interesting thing about engineering education

So engineers not only have to be right, they have to be right for the right reason. And the "right reason" isn't technical.

I wonder how long before PoMoLitCrit type arguments become established :(

Which is why I cut MIT out of my estate planning... they've gone nutso in the SJW direction :-( ...Jim Thompson

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I'm looking for work... see my website.

Thinking outside the box...producing elegant & economic solutions.

Those sociology types have excellent instincts for following the money.

What you call "social engineering" is what most people would call an attempt to give the usual self-absorbed Aspergers case who turns up for say, software engineering a snowball's chance of succeeding in a world filled with other people who have different needs and ideas than they do. I mean, it is mostly hopeless, but I can't fault them for trying.

The first thing I thought when reading the comments was "I feel sorry for anyone who has to work with these people." Particularly "THE ORIENTALS"

Perhaps you can tell us if it's the same in the States as it is here in England, John. There is a terrific disparity in the syllabuses of public and private schools here. This is a bit awkward because "public schools" here are private, fee-paying institutions, a terrible misnomer I admit, so I'll refer to them as "private schools" and free, open-to-anyone schools as "state schools" so anyone West of the Atlantic Ocean won't get confused. The syllabus of state schools is padded out with so much junk, more concerned with *what* to think than *how* to think. So much is pure Leftist propaganda; subjects that don't advance the students' academic abilities one iota and add zero to the skill set that would enable them to succeed in the real world, get hired and prosper. There is no such padding in the private schools' syllabuses. Instead, students from families with money to burn get a wonderful education which not only equips them for the future, but enables them to make the connections with the children of other wealthy and influential families which should ensure that even if they have poor academic ability, they will find little difficulty in succeeding in well-remunerated professions such as the law, Civil Service, politics, banking, insurance and so on.

I'm kind of guessing this is the case in the US, too?

Pretty stunning, but well expected from the feminist, lefties full of their own personal agenda that now inhabits this universe.

-- Kevin Aylward

In the case of Google engineers pulling down ~150 grand a year, they seem blissfully unaware that nobody gives a shit about their "problems"! ;-)

We have public (State owned) and private universities. The public ones are free or fairly cheap for in-state residents; most private schools are frightfully expensive, like $60K a year for tuition, more for dorms and meals.

Some state schools, like UC Berkeley, UCSD, Cal Poly, are world-class. An EE degree from Berkeley is as good as one from Stanford. We also have a bunch of state colleges that offer 2 and 4-year programs and often act as feeders to the state universities. I don't think that income is dominant in getting a good EE education.

I occasionally interview students and grads, for internships or real jobs. Few EE students or grads understand much about electricity and few can intelligently explain their senior project. I think the EE cirriculum is not rigorous like it used to be, and they can take a lot of non-EE courses that are easy. Electromagnetics, signals-and-systems, control theory are now often electives. They learn to code a lot, too.

Seems to me that there are few kids these days who want to, or can, learn to design real electronics. I nab them when I can, and we teach them what we know.

The idea of sociology types moving into EE education can only make things worse. Or better, I guess, for people like us who design real electronics.

That's a rather rosy spectacled view of public schools here.

NT

It's scary, but then I'm not sure there were many around in my age group either. On my course there were only 2 of us that didn't look like rabbits caught in headlights in the first lab session.

NT

I guess there have always been just a few kids with real talent for electronics. Now there are more desk-fillers maybe. But seriously, how can anyone get an EE degree without understanding filtering and modulation and impulse response and convolution? Or basic electromagnetics?

I wouldn't disagree with what you are saying, but there has always been and always will be a relatively small proportion of people that excel at any given topic. Most will be herd followers, at best.

I once worked at a company which had more than its fair share of /very/ bright employees. We occasionally considered whether we, as interviewers, would have employed some of the other existing employees. In a few cases we humbly concluded that we probably wouldn't have, despite us /knowing/ they were /extremely/ technically competent and innovative.

BTW, as usual the anonymous pseudonym misses the more significant points about UK education. The public (i.e. fee paying) schools are very good at turning out self-confident conformists that can boss other people around; excellent when you were the sole District Officer dispensing justice to natives in the Empire. The other, worrying, trend is the religious schools outside state control; think of madrassahs, and you'll be on the right track.

Well..... I didn't go into the epidemic levels of boy buggering that go on routinely in our public schools, but other than that, the kids learn a lot of very useful stuff. ;-)

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For the avoidance of doubt "schools" in the UK is used for pre university education and "university" or "college" for later.

The exam syllabus has been watered down a lot since my day but that isn't due to Leftist propaganda so much as the poor quality of earlier schooling in some areas. There are plenty of good state schools too but there are also some terrible ones which effectively trash the life chances of anyone unfortunate enough to go to them. It is a postcode lottery and people will move house or fake living at another address to fall into the catchment area of a good (free) state school.

It is invariably the most deprived areas that have the worst schools with the lowest funding.

Also some of the old syllabus is supremely irrelevant like calculations in arcane Imperial units and spherical trig for great circle routes (which was still in the maths syllabus when I did it). Spherical trig isn't even in the astronomy syllabus any more which is ridiculous.

Sample of 1985 vs 2011 questions for maths (Cambridge exam board)

Not surprisingly houses in areas with good state schools sell at a significant premium (again pricing the poor out of the market).

They also spend an enormous amount per head on the best teachers, facilities and equipment as compared to state schools. They also acquire old boy network connections that will get them into the best jobs with or without any talent or aptitude.

He was talking about pre university education. There are just a handful of private universities in the UK. The Russell group comprises the leading research universities and they fight over the best students, then there is a long tail of universities and former further education colleges. Some have particular areas of expertise which make them competitive for some courses even if overall they aren't world class.

There is a huge shortage of quality vocational training for those without an academic bias in contrast to Germany or Japan. Not surprisingly we have skills shortages in engineering as a result.

I think most EE can probably survive without being able to derive Maxwell's equations, but basic active components, networks, digital logic and control theory are essential core components. Numerical analysis is also useful in this era of simulations. I have seen way too many unstable systems of one sort or another teetering on chaotic.

I find it a bit depressing how badly relativity must be taught in EE courses given how many EEs refuse to understand Einstein's theory.

I think that was always the case although it is much harder today for the kids to get any grounding at home by dismantling old CPU boards. The modern multi legged beasts only play ball in very complex circuits unlike the old days when 14 or 16 pin TTL devices could be prized off a scrap board and still work if you were reasonably adept at doing it.

OTOH PCs and the Raspberry Pi and similar cheap devices allow them access to kit that seems inspired by Star Trek.

Depends if they manage to improve user interfaces - engineers are often pretty bad about making their kit easy to use or writing manuals.

More of an excessively pessimistic view of state schools. I am pretty sure if the state schools were allowed to spend as much per pupil as the public (private) schools they would get significantly better results.

There are plenty of good state schools in the UK but there are some pretty awful ones in the poorest areas too. The country is largely run for the benefit of London and the South East and it shows in the pattern of spending. Northern rail electrification was cancelled only last week and in literally the next breath Cross Rail II announced for London.

either. On my course there were only 2 of us that didn't look like rabbits caught in headlights in the first lab session.

Look at how most qualifications work. You only need to know 60% or so of th e material to get one. They're also mostly paper based, meaning if you can regurgitate a suitable answer that's good enough. Eg you might use any one acceptable transistor biasing scheme without knowing them all, or knowing w hich to pick when.

In the lab I guess a lot of people must get a lot of help doing their proje cts, whereas in the 1st lab session I went beyond what was expected to reso lve shortcomings of the task that was set. I just saw it was needed & did i t, was surprised no-one else did and was surprised it wasn't just expected for people to find & solve problems. They were all outputting rubbishy sign als. I suppose it would explain why my sponsor chose to put up with me.

NT

Yes. Does it need to be that way though?

Good employees also require life skills other than engineering, and many fall short. Let's face it if you're a very good engineer it's likely your interaction with the world is not really normal outside of engineering.

It's a point, it's certainly not the point.

NT

that's a childish myth

NT