Why The Heck Is Engineering So Hard ?

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
Having done "process engineer" work as a grad student, I'll tell you why this is the case. A typical integrated circuit fabrication lab course will enroll a variety of students, including electrical, chemical, materials, industrial, and chemistry, since not much EE background is required for the course other than a rudimentary understanding of semiconductor devices, e.g. the diode and the MOSFET. Integrated circuit fabrication is a broad interdisciplinary field; for example chemists could work on chemical vapor deposition, materials scientists could work on physical characterization, EEs could work on electrical characterization, industrial engineers could work on improving die yield, chemical engineers could work on molecular beam epitaxy and other deposition methods, etc. Now I don't know if these particular people's Intel jobs were that specialized, but I do agree that the companies are often more interested in your intellectual capacity than your specific course background. This can often be seen in academics as well. Among my peers, there are EE PhD students working for faculty in aero/astro, biomedical, mechanical, materials, chemical, petroleum, CS, and chemistry.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Exactly, im_blue, exactly. That all goes to my central point which is that, quite frankly, you don't really need to know a lot of the things that they teach you as a part of an engineering curriculum. Many of the painful things that you are forced to learn as an engineering student turn out to be a non-value-added exercise, and hence became basically pain for the sake of pain. </p>

<p>By the same logic, this is why so many MIT engineers end up going to consulting or investment banking. Their specific engineering coursework was not valued, what was valued was the general market-signalling aspects of the degree in that it conveyed information about a particular student's general talent level. Nobody at McKinsey gives a hoot about Navier-Stokes equations or fugacity. Trust me on this one. </p>

<p>That therefore means that engineering curriculums can be reformed to eliminate the less value-added activities and replace them with more interesting, more useful activities. Drawing from my example above, I don't see why ChemE's have to do OChem lab. They should learn some OChem, but why are they required to do the lab? How does OChem lab help future chemical engineers, especially the ones who are going to industry? Now, if some of them want to do the lab, then they should be free to do so, but I don't see the value in requiring ALL of them to do the lab. </p>

<p>Furthermore, I am not talking about reducing rigor. You can have a curriculum that is extremely interesting yet also extremely rigorous. For example, if you had ME courses on how to design fast motorcycles or racecars, I am quite sure that a lot of students would find that extremely interesting. If you had EE courses on how to create the best hi-fi audio equipment or electric guitars, again, a lot of people would want to take these courses, including even some non-EE's. </p>

<p>I remember back in the old days how a lot of people I knew were talking about how they wanted to be engineers because they wanted to learn how to build this-and-that cool device. I know one guy who said he wanted to be an ME because he wanted to design his own speedboat. Another guy said he wanted to be an EE because he said he wanted to build his own audio recording studio. Another guy said he wanted to be a ChemE because, heh heh, he said he wanted to start his own microbrewery. </p>

<p>But then they all embarked on their engineering programs and a lot of them realized that those programs were simply not going to teach them what they actually came to learn. Instead, they were going to be forced to do a lot of extremely painful and time-consuming things, and after all that, they STILL were not going to know how to accomplish their goal. Some of them stayed and completed their degrees, but some of them dropped out. In fact, the former EE guy (who dropped out of EE) even told me later that he came to learn how to build and run his own recording studio. He didn't come here to learn all this math. He said he wouldn't mind learning all of the math if they were also going to teach him how to use it to achieve his goal. But they wouldn't do that. So he ended up switching over to a cheesepuff major, graduating. Now, yes, he's running his own small recording studio, and seems to be doing just fine despite not having an EE degree.</p>

[lkf725]

<p>I have just a short comment to add. Many, many jobs have little to do with the college learning but rather depend on experiential training. I learned tons of stuff in pharmacy school (somewhat "vocational", like engineering) that has no application to my hospital pharmacy job. I do not have to synthesize new drugs, graph levels of drugs and their metabolites, experiment on rats or be an epidemiologist. What I do need to do I learned on the job...and this changes on a weekly basis.</p>

<p>Probably getting through such a program guarantees an individual with a certain amount on the ball. I do agree with you though, that they could certainly make the course work more interesting and less painful.</p>

[spe07]

<p>I guess the fundmanetal point of what I have been trying to say is that there is some need in industry and academia for nearly everything that is taught in classes. Sakky keeps bringing up the OChem lab is useless for ChemE. This is probably true for most ChemE jobs but not all, the ChemEs I work with in the biotech industry are dealing with this kind of thing every single day trying to develop new proteins and compounds. </p>

<p>Industry is without a doubt looking for intellectual capacity more than what classes you took, but just about all jobs in these fields will require you to work with at least some subject that you dealt with in your classes. There is some correlation between the curriculum you study and the the job you get. For me, it has primarily been thermodynamics for HVAC stuff, my friend working at IBM has to deal heat transfer and circuits, another working for Lockheed has been dealing with structural stuff. So while 75% (probably even more) of the classes you take will ultimately end up being useless for you, that one class that relates to your industry is needed. </p>

<p>The problem colleges face is that they have to satisfy all of these requirements in the education because chances are someone will need it. Some will do research, some go get PhDs, some work in industry, some leave the field completely to get law degrees or MBA or whatever. And while its a great idea to say have multiple tracks at the university level or teach cool classes that people want like how to build sweet speakers 101, this thought is overly idealistic. Those sweet classes like how to build really fast cars end up being heavily science based because in order to understand how the engine actually works you need some technical background. The jet propulsion class at my school is a perfect example. Freshmen year before people have any idea what engineering is they all want to take the class, only to find out that it deals heavily with thermo and fluids, so in the end out of a class of 80 students 10-15 may take it. And I'm sure you could argue that this class doesn't have to be science based and you can just teach them how a car engine or speaker or recording studio works without the heavy technical aspect of it all, but there would be a tremendous resistance to this within the walls of academia (and probably industry as well). I can't see the inherent structure of the university system fluctuating that much to accomodate this.</p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
I guess the fundmanetal point of what I have been trying to say is that there is some need in industry and academia for nearly everything that is taught in classes. Sakky keeps bringing up the OChem lab is useless for ChemE. This is probably true for most ChemE jobs but not all, the ChemEs I work with in the biotech industry are dealing with this kind of thing every single day trying to develop new proteins and compounds.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The problem with this is that you can then justify anything you want on the grounds that somebody out there in the world might use it. For example, why not force all engineers to become fluent in Chinese? After all, some engineers (especially these days) take jobs in China or otherwise work with suppliers or customers in China. </p>

<p>At some point, you have to set reasonable limits and admit that certain courses are used by so few graduates that they ought to be electives. For example, most ChemE's need to know Thermodynamics. But few ChemE's need to know, yes, OChem Lab. So let's make OChemlab an elective. Those who want to take it can take it. But you shouldn't force everybody to take it. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Those sweet classes like how to build really fast cars end up being heavily science based because in order to understand how the engine actually works you need some technical background.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That would be perfectly fine. In fact that would be an excellent way to deliver a science education. The truth is, most Americans find science/engineering classes extremely boring. And the way it's taught, can you really blame them? Like I said, it seems to me that most eng departments deliberately go out of their way to make the material as boring as possible. It's almost like they don't WANT students to be interested, so they deliberately force students to complete boring assignments that nobody cares about. </p>

<p>So take chemical engineering. Why not take students (who are of legal drinking age) to a brewery and show them what each step of the brewing process does, how it is impacted from both a chemical and an engineering perspective, and then dive deep into the mathematics. There are a LOT of chemical engineering aspects to the art of brewing, ranging from thermodynamics to fluid mechanics to reactor design to separations, and so forth. Or take apart an entire audio stereo system and then teach what each single component does from a signal analysis standpoint. Such a class would necessarily be extremely mathematical and rigorous, and stereo systems are extraordinarily complicated beasts. But at least students would be able to see the value in what they are learning. Those students who took the class would be able to understand how a stereo system really works from a fundamental mathematical standpoint, and those who are really good would be able to build their own cool stereo from constituent parts from Radio Shack and be able to explain why their stereo has such good fidelity, from a fundamental mathematical basis. </p>

<p>Nobody is saying that you should get rid of the math or get rid of the rigor. But what I am saying is that you should tie that stuff into practical and tangible results that students can understand. These students are engineering students. They're not math students or physics students. They're engineering students. Hence, they want to know how to engineer things. If these students really wanted to learn a whole slew of math, then, fine, let them major in math. Engineers are just supposed to use math as a tool to help them engineer. You don't just do painful math just for the sake of math. </p>

<p>Yet right now, what do you end up with? I just talked to a guy who just graduated (last month) with a degree in EE. In fact, he was one of the top students in his class - in fact, so good, that he's going to go to MIT to get his PhD. But what does he know how to do? Can he build his own stereo system? No. Can he build his own television? No. Can he build his own telephone? No. Can he build his own radio? No. In fact, he admitted that he doesn't really know how to create anything at all. But he's really really really good at doing math. </p>

<p>
[quote]
there would be a tremendous resistance to this within the walls of academia (and probably industry as well). I can't see the inherent structure of the university system fluctuating that much to accomodate this.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think you just hit upon the crux of the matter. It's not that they can't teach you things in a more interesting, less painful manner. It's that they don't WANT to. There's a big difference between "can't" and "don't want to". The current process reminds me of other historical practices that were a net negative to society. Such as slavery. Such as Chinese foot-binding. Such as suttee (the practice of Indian widows immolating themselves on their dead husbands' funeral pyres). In all of these practices, the society itself refused to end the practice, so an outside party had to forcibly end it. </p>

<p>In the case of engineering, I think this is the case where the government has to step in to enact policies to make engineering more interesting and less painful. That is, if the government really wants more Americans to study engineering, as the government says it does. Now, if the government doesn't really want that, then fair enough, then we'll simply have to put up with the present state of few Americans wanting to study engineering.</p>

[spe07]

<p>
[quote]
At some point, you have to set reasonable limits and admit that certain courses are used by so few graduates that they ought to be electives. For example, most ChemE's need to know Thermodynamics. But few ChemE's need to know, yes, OChem Lab. So let's make OChemlab an elective. Those who want to take it can take it. But you shouldn't force everybody to take it.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I honestly think that ABET has done a decent job with setting these limitations that acts as a guide to students, without it you would be forcing sophomores to decide what classes are important to an engineering career, because frankly, you and I both know that advising in colleges is marginal at best. It is definately not perfect and does need to be constantly evaluated, but I don't think it does that bad a job.</p>

<p>
[quote]
That would be perfectly fine. In fact that would be an excellent way to deliver a science education.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I completely agree with all that you have said. Academia should try to make engineering enjoyable. But I think things are changing, albeit very slowly. All the good qualities that engineering programs should have are currently present at my school. We have car engine labs, jet engine labs, field trips to government agencies and high tech aerospace firms. So it does exist out there, not nearly as much as it should though.</p>

[GLOBALTRAVELER]

<p>Let me just say this after years in the technical corporate world...</p>

<p>It maybe an unfair judgement, but companies still think that if you can major in engineering/mathematics/physics...you can do most anything they throw at you.</p>

<p>Trust me, I have heard the whispers.</p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
I honestly think that ABET has done a decent job with setting these limitations that acts as a guide to students, without it you would be forcing sophomores to decide what classes are important to an engineering career, because frankly, you and I both know that advising in colleges is marginal at best. It is definately not perfect and does need to be constantly evaluated, but I don't think it does that bad a job.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think you just hit upon another aspect of the problem. Why does every single program have to necessarily be ABET-accredited? As we have seen, there are plenty of people who just want to study engineering for personal interest but don't actually intend to work as engineers in an ABET-accredited environment. For example, all of those MIT/Stanford engineers who end up in consulting or banking, or the guy who just wants to learn how to run his own recording studio in his spare time. So why not have two tracks - one that is ABET accredited, and one that isn't? Harvard does this. Even Berkeley does this with CS (Berkeley has an accredited BS program in EECS, and an unaccredited BA program in CS). The unaccredited track would be freer and allow students to take courses that they actually think are interesting. </p>

<p>
[quote]
I completely agree with all that you have said. Academia should try to make engineering enjoyable. But I think things are changing, albeit very slowly. All the good qualities that engineering programs should have are currently present at my school. We have car engine labs, jet engine labs, field trips to government agencies and high tech aerospace firms. So it does exist out there, not nearly as much as it should though.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I think much of the problem is that many engineering profs at the top research schools have never actually worked a day in their lives as "real" engineers. Instead, they've spent their whole lives in research and academia. But those are fields that are highly unrepresentative of what most working engineers do for a living. </p>

<p>It would be nice if engineering departments had more instructors who actually had extensive experience in industry. A class on Chemical Separations Processes would most likely be far more interesting if it was taught by somebody who actually worked in an oil refinery for 20 years than by a prof who has only dealt with the theory. </p>

<p>Now, I'm speculating here, but I suspect that engineering departments don't really want their field to be interesting for fear that if they did make it interesting, that would attract more students, which would mean more graduates, which would therefore reduce engineering salaries. </p>

<p>If this is true, then this is wrong-headed on because it discounts the market-expanding aspect of increasing interest. If Americans in general became more interested in engineering, then that would foster a greater pace of technological development which would increase the number of total engineering jobs out there. Right now most Americans simply see science and engineering as "uncool", and most technological innovation within the US has been developed either by people seen as uncool nerds (i.e. Bill Gates), or by immigrants. The most talented Americans are more attracted to jobs in consulting, banking, law, medicine and the like. Furthermore, a lot of Americans are far more drawn to careers in pop culture, like becoming the next American Idol or the next LeBron James, than into technical careers. That's because pop culture is considered to be 'cool'. Even somebody like Paris Hilton can make millions of dollars despite having no discernable talent whatsoever, but just by being involved in the pop culture industry. If engineering could be considered to be 'cool', then the market for engineering would expand dramatically. The major problem, so it seems, is that present-day engineering departments just don't WANT engineering to be cool.</p>

[lkf725]

<p>Globaltraveler,
That would be good news! I have been a little worried because some have posted that after about ten years of work, an engineer is dead in the water as his skills become obsolete. On the contrary, the engineers I know are some of the best-read, most versatile people I know. So I'm glad to hear engineering isn't a career death sentence!</p>

[Dirt_McGirt]

<p>You compared engineering curriculum to slavery and foot-binding. Come on. That's outrageous.</p>

[Dirt_McGirt]

<p>Your friend in EE can't make a radio, but I'd bet he could learn that super quick. Some guy that went to technical school could build said radio. He would be **** out of luck when it comes to truly understanding whats going on or coming up with a new kind of technology. Engineering isn't a vocational program, it gives you background knowledge and tools for the future.</p>

[Dirt_McGirt]

<p>I also wouldn't look to Harvard for engineering tactics. Their program barely exists. They have CS and a degree called engineering sciences. Not quite what I would call well-developed.</p>

[Mr_Payne]

<p>Sakky, my school offers most of the electives you are talking about. Hell, for ME we have an Acoustics class, Internal Combustion Engine Class, Turbine Class, Single Track Vehicle Design Class, Racecar Vehicle Dynamics Class, etc. These things are very applied and we can choose to do them if we want. I really don't think it would be wise to start eliminating Thermal Engineering and/or Fluids II, etc. Considering most students don't know where they will end up working. If companies <em>expect</em> students to have the knowledge schools should teach it.</p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
You compared engineering curriculum to slavery and foot-binding. Come on. That's outrageous.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am deliberately using a high-profile example to prove a point - that I believe that the culture of engineering education is riven with inertia. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Your friend in EE can't make a radio, but I'd bet he could learn that super quick. Some guy that went to technical school could build said radio. He would be **** out of luck when it comes to truly understanding whats going on or coming up with a new kind of technology. Engineering isn't a vocational program, it gives you background knowledge and tools for the future

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But your assumption is that engineering education is the best way to achieve said new technologies. Why do you assume so? Like I said, many of the newest commercial inventions were created by people who had no college degree at all.</p>

<p>Look, Dirt, you said it yourself, most engineering jobs are really not that hard to do. We've reached a point where many engineering degree programs are actually harder than the jobs themselves, and there's something very odd a situation like that. Not to mention a major economic inefficiency, which is what Sowell has pointed out.</p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
I also wouldn't look to Harvard for engineering tactics. Their program barely exists. They have CS and a degree called engineering sciences. Not quite what I would call well-developed

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Harvard engineering is ranked somewhere in the 20's. That's pretty darn good, considering the fact that there are literally hundreds of engineering programs out there, most of them being no-name programs. So if Harvard's is not well-developed, then what about all of those programs ranked lower than Harvard's? I suppose they are really not well-developed.</p>

<p>Furthermore, what's so 'wrong' about having a program called engineering sciences? It's ABET accredited. I don't see why it would be any worse than all of those no-name programs that are also ABET accredited. </p>

<p>If Harvards "engineering sciences" program is not well developed, then what about Caltech's "engineering and applied sciences" (EAS)? Caltech only formally hands out 3 kinds of engineering bachelor's degrees in specific disciplines - EE, ChemE, and (recently) ME. All of the rest are wrapped up in EAS. It's impossible to actually get a BS degree in CivilE, MatSci, AeroE, BioE, or any of those other engineering disciplines at Caltech. All you can get is a degree in EAS. </p>

<p>Consider the Caltech commencement data. I defy you to find one person who got an engineering degree in CivilE, Mat Sci. etc. You can't do it. All of those people got degrees in EAS.</p>

<p><a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/06/bs.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[quote]
If companies <em>expect</em> students to have the knowledge schools should teach it.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But don't you see the circular reasoning here? Schools force you to have this knowledge as part of the curricula, and then companies then expect you to have it, which means that schools have to force you to have the knowledge. Hence, it's a completely circular line of thought. The main problem is that nowhere within that circle has anybody ever bothered to justify whether it really makes sense, from a socially optimal standpoint, for people to learn that stuff. Education is not cost-free. People have to spend time learning it. So you have to ask, from a large social view, whether it makes sense for people to be spending their time learning that stuff.</p>

<p>One proper analogy here would be the mandarin bureaucrats of ancient China, who were selected based on their ability to recite Confucian classics and other texts, as well as skills in the arts and so forth. So, sure, under that system, if you want to be a bureaucrat, then you have to learn those things. But nobody ever showed why it was optimal for China to select its civil servants based on these skills. In fact, history showed that it was clearly suboptimal as bureaucrats became a strong reactionary force against the modernization of China, and retarded China's economic and technological development - which the people of China dearly paid for when China became subjected to the superior military technology of the West and Japan during the 1800's and early 1900's. </p>

<p>Nobody is disputing that there ought to be engineering education. The issue it to deliver the OPTIMAL kind of engineering education, that is, the one that provides the most benefit to society at the least cost. Clearly when you have ChemE's forced to take useless OChem labs, we are not at the optimal point. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, my school offers most of the electives you are talking about. Hell, for ME we have an Acoustics class, Internal Combustion Engine Class, Turbine Class, Single Track Vehicle Design Class, Racecar Vehicle Dynamics Class, etc. These things are very applied and we can choose to do them if we want

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Good for you! Then that begs the question of why don't other schools do that. </p>

<p>For example, here are the MIT and Caltech course catalogs. I defy you to find a class that has to do with racecar design. You can't do it. Yet these are supposed to be 2 of the elite ME schools in the world. </p>

<p><a href="http://student.mit.edu/@7391052.29992/catalog/m2a.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://student.mit.edu/@7391052.29992/catalog/m2a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/courses/listing/me.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://pr.caltech.edu/catalog/courses/listing/me.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

[aibarr]

<p>Really? Engineering jobs aren't that hard to do?</p>

<p>I've got to admit, that's what I thought when I started my job, that school was going to be way tougher than anything I'd encounter in practice, but I was darned wrong... I'm dredging up equations and concepts that I'd long since forgotten, and I'm learning new stuff all the time.</p>

<p>Perhaps I've got a highly demanding job, but I'm not all that sure that I do... <sarcasm>I mean, I <em>am</em> juuuust a civil engineer, albeit a structural one...</sarcasm> ;)</p>

<p>Anybody else who's in the industry concur that engineering jobs aren't the easy, simplistically practical, trivial problem-solving careers that they're implied to be here...? Heck, <em>I</em> can barely understand the complexities of the projects that I work on when I start with them, and I can't imagine letting an academ loose on them.</p>

[monydad]

<p>It depends completely on the nature of your practice; where you are on the engineering "food chain". People at the front end, making the fundamental building blocks/ equipment, use a great deal of the fundamental theory. many others use the equipment the first group of engineers produce as building blocks to incorporate into larger systems. This latter group is further removed from the fundamental physics, and more into design issues. Then there are project engineers who spec out whole systems to this second group, and then make sure the systems work as specified.</p>

<p>For example, there are engineers who design electromechanical relays, from first principles of engineering. Very challenging, I would think. There are other engineers who specify and purchase these relays to incorporate into various systems they are designing. They are concerned with the I/O properties of the relays and not so much the physics of their design.</p>

<p>Each group of engineers faces their own sets of complexities and challenges, but they are not all identically the same. It can be very hard, and intellectually challenging, to design a large system, incorporating numerous building blocks, within a very short time frame and within a specified budget. Even if you don't formulate and solve many equations in the process.</p>

[sakky]

<p>
[quote]
Really? Engineering jobs aren't that hard to do?</p>

<p>I've got to admit, that's what I thought when I started my job, that school was going to be way tougher than anything I'd encounter in practice, but I was darned wrong... I'm dredging up equations and concepts that I'd long since forgotten, and I'm learning new stuff all the time.</p>

<p>Perhaps I've got a highly demanding job, but I'm not all that sure that I do... <sarcasm>I mean, I <em>am</em> juuuust a civil engineer, albeit a structural one...</sarcasm> </p>

<p>Anybody else who's in the industry concur that engineering jobs aren't the easy, simplistically practical, trivial problem-solving careers that they're implied to be here...? Heck, <em>I</em> can barely understand the complexities of the projects that I work on when I start with them, and I can't imagine letting an academ loose on them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What I meant is that engineering jobs are often times not as hard as engineering coursework itself, particularly at the top schools. To wit: many people who flunk out of engineering at a school like MIT could be perfectly serviceable engineers. They're just not good enough to get an engineering degree FROM MIT. The same could be said for many of the other rigorous engineering schools - Caltech, Georgia Tech, Berkeley, Illinois, etc. </p>

<p>But that's really a side issue to my main point here. My main point is not that not only is engineering coursework difficult, but in many cases, it is difficult AND NOT USEFUL. I don't think anybody here has a problem with difficult coursework as long as it is useful. The problem is that a lot of it, frankly, isn't. </p>

<p>And I think a lot of engineering students, deep down, know this. People see large engineering companies hiring people who aren't even engineers, like Intel who hired to be process engineers that girl who majored in chemistry, and, I just recently found out, just hired another girl who majored in physics. Or if they did major in engineering, then they may have majored in many disparate versions of engineering - i.e. Boeing hiring an Engineering Systems major, a ME, and a MatSci major all for the same job. Or like Dell, who just hired 3 people, one who majored in ME, another who majored in Engineering Systems, and another who majored in Civil Engineering (!), although granted, that last girl was actually sponsored by Dell, so I suppose you could say that she wasn't 'really hired', but was already a Dell employee. Although that does beg the question of why exactly Dell was sponsoring somebody to study civil engineering. It might make sense if they were all being tasked to do different assignments. But they're not. They're all assigned to do basically the same job. </p>

<p>It is precisely this sort of thing that breeds cynicism within the ranks. Students ask themselves "Why am I struggling through this extremely difficult and painful class when I may end up with the exact same job as somebody who never took it at all?" And rightfully so. Students quickly pick up on the fact that they just don't need to know a lot of the things that their courses are trying to teach them. That is a powerful demoralizer. Not only that, but it tends to encourage all of the gaming and the cheating that goes on. A lot of students resolve to simply pass the classes without really learning anything, because they can see that they don't really NEED to know it, because others who don't know it seem to be doing perfectly fine in terms of getting jobs. Hence, students begin to see coursework as merely an obstacle that is blocking them from getting a job and not something that carries inherent value. Frankly speaking, they have a point. It's sad to say, but it's true. </p>

<p>What I am saying is that engineering departments ought to optimize their curriculas to make sure that what they are teaching is USEFUL. It's not really the difficulty of engineering coursework that is the problem. Rather, it's the LACK OF UTILITY of much of the coursework that demoralizes students. </p>

<p>I'll leave you with this final thought. Take the Berkeley ChemE Thermodynamics course. That class is a notorious weeder, probably eliminating about 1/2 of the class. A lot of the Berkeley ChemE graduates end up working in semiconductors, i.e. Intel. How do you think it makes one of those ChemE grads feel to see that Intel also hired, for your same job, a Chemistry major who never had to take Thermodynamics at all? Or, perhaps even more starkly, how about a person who took Thermo, and got weeded out? How do you think THAT person feels to see somebody who never took Thermo getting a Intel process engineering job anyway? Clearly they're all going to ask themselves why they ever had to take Thermo at all. If the employer is not going to care, then why should they?</p>

<p>If employers are going to send the market signal that you don't really need to know certain subjects in order to get hired and/or do the job, that creates a powerful disincentive to learn those subjects.</p>

[aibarr]

<p>Thing is, I'm sitting at work right now, and I've got five textbooks off my shelf and open in front of me. I'm doing way more hand calcs than I thought I'd be doing, and I'm dredging up material from courses that I never thought I'd revisit.</p>

<p>If you'd asked me two months ago whether or not I'd ever use the stuff that I'd learned in school, I'd have shared your thoughts, that nobody actually uses that stuff in real life. But I get out here in the "real world," and they hand me my business cards and set forth problems that are very much like the problems that I worked in my classes.</p>

<p>I'm really quite surprised, but that's how it is for me, at least... I'm using all that stuff. It's incredibly applicable. I'm dredging up both the theoretical and the practical concepts that I learned, I'm crunching numbers, I'm putting them on paper, and I'm relearning everything that I jettisonned in grad school. It goes against everything everyone's told me about engineering, but I'm actually using the stuff I learned.</p>

<p>Anybody else in practice experience this? ...or is it just me?</p>

[jma]

<p>"In the case of engineering, I think this is the case where the government has to step in to enact policies to make engineering more interesting and less painful"</p>

<p>Sakky, I agree with most of your points regarding the existing probelms. However I am not so sure that government intervention in academia is the right way to solve the problems. </p>

<p>The Economist, has had some interesting articles on the differences between American and European higher education. I have to agree with The Economist that European higher education has fallen so far behind America's higher education because of the excessive government influence in Europe compared to in America. </p>

<p>Ultimately, I do not believe that putting legislators in charge of engineering curricula will solve any problems with engineering in America. And even if legislators could temporarily solve problems, I still believe that ultimately, their influence would have a net negative effect. The risks of legislators imposing truly harmful regulations outweighs any potential benefits. I can't imagine a world where we have the government imposing their will on what engineering programs can and cannot teach. This will only stifle future innovation and potential improvements in the system.</p>

[superwizard]

<p>sakky in one of your earlier posts you mention that Stanford's engineering was generally considered more 'humane' than in other top Universities like Caltech and MIT. Would you care to clarify why you believe so? DO you believe other universities should mimic Stanford? I'm going to Stanford next year and I am fearing the immense workload for engineering.</p>