At LSU, graduation rates are improving for Civils ...
I was on the LSU campus in the Spring of 1976. Absolutely beautiful. A few days later I flew back to the igloo capital of the Southern 48 in Michigan. Very depressing.
At LSU, graduation rates are improving for Civils ...
Glad to hear CE's are taking a basic surveying course at LSU. Way too many universities graduate CE's who know NOTHING about surveying. At least they need to know what it is, what to ask for in a survey, what coordinates are, etc.
> 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.
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> 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.
According to my physician son who's undergrad work was a BA in philosophy and a BS in Chemistry, the Med schools don't want undergrads in Engineering as they think that background is too narrow. After spending approximately 35 years in land surveying rubbing shoulders with engineers, I'd have to agree with Med schools.
Engineering education just graduates a lot of iron asses who don't learn how to think. The industry is all boiler plate.
Environmental Engineers
when I graduated from engineering school in 1981, there were electrical, mechanical, chemical & civil engineering.
nowadays it seems that the majority of engineering degrees issued are environmental engineering. Can't see how you can build anything with an environmental engineering degree?
Environmental Engineers Stop Other Engineers From Building
At greater cost to the economy than they can imagine.
Paul in PA
