| "I was trying to memorize equations, and engineering’s all about the application, which they really didn’t teach too well" - Matthew Moniz from the article He's absolutely right, and no first year design project is going to fix this if the rest of the degree is structured the same as before. I think the bigger problem is simply that university is the wrong way to teach engineering. I graduated 10 years ago with an EE degree (power systems major) and have worked in the field since, so I'm going to pick on EE here. During my degree, I was mainly taught theoretical models of electrical systems, interspersed with contrived lab experiments. Very few 18 year old kids are going to appreciate the standard equivalent circuit of a transformer or a synchronous machine, less so more abstract things like Fortescue's symmetrical components. Because no kid has ever had much of a chance to look at power transformers or machines in service. Sure, they've seen power lines, but how many have seriously looked closely at them? Or maybe even asked themselves why there are strange, ceramic looking things connected to them? So the first time I saw a real synchronous machine was in a lab. But looking back, it was really a contrived situation, with everything looking like it came out of a Bob the Builder toy set, alligator clips and all. You would never see a machine hooked up like that in real life... but only work experience has taught me that. When I graduated, I was clueless. And in the intervening years since, I came across countless graduates just as clueless as I was. It's almost surely a systemic problem. I only met one graduate who really had a clue, and it turned out that he was a qualified electrician before he did his degree. Which brings me back to my point - IMHO the pure university system is the wrong approach to train engineers. Their premise is that you learn the theory first, then apply it in context after you graduate (with some lame attempts at "practical" teaching in between). This works for some, but I'd wager that for most, it's a waste of time and you'll end up having to learn it all twice. I would prefer to see a hybrid apprenticeship - university system, similar to the way you train tradespeople, but with more coursework components. The work is aligned with the study (or at least the student-apprentice gets exposure to real environments) and modules don't necessarily have to be done in a set order. It could potentially even be set up on a competency basis (like Western Governors University). I don't know if this scheme would work, but I sure know that universities conceived for training academic researchers do not do such a good job of training practicing engineers. |