Confessions of an Engineering Washout

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by decimon, Sep 21, 2005.

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  1. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Continued at TCS.
     
  2. Jack Tracey

    Jack Tracey New Member

    This was an interesting story. Because I have a bit of engineering background (associates degree) I have no trouble believing it. I was unaware, however, that there is a shortage of engineers in the US. Is this specific to a particular branch of engineering or is it an across the board shortage?
    Just curious.
    Jack
     
  3. Jeff Walker

    Jeff Walker New Member

    That accurately summarizes what I saw at the University of Kansas 15 years ago. The teaching was generally better (well, maybe not in the regular calc classes - the honors classes always had real profs), but there was this really strong desire to flunk engineers out.

    A typical curve in a Freshman-Sophomore engineering class would be to fail 10 to 20% of the class. This is probably a good thing as many of the students didn't belong, so why waste their time by passing them through? What was really baffling though was that many upper-level courses used the same curve. So after you have driven 50 to 66% of the engineering students out of the major, you then apply the same curve to the remaining students who actually belong. I saw several really bright students begin to get C grades (or worse in some cases) their junior and senior years. This tended to cause people to burn out on engineering. I knew one EE major who switched from EE to pre-med in their senior year. The grind of the pressure simply drove all the joy out of the subject.

    Maybe this produces good engineers. I really don't know. What I do know is that upper-level math classes tended to use a 25% A, 50% B, 25% C curve (with D's and F's only for the truly unqualified who managed to fake their way through the calculus sequence). This was far friendlier to students and I don't think it really had a detrimental effect on the actual education.
     
  4. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    I think the lack is in American engineers and not engineers in America.

    But the demand for engineers tends to be cyclical. In the '70s a layed-off computer engineer was trying to sell me land in the Poconos (Pennsylvania mountain and resort area). When all else failed he asked if I couldn't find it in my heart to buy from him a plot of land. Sure hope that guy was a better engineer than he was a salesman.
     
  5. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Jeff,

    Any feel for if this is typical of just the "smartypants" engineering schools or of them all? Might a student have a better experience at a Polytechnic U. than at an MIT?

    Doesn't matter to me but it might to others.
     
  6. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Ordinary linear differential equations was MY personal Waterloo. First "C" I ever got in any math or science class. And it was a gift at that, I'm sorry to say.

    So now I'm a lawyer.

    Weirdly, forty years later, I asked myself a trivial question and someone realized that it could be solved only by using a set of differential equations! It's interesting what one retains, you know?
     
  7. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    "somehow", not "someone"
     
  8. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Still with the imaginary friends, eh? :)
     
  9. Jeff Walker

    Jeff Walker New Member

    I suspect so. I get the impression that the major research institutions have a very different attitude than minor engineering colleges. Failure rates become a an easy way to demonstrate that you are an elite program. The Kansas Aerospace, EE, and ChemE programs are very well thought of, for example. And I am certain that those that survive the guantlet are truly excellent engineers. But I would bet that a lot of the caualties (particularly the junior and senior year casualties) would be very good engineers as well. And I suspect that Polytechnic U or Directional State U would work just as well or better for them.

    Maybe it's an issue of being able to properly select the student pool. In graduate degrees, like MD or JD, the elite schools can select the students coming into the program. With an undergraduate program at a public university, there is less opportunity to select the student pool, so they may have to more agressively select after the students are in the program. That just seems like an overly cruel method (excepting those that simply don't belong in engineering, of course).
     
  10. Michael Lloyd

    Michael Lloyd New Member

    Many of the same statements regarding TA's, poor professors, tough exams and the like could have been made about my chemistry program all those years ago. I preservered, however, and ended up with a MSc. I suspect that many people in technical or physical science majors could tell similar stories. Odd how so many offshore students undergo the same programs and yet thrive. Does this speak to the program or the student?
     
  11. little fauss

    little fauss New Member

    A friend of mine with a 140-ish IQ (and a hard worker to boot) ended up 2.8 in EE at the University of Minnesota. It was really frustrating for him. He was working his way through college, so that might have been part of it, but it still was demeaning to him. At least all worked out in the end. That PT job turned into a FT job, and almost a decade later he still works for the same company, and a pretty fair one at that--Unisys. Evidently one of the industry's heavy-hitters wasn't too put off by the "bad" grades. They knew he was well-qualified, they'd seen it themselves every day he clocked in for work.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 21, 2005
  12. Zaya

    Zaya New Member

    my 2 cents

    Let’s face it. High schools do not prepare students for college.
    All this high school honor stuff & AP classes do not say anything.

    Some students, such as the author of this story, are not meant to be in sciences.
     
  13. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    You know, I kinda wish that the ABET BSET program was available to me back in the 'seventies. What it really IS, is an engineering curriculum of the sort that was offered before about 1950. At around that time (read Sputnik and the Soviets) our colleges of engineering "enriched" the engineering degree with GOBS of additional higher math.

    Now, I don't suggest that they shouldn't have. I am in no position to know. But.

    In all but a handfull of states, a BSET and two years of practical experience (and the exam) will qualify one for an EIT certificate followed, one hopes, by a P/E license. MOST engineers don't USE the higher math! For MOST purposes, the problems have been SOLVED.

    My engineer friends confirm this; one friend is an engineer AND a professor in the local University's E/T program. She tells me that her students find jobs RIGHT NOW; that there is a HUGE demand for PRACTICAL, B.S. level engineers who don't need additional training. Her BSET students end up functioning as engineers and being PAID as engineers.

    Makes you think.
     
  14. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    I think that degreed engineering careers probably range from practical, technician-level work to work that borders on theoretical science. Perhaps oddly, BSET programs (RA) suitable to technician-level work seem to have lessened in number as compared to a few decades back. Ditto for AAS/AS technician-level degrees.

    Or is my perception wrong?
     
  15. JLV

    JLV Active Member

    I think the guy was a whiner, and he should have studied something else. Engineering people, in general, don´t begin their studies for the money or for glamour or as an easy way to get out of college with a good degree and a job lined up, but because they love the profession, and love the challenges this job provides. Some of the subjects an engineer must master are not easily to handle or to understand; they are in fact fairly abstract, and not cut for everybody. If the guy didn´t feel comfy there, he/she probably wasn`t supposed to be there in the first place. Just pay attention at the proces he followed to pick that class...... I guarantee that some of the greatest pleasures I have found in my life is to solve complex engineering problems. The more difficult the better. To spend time thinking about something for days and come up with the idea while walking your dog or under the swhower, that´s often the process. In these studies to change a minus sign for a plus while solving a problem can yield an A or an F. As I said it is not for everybody. Definitely not for the article writer.

    This is what the guy think is the solution to his tribulations.

    Give me abreak! :rolleyes:
     
  16. JLV

    JLV Active Member

    You quit too early. You didn´t understand the material or you just simply screwed up the final? If the latter, Geez, man, you should have continued at any expense if that was what you liked.

    Ouyt of curiosity, what was that? Something from Penrose?

    Yes and no. What happens is that most math operations are solved nowadays with software packages like autoCAD, mathlab, ANSYS etc... The engineer doesn´t need to solve the Finite Element of a complex structure, for instance, by hand because the computer does it for him/her. But you NEED to know perfectly your math to fully understand the process behind.
     
  17. JLV

    JLV Active Member

    Re: my 2 cents

    I agree 100% with that. I wanted to be a football (soccer) player, a Latin lover, and spiderman. And look what I became ;) Not everybody can a be a rock star a lawyer or a doctor. That´s something we have to understand and acept it naturally as we go through life.

    On top of that it is true that a good number of students that come from American high schools are simply not well prepared to handle tough calculus or physics classes. If the talent is there then it can be fixed by taking remedial courses. Otherwise, like the author of the article, you´ll have to find someone that explains to you the math "for verbally oriented persons..." :D
     
  18. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

    Re: Re: my 2 cents

    1957
     
  19. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member

  20. JLV

    JLV Active Member

    The type of work that engineering requires has little to do with perspiration. Furthermore, change the word "engineering" for theater, medicine, law, basketball or theology and the sentence retains all its meaning (if any).
     

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