Old-School Engineering Programs Slow to Change

A column in the Gary Post-Tribune, a paper that covers much of Northwestern Indiana, has a different take on one of the most active academic sectors in the nation. The columnist notes that many companies today are led by engineers, but several of those companies, notably Google, are led by engineering school dropouts who found that the emphasis on the theoretical over the practical was too constricting.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the National Science Foundation reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education that "engineering education's widespread emphasis on theory over practice at many of the nation's 1,740 college-level engineering programs discourages many potential students, while leaving graduates with too little exposure to real-world problems."

The report concluded "engineering programs aren't meeting the needs of students or employers who want a more relevant curriculum." Electrical engineering is at the core of green industry development, an area that needs all the innovative thinkers that can be found.

The two areas most resistant to change are engineering faculties and accreditation agencies. Both seek to reinforce old habits and justify staying with the old curricula. Millions of dollars have been given to universities to diversify their engineering curricula, but have failed to get past the "cultural issues of change," said Sheri Sheppard, vice provost of graduate education at Stanford. "Cultural issues of change" translates into faculty resistance.

One exception is Georgia Tech's biotechnology engineering program. The problem-based approach taken by Tech allows students to take a semester to work on practical problems. One such program focuses on how to keep the blood supply safe from the AIDS virus.

One important benefit of the hands-on approach to engineering is that it attracts more women who normally would not consider it as a career. The breakdown of enrollment in biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech is revealing: 39 percent females, compared to 9 percent in electrical engineering and computer engineering, and 12 percent in mechanical engineering. When you consider the fact that nearly 60% of all students enrolling in college today are women, it won't be long before the engineering field has some gender equity as the fields of law and medicine do today.