Not Enough Engineers ?

In the Steve Jobs biography, he lamented to Pres. Obama that he had to build is factories in China because, in part, there was no way he could hire 30,000 supervising engineers.

Poll

What's the best punchline to THAT thread name? ( Not enough engineers?)

Don

A friend of mine always said:
"The only good engineer, drives a train."

well maybe- but I smell prpoganda

Much like the Texas Miracle, we hear ad nauseum about how Perry's creating jobs and the Texas. Media campaign afte media campaign and when fair minded folks take a look the miracle poof dissappear like a MIRAGE. No doubt we need more engineers, but I caution all to beware. In 2009 Greenspan complained bitterly about the protected and gineering employee market with CHEAP H1B1 VISA WORKERS. I am jsut saying.

Do Civil Engineers need three semesters of Calculus? Let's be honest here. Who integrates solutions? Instead of three semesters of Calculus how about a semester of algebra, a semester of geometry, a semester of trigonometry and a semester of analytic geometry? The problem with engineering educations it's too technical especially for civils. American universities are graduating very very narrow minded individuals in engineering. I mean they're being educated for highly theoretical research when most are going into applied engineering fields.

The ebb and flow of potential employment versus graduation rates strikes again. When I enrolled in engineering everyone was being told to look elsewhere because there were big layoffs of engineers by the space race-related companies. Four years later the oil/energy-related companies were hiring all the engineers they could find. Another problem was that many engineers were being taken from the technical field and moved into the management roles as the businesses became more dependent on leadership with technical backgrounds.

Industry has learned to reach out to the most knowledgeable individuals regardless of specific training. The stats provided above show that less than one-third of high school graduates are prepared to take on the science courses required in engineering. Combine that with less than half being prepared for the mathematics required to get a slightly lower percentage yet. Add to that the fact that over half of those starting as engineering students fail to continue past the first two years. Most of those have discovered that they can get grades far lower than they have ever experienced before. They feel like failures. They feel they must change to other curricula where they can once again get the grades they have received in the past. The sad thing is that they give up on their goals. They are not stupid. They just are not superior to many of their classmates as they had been in their earlier years when they were a part of universal classes rather than select classes. Meanwhile, those who are truly exceptional merely use the engineering classes as challenging preparation to go on to apply to law school, medical school and other ultra-select programs at major universities.

Mr. Corner

I believe most Civil Engineering programs require four semesters or about 16 hours of calculus and differential equations. Classes such as statically determinate and statically indeterminate structures will call on the key elements of those prepratory classes. Numerous other higher level classes would be impossible to master without all of the technical base classes first being mastered. The complexity of designing in the real world goes far beyond some of the basic day-to-day things that many think of as common civil engineering functions.

Very Good analysis Holy, I believe Calculus I is the make or break point. In the beginning I had a very hard time grasping the concept of a derivative, but I didn't give up. I worked at it about 8 hours a day, hung out in the math lab until I was blue in the face. When it was said and done I was tutoring the subject. I went back to school later in life and realized I never needed any of that stuff in my day to day work and I totally forgot all of it.

Ralph

But what kind?

There are lots of jobs available for engineers, but what kind of engineer? Electrical, software, controls, etc.

Andy

I Only Had 15 Hours Of Calculus

Neither did I have any calculus in high school. I feel shortchanged.

Engineers continually deal with shorthand solutions that only can be proven or disproven through Calculus, but it is not neccessary to do derivaties etcetera on a daily basis.

Truth be told however. I switched from Engineering Mechanics, very theoretical, to Civil Engineering to avoid 6 more credits of very difficult Calculus. The engineering mechanics professors decide to teach the advanced calculus themselves because the mathematics department was not do a good enough job? At least in Cevil Engineering everything stayed still more or less.

Paul in PA

The Point Of The Post Is...

...that the same precollege education failures affects the survey education field.

Paul in PA

I don't know. Calculus was pretty easy for me. Advanced Physics was my downfall. That and somehow I got thru Chemistry.

The classes you take in college are not necessarily because you will use the course subject at work. Why do universities have flunk out courses?

Many times you are not there to learn Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Statics, Concrete design, etc. You are there to learn to solve problems under pressure.

Gather the data
Consult the experts
Apply the theory
Formulate a solution.

It may seem over simplified, but learning this process is truly what makes college graduates successful.

Calculus is an extremely good course to teach this. If we were concerned about actually taking courses covering things we do in business, we would take courses on employee attitudes and motivation as well as bill collecting.

> I don't know. Calculus was pretty easy for me. Advanced Physics was my downfall. That and somehow I got thru Chemistry.

Couldn't and can't stand chemistry, once I got a good grasp on Calculus, physics was a breeze.

I guess that's what makes us all different.

Cheers

> The classes you take in college are not necessarily because you will use the course subject at work. Why do universities have flunk out courses?
>
> Many times you are not there to learn Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Statics, Concrete design, etc. You are there to learn to solve problems under pressure.
>
> Gather the data
> Consult the experts
> Apply the theory
> Formulate a solution.
>
> It may seem over simplified, but learning this process is truly what makes college graduates successful.
>
>
> Calculus is an extremely good course to teach this. If we were concerned about actually taking courses covering things we do in business, we would take courses on employee attitudes and motivation as well as bill collecting.

I agree you're supposed to go to College to learn how to learn.

Ralph

The Point Of The Post Is...

Much of the first two years of engineering education is designed to find those who have the capacity to train their brains to deal with complexity and structure simultaneously. Advanced engineering physics during the sophomore year is one of those training exercises. Only the rudimentary courses in one's chosen program of study are offered in the first two years. Some courses have three or more prerequisites as they are capstone or senior level challenges. Much of the first two years also prepares one to be able to switch to a different engineering program or several other options for which most of the same courses are required.

The fun begins in the third year. You finally find out why you were forced to take all of those prerequisites. Things start to make sense. A typical first semester of the third year might have five classes similar to the following required: thermodynamics, electronic circuit theory, fluid mechanics, mechanics of materials, soil mechanics, computer programming and engineering economics.

> > The classes you take in college are not necessarily because you will use the course subject at work. Why do universities have flunk out courses?
> >
> > Many times you are not there to learn Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, Statics, Concrete design, etc. You are there to learn to solve problems under pressure.
> >
> > Gather the data
> > Consult the experts
> > Apply the theory
> > Formulate a solution.
> >
> > It may seem over simplified, but learning this process is truly what makes college graduates successful.
> >
> >
> > Calculus is an extremely good course to teach this. If we were concerned about actually taking courses covering things we do in business, we would take courses on employee attitudes and motivation as well as bill collecting.
>
> I agree you're supposed to go to College to learn how to learn.
>
>
> Ralph

Ralph,

Anyone planning to attend college should have learned that LONG BEFORE even applying to college.

>
> Ralph,
>
> Anyone planning to attend college should have learned that LONG BEFORE even applying to college.

Hi Stephen,
The way I see it, learning is a life long process. What I got out of College was an ability to become self sufficient and trust my research in my Professional life. I was then able to use the tools afforded to me to explore many more things on a different plane, which wasn't strictly theoretical.

Ralph

At LSU, graduation rates are improving for Civils ...

... since the university increased its entrance requirements. No longer do we have "flunk-out" courses, and with higher entrance requirements our students are better prepared to matriculate. As a result, LSU Engineers are continuing to increase in graduation rates, and the U.S. News rating for the LSU College of Engineering keeps gettin better as well as our Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

We are now on-track to decrease our required credit hours for graduation down to 120 semester hours.

I now teach Elementary Surveying to 100 new Civil Engineering Juniors every year, and have been doing so at that level for over 5 years. The health of our program is just dandy.

Football ain't too bad, either!