There is an interesting piece in the NY Times about Engineering and Science education. What is most interesting is that it is reflective of today's society rather than the facts.
First, they use the acronym, STEM, for science, technology, engineering and math, and I really do not get that. We always had math in the sciences and I have no idea what technology is. The world is divided into science and engineering. Science looks at primal stuff like chemistry, biology and even math, and engineering uses that stuff to make things. A chemist creates a process and a chem E makes it into a production engine. Simple, clear, direct. This STEM thing must be some Washington type who is trying to sweep every type into a pool. Frankly it is nonsense.
Second, the article states:
“We’re losing an alarming proportion of our nation’s science talent once
the students get to college,” says Mitchell J. Chang, an education
professor at U.C.L.A. who has studied the matter. “It’s not just a K-12
preparation issue.” ....
The bulk of attrition comes in engineering and among pre-med majors, who
typically leave STEM fields if their hopes for medical school fade.
There is no doubt that the main majors are difficult and growing more
complex. Some students still lack math preparation or aren’t willing to
work hard enough.
Other deterrents are the tough freshman classes, typically followed by
two years of fairly abstract courses leading to a senior research or
design project. “It’s dry and hard to get through, so if you can create
an oasis in there, it would be a good thing,” ...
Now let me give some current personal interjections. I wanted to get back some of the Organic Chem I took 50 years ago, yes 50, and so I enrolled in the local Community College, and am taking the course. Yes, it is worse than 50 years ago, we just learn tons of facts, and for me it is not hard since I had all the courses that followed and am doing my own advanced work beyond that level. I just wanted to refresh some ideas. The poor students seem stunned by the collection of facts and the constant harangue from the instructor as to how hard they must work. That was not MIT despite the reputation. There the instructor distilled the facts into a coherent whole, just look at the MIT Open Classroom videos on Freshman Chemistry, no memorization, understanding and applying concepts.
The article continues:
...bailed out of engineering at Notre Dame in the fall of his sophomore
year. He had been the kind of recruit most engineering departments dream
about. He had scored an 800 in math on the SAT and in the 700s in both
reading and writing. He also had taken Calculus BC and five other
Advanced Placement courses at a prep school in Washington, D.C., and had
long planned to major in engineering.
But as ... sat in his mechanics class in 2009, he realized he had
already had enough. “I was trying to memorize equations, and
engineering’s all about the application, which they really didn’t teach
too well,” he says. “It was just like, ‘Do these practice problems, then
you’re on your own.’ ” And as he looked ahead at the curriculum, he did
not see much relief on the horizon.
So ..., a 21-year-old who likes poetry and had enjoyed
introductory psychology, switched to a double major in psychology and
English, where the classes are “a lot more discussion based.” He will
graduate in May and plans to be a clinical psychologist. Of his four
freshman buddies at Notre Dame, one switched to business, another to
music. One of the two who is still in engineering plans to work in
finance after graduation.
This is the problem. First I took the same course almost 50 years ago also. Mechanics does not require memorizing a single thing! You got all the theory in high school. It is applying the ideas to different geometries, moving parts, and just thinking. That is engineering, the difference between science and engineering. If memorizing was required it was either taught improperly or the student perhaps was never meant for engineering in the first place.
How about looking at the excess pampering of students, the telling them that they are all perfect. They are NOT, some are just lazy, even dumb. But when one looks at percentages from now and back 50 years one sees that we were much more productive then, was it the draft, the fact that without an education we would at best pick up trash, or worse work on Madison Avenue! That was before Wall Street for the young folks.
The article continues:
“They learn how to work with their hands, how to program the robot and
how to work with design constraints,” he says. But he also says it’s
inevitable that students will be lost. Some new students do not have a
good feel for how deeply technical engineering is. Other bright students
may have breezed through high school without developing disciplined
habits. By contrast, students in China and India focus relentlessly on
math and science from an early age.
I have had many of those recent Chinese students at MIT. They are all back somewhere else, never stayed here thanks to our Government, but they had the basics and we then applied it. It seems that the approach is to "play" without principles. I do not believe that such an approach works, especially based upon experience. Engineers also look at large systems, and as such they must be able to abstract reality while retaining all of its key elements. Then reconstruct it and tell how it works and how to control it. That requires an ability to deal with a broad set of fields and at two levels, levels of significant sophistication such as stochastic systems and then at levels of conveying that to people whose concurrence you may need, such as MBAs who have no idea what you may be talking about in reality. Thus the challenge for the engineer is dealing with the facts properly and then converting that reality into a consistent and truthful yet understandable simplicity.
Thus the attempt to make the Freshman year one of fun and games is in my view a fatal error. A good college is not a High School. MIT understands that and has for decades. Thus Pass/Fail. At MIT there is very few places to hide, there are however many places to explore and find that resonance that makes for an enjoyable and productive career. It often is the mentoring of people who are mid or later career that helps the student, seeing where they may be going.
I am reminded of one of my student dinners, we had an MIT grad, about ten years out, CEO of his own start up. The students after the dinner said as we walked back to Campus:
"We did not know an engineer could run his own company? We thought you had to get some MBA person."
I turned somewhat miffed and said to the Chinese mostly students in my oft times abrupt New York manner:
"What do I look like, chopped liver. Besides look who runs your country, all engineers, they are not chopped liver either!"
Try and translate that into Mandarin!
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