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Educating the Engineer of 2020:
I am not convinced of this idea. It seems to me a BS degrees in engineering should be a full degree not some “pre” degree like pre-law. Obviously no engineering degree is an invitation to stop learning; life long learning is a requirement whether the engineering degree is earned in 4, 6, 8… years. Improving the life long learning methods is where effort should be focused in my opinion not in making the original degree take longer to earn.
These seem like good ideas to me.
Related: Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond (speech) - Global Engineering Education Study - Educating Scientists and Engineers - Applied Engineering Education - MIT Engineering Education Changes
Other than trying to get people to buy the content that they provide for free I can’t understand why they present the material so poorly online. Once again basic web usability principles are lacking on their site.
While providing information online is better than not doing so, making it very inconvenient so you can’t be said to be withholding information while intentionally making it forcing people to reload each page of a 192 page document is exactly the type to of old thinking that needs to change to move forward. If NAE practices such an old way of thinking in distributing ideas on how to improve in the future that is not a good sign. Who does seem to understand the new world - how about: Public Library of Science - Olin College of Engineering (they actual practice a new way of doing things) - 25 provosts from top universities (I think it is obvious they want usable content published online - not crippled content) - MIT’s Open Courseware.
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January 29th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I disagree on your first comment. There is just too much to learn for a 4-year degree to be sufficient any more. Important basic subjects are being cut and more advanced subjects are short of time to say the least. On top of this, time for electives outside the required curriculum is extremely sparing. The only fellow students I know taking foreign language classes in my curriculum are those with previous degrees that exempt them from the university general education requirements. I think it is not just specialization, but basic skills that are being restricted by the 4-year system. Now I am talking about Mechanical Engineering specifically which is inherently an extremely broad discipline (fluids to solids, nano to macro) so YMMV. I don’t want to see overspecialization or potential students shying away from a longer degree, but I strongly feel that current degrees at schools I am familiar with leave a great deal to be desired, much in the same way that I remember my high school curriculum being gutted. A situation I fear has grown much worse since the implementation of No Child Learns Anything That Won’t Be On The Federal Test. Thoughts?
June 11th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
[...] system to engaging students in actual engineering projects not just problem sets (for example: Educating the Engineer of 2020: NAE Report - Olin Engineering Education Experiment - Changes at MIT for Engineering Education - Educating [...]
December 13th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
This interesting and long report (I have not finished reading it yet - 120 pages) has been completed by the President Emeritus of at The University of Michigan (and current University Professor of Science and Engineering)…
February 9th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
“Basic engineering skills (such as knowledge of the engineering fundamentals) have become commodities that can be provided by lower cost engineers in many countries, and some engineering jobs traditionally done in the U.S. are increasingly done overseas…”