it well enough to get over 30%. There is a problem for sure and I don't have the answer to how to fix the problem, but I don't feel like the solution is to make something an elective because the majority struggle with the material.

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<p>To be clear, this happened at one of the top engineering schools in the world (I won't say which, but surely many of you can figure it out). Hence, we weren't exactly a bunch of average Joe's - we were a collection of some of the best engineering students in the world. Yet, even so, the average class score was only a 25%. When that happens, I think that clearly indicates that the material is just too hard. </p>

<p>I'll give you another example. My brother went to Caltech, whose student body has the highest average SAT score of any school in the country. Yet Caltech is also infamous for its grinding difficulty, and my brother reportedly took numerous exams for which the even the top score would still be under 50%. Come on, when even the best students at a school like Caltech don't understand the majority of the material, I think that clearly indicates that what you are teaching is just too hard. I mean, seriously, in the real world, what company is going to be building projects that are so difficult that even the best engineers are going to make mistakes most of the time? </p>

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Before the concept of current and all that other good stuff was discovered, what use did engineers/scientists have with the theories behind electricity and magnetism? Should engineers have continued to focus on fire because that was the best technology of the time? It was the hard work of the scientists and engineers to make new theories and new technologies that helped make electricity come to life and all the other applications that followed, like induction, shielding, etc. Most engineers will make the technology of now and the near future for the most part, but making something an elective will only limit the opportunity for drastic innovation to occur.

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<p>Well, since you brought it up, let me walk you through a bit of history of electromagnetism. The fact is, what you described is in fact what did occur: engineers did in fact focus on fire (or, more specifically, the steam engine). Even after the discovery of the Maxwell Equations (not the M.R.'s of thermodynamics infamy but the M.E.'s of EM fame), electromagnetism was still considered to be little more than a scientific curiosity for years. It was only by the end of the 19th century that electrical engineering was even born as an academic discipline distinct from physics, and that was only after the practical applications of electromagnetism were beginning to become clear. Faraday's law of induction was published in 1831, the Maxwell Equations were published in serialized form from 1861-1865 and in unified form in 1873, but the first courses of study of electrical engineering were not offered by any university in the world until Cornell started in 1883 and the first actual standalone department of electrical engineering was not founded until the University of Missouri did so in 1886. </p>

<p>Since I mentioned that the useful application of electromagnetism needed to be demonstrated before formal courses on EE were founded, one might reasonably ask who was discovering such application? The answer is: scientists and researchers. </p>

<p>That speaks to what I have said before. Remember, I am not stopping anybody from learning anything they want to learn. For those people who want to become researchers, they can learn all the theory they want through electives. I have no problem with those people who want to prepare themselves for research careers. </p>

<p>But most engineering jobs are not research jobs, and most engineering students don't want to be researchers. They just want to get those regular non-research engineering jobs. </p>

<p>Heck, even those people who do want to become researchers just need to know the theory that is relevant to their subfield. Again, take that girl who went to finish her engineering PhD in just 3 years, and with a slew of first-author publications by the time she finished. She freely admits that to this day, she still doesn't really understand the M.R.'s. She doesn't understand the Bridgman's Equations. She doesn't really understand the Navier-Stokes equations. And, frankly, she doesn't care. Her specialty is biochemical engineering, specifically the synthesis of biofilms, for which she doesn't really need to know that stuff. If she ends up on a project where that knowledge is necessary, she will surely just get a coauthor to work with her.</p>

<p><< Don't be a ChemE >></p>

<p>why not?</p>

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To be clear, this happened at one of the top engineering schools in the world (I won't say which, but surely many of you can figure it out). Hence, we weren't exactly a bunch of average Joe's - we were a collection of some of the best engineering students in the world. Yet, even so, the average class score was only a 25%. When that happens, I think that clearly indicates that the material is just too hard.

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<p>It might be that the test was too hard, or it just wasn't a good test (in that it did not test what was taught).</p>

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I'll give you another example. My brother went to Caltech, whose student body has the highest average SAT score of any school in the country. Yet Caltech is also infamous for its grinding difficulty, and my brother reportedly took numerous exams for which the even the top score would still be under 50%. Come on, when even the best students at a school like Caltech don't understand the majority of the material, I think that clearly indicates that what you are teaching is just too hard. I mean, seriously, in the real world, what company is going to be building projects that are so difficult that even the best engineers are going to make mistakes most of the time?

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<p>It could be that the students understood the material, but the tests weren't very good (and were weighted heavily). How well did the students do on the problem sets and/or labs? In general these are more representative of what engineers do on a day-to-day basis in their careers.</p>

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It might be that the test was too hard, or it just wasn't a good test (in that it did not test what was taught).

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<p>Yeah, well, that's part of my point: many engineering tests are either too hard or are not well designed. Either way, the actual pedagogical experience is poor.</p>

<p>You never hear of this happening in, say, the humanities. I've never heard of an English exam where the average score was a 25%. </p>

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It could be that the students understood the material, but the tests weren't very good (and were weighted heavily). How well did the students do on the problem sets and/or labs? In general these are more representative of what engineers do on a day-to-day basis in their careers.

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<p>Nah, trust me, in the thermo class, we didn't understand the problem sets either. If anything, the problem sets were actually harder than the exam, if you can believe that. After all, at least in the exam, you had only a few hours before you had to turn in whatever (little) you figured out. But in the homeworks, you could literally burn up hours upon hours upon hours, spinning your wheels and getting nowhere, and still have no idea of what was happening. But of course you wouldn't dare stop because the brutal war of the grade-curve attrition meant that you were afraid that other students might be spending their time (slowly) solving the homework, which would put you in bad shape for the curve. </p>

<p>There were also no labs. There should have been. But there weren't. All you were doing was just manipulating a whole bunch of equations with pen and paper. </p>

<p>Which gets to my answer to the OP's question. Engineering is hard because much of the material is not only extremely difficult to understand, but also poorly connected to real-world engineering. To this day, I still don't believe we actually learned anything by wrestling with those M.R.'s. If anything, we became worse off, as that experience simply increased the cynicism of the students. *Don't know what's going on? Don't understand what the equations mean? Don't know how to apply them to real-world problems? Who cares? You don't need to know. Just complete these endless somersaults of mathematical manipulations so that you can pass the class, and that's all that matters. * That's the sort of attitude that these types of classes fostered.</p>

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Engineering is hard because much of the material is not only extremely difficult to understand, but also poorly connected to real-world engineering.

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What percentage of the classes in your experience would you say had very little connection to real-world applications? It seems for you that it was every other class. </p>

<p>For me, the lack of a connection rarely happened, so it was maybe 5% of my classes, mainly modern physics. Yes I know some of you have said that there are real world applications for it, but the course definitely did not reflect that.</p>

<p>How hard is electrical engineering compared to pharmacy (Pharm D degree)? Also, what is the average starting salary for electrical engineers in Texas that graduated from UT or Texas A&M? How long does it take to get a Masters in electrical engineering?</p>

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How long does it take to get a Masters in electrical engineering?

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<p>It depends on the program. Some programs allow students to complete a master's one year after completion of the bachelor's. There are also some co-op programs where a company pays for your graduate education, and you work for the company during summer break and/or some of the school term. Some schools have programs where students take one or two classes per quarter or semester while working full- or part-time. These tend to take longer than a year, however, but the companies may pay part or all of the tuition as long as some minimum grades are earned.</p>

<p>This entire "Don't need to understand what's going on to pass the class" starts way before college. In my experience, it's the students who actually try to understand the material who do worse because they end up confusing themselves. </p>

<p>In addition, even in high school courses, teachers don't always have answers to when students will ever actually use the material taught. Even worse, when they do have the answers, they don't tell why until you actually use it to do something more complicated or cooler. Then students who didn't learn it the first time around really suffer, making them even less likely to learn. Compounding the problem of fewer engineers is the lack of skills that should have been taught in high school--students have already lost interest and do only what's necessary to pass, never actually learning the material, a habit that hurts when they get somewhere where they can't slide through on "just enough".</p>

<p>Learning for the sake of learning is a great ideal, but I still don't understand why everyone who wants an education must be subjected to "learn for the sake of learning".</p>

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In my experience, it's the students who actually try to understand the material who do worse because they end up confusing themselves.

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<p>You can't be serious. This is absurd. To me, it kind of sounds like an excuse to be a lazy student. I'm not trying to be mean. I just do not see why this could be true.</p>

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In addition, even in high school courses, teachers don't always have answers to when students will ever actually use the material taught. Even worse, when they do have the answers, they don't tell why until you actually use it to do something more complicated or cooler.

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<p>I agree--it would be nice if instructors could provide better motivation for topics later in your academic career. But realistically it sometimes cannot be done. Do you really expect high school math teachers to be familiar with physics and engineering enough to even be able to answer the question "when will we use this?", much less give a satisfying answer to the question. Even if the teacher had perfect information about all of the useful applications of high school mathematics, would he/she be able to give a satisfactory answer to a struggling student? I think the teacher should try, of course, but I don't think that one can expect good or even decent motivation for all topics.</p>

<p>I'm repeating myself in this thread a lot, mostly because I strongly disagree that it is the fault of professors and engineering curricula that a lot of students do so poorly in engineering. Well, let me clarify. Engineering is difficult, so that is a reason why students do so poorly, but I don't think universities make learning the material more difficult than it needs to be. Personally, I think that students' laziness (or just plain lack of interest in engineering) is more to blame.</p>