Story of an Engineering Dropout
I saw this article a few days ago discussing one person’s opinion and experiences of why the number of engineering graduates is dropping in the U.S.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/092105B.html
While I never even thought about dropping out of engineering for another major, I defintely experienced everything within the article, including a 58% Physics II grade that became a B! I also experienced a well known phenomenon at Alabama of taking certain classes during the summer semester so as to pass with a decent grade and not significantly impact your GPA – I attended 1 summer semester for a few such classes between my junior and senior year.
4 Responses to “Story of an Engineering Dropout”
Comment from jank
Time September 29, 2005 at 11:56 am
I caught this when it was published, too, but hadn’t gotten around to ranting on it. The first thing it did was make me thrilled to have gone to Trinity, and not have to deal with the TA hell. We had actual, useful classes taught by actual, useful professors who used texts as references rather than sorce documents. We had the issues with 60% on a test becoming an A or a B, too, but in large part that reflects issues in our testing models (ie, expecting to solve any number of intricate problems in an extremely limited time without any reference materials) than issues with material.
The difference, though, is that we paid for it. The tenured professors were on salary to teach and stay current. Research was done as a side venture, not as a means to generate revenue. Classes were small, project focused, and the entire curriculum was related.
The issue with larger schools as I see it, is a poorly designed mission, or completely deceptive marketing. If the mission is to teach new engineers, then that is where the focus needs to be. If the mission is to generate new, whiz-bang stuff, then that should be the focus.
How to solve it? Turn it over to the market.
Yeah, I’m serious here. Part of the reason that corporate R&D has been cut in recent years is that they face competition for ideas from publicily funded universities. Since the universities don’t need to profit to stay in business, they can make innovation available at a lower cost than industry.
As a consequence, industry has pushed for extended intellectual property protection, with all of its knock-on effects for the death of the public domain.
The other idea I’d throw out there is that “specialization of interest and speed” are counterproductive in the long run. If we are looking for colleges to deliver little more than competent technicians, then, yes, interest and speed are important. But if we are going to look towards higher eductation to continue to fuel America’s future, we need people who can integrate not only the technical side of a subject, but look at the larger picture and the multi-disciplinary effects of ideas.
Comment from stavros
Time September 29, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Your comment on the testing models is spot on… In one of my classes junior year the test was the challenge not the material! There were 3 tests and the final, each was 10 question multiple choice with 4 answers. The answers were all the same number but the decimal place of the units would be different. Showing your work didn’t count for anything. The only good news was you were allowed to bring anything you wanted to class, save another person to use during the test.
Comment from jank
Time September 30, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Hey, that’s your tax dollars at work. Part of my work at Sub School centered around revising our tests and labs to make sure that students could be judged on knowledge by someone who didn’t need to “grade on a curve”. We did it – students were happier because they could actually pass tests without relying on kindness and mercy from graders, instructors were happier because you didn’t need to reconcile 3 grader’s absolute marks to the same curve prior to submitting actual test grades, and we were sending folks to the fleet with a standard set of tangible skills.
But digging back to the root cause of the impending failure of our nation’s engineering base, testing is just a reflection of the larger neglect in teaching quantifible subjects.
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Comment from etrigan
Time September 28, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Somewhere I heard (NPR?) that fewer USians (if we aren’t Americans?) are graduating from college. This article indicates part of the problem. I think education in general has a larger unaddressed problem. At a younger age we learn more — and are capable of learning more — than the people 50 years before us but the education system isn’t keeping up. We (you, jank, kMc and I) were lucky to go where we did in that the Magnet system was a little more geared for customization. By the time a person reaches college, the idea of classes to keep students “well-rounded” should be tossed aside in favor of specialization of interest and speed. One student could take 6 semesters to finish a Physics requirement while a more advanced student would take two. High School should be more like college where core curriculum is based on a subject, but other requirements “well-round” a student. Also, introducng more acceptance of class-jumping would be a good idea. (I started freshman year with the sophomore math class.) Jill Bettinger (and many CMHS Seniors) spent school time off campus taking college courses.