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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>