I earned my Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1997.  My Master in Electrical Engineering in 2005.  While earning these degrees I attended 4 schools.  I have a couple of observations…

First Observation: Get Rid of Tests and Finals

Tests and finals are part of every level of education.  They don’t belong in Engineering education. 

The main thing a test grades is a student’s ability to accurately complete an arbitrary problem with very limited resources, no collaboration, and too little time to properly check your work.  Which of these skills is important after you leave school?

Some will argue that tests are the only way to assess a student’s individual ability.  I will admit that I don’t have an entirely adequate replacement.  In my mind that doesn’t justify all the downsides that come with testing.

There are few if any real world situations where your ability to solve an arbitrary problem in 15 minutes or less is important let alone critical.  In fact, the really good engineers that I know do their work thoroughly, double check it thoroughly, and for difficult design or analytical problems they seek out another engineer to double check their work or at least their assumptions.

Second Observation: Good designs are the result of collaboration

Few real world systems are designed by a single person.  Complex systems are tackled by large groups of people working in collaboration.  Student engineers need to learn how to work in teams.  More importantly student engineers need to learn how to quickly, succinctly, and clearly present complex questions and results in Word, PowerPoint, and MathCad documents.

Succinct presentations are a critical skill.  Succinct presentations help you, as an engineer, clarify your thoughts and boil down the issue to the key issue.  I can’t count the number of meetings I’ve sat through that should have been 15 minutes but an hour and a half later we’re still talking about some minor detail on the 3rd slide in the presentation.

More to follow…

The USA needs more engineers and scientists to continue to drive our economy and secure our country.  Our military’s dominance is obviously tied to our technology.  We couldn’t possibly match China man for man due to the shear number of Chinese available to fight.  Our economic dominance is also due to technology.  Technology allows us to have higher levels of productivity and innovation allows us to open up enitrely new markets.  But importing foreign engineers isn’t the answer.

A couple of quick definitions…  Foreign born engineer in this context means a person who was born and primarily raised in foreign country.  Native born engineer in this context means person who was primarily raised in the US.

I work in the Aerospace and Defense industry.  The reasons for wanting native born engineers are obvious.  The security risk posed by a native born engineer is generally considered to be less than a foreign born engineer all other things being equal.

I’ve got a BSME and MSEE and I attended 4 universities to get those degrees.  Most engineering programs are comprised of something like 30% foreign born students; my universities included.  Many of those students would go home if they could have the right kind of life style in their home country.  Many of them have begun going home as the economic conditions in China and India improve.  The money they generate with their brains stays in the country they live in.

We should always encourage the best and brightest to come here, live here, make us stronger.  I am also in favor of teaching engineering to any person from any country that has the drive, brains and money to come get that education.  However, most of the foreign engineers I met were no better or worse than the native born engineers. 

The better the economic conditions at home, the more likely a foreign born engineer is to return to their home country.  If they come here for the education and take that education back to their home country then they have primarily made their home country stronger not the USA.  I have no issue with this but I am primarily concerned with the strength of the USA.  As such, we, in the USA, should be focusing on graduating more native born engineers not recruiting foreign engineers.

I welcome anyone from any country to come and get educated in the USA.  I prefer those that get educated here stay here and contribute.  But I also believe that US efforts and money should be focused on getting more natives to graduate rather than on recruiting engineers from outside the USA.