The Big Ferment in Engineering Education

Associate Editor, International Science and Technology

A FEW years ago, a liberal arts college faced the recurring problem of what to do with its school of engineering. Its dean was about to retire and perhaps some changes should be made. The school's board of overseers was asked to advise. Their recommendations were heeded, but perhaps reluctantly. An overseer said: "I really believe they hoped we would recommend that the school of engineering be abolished."

This story symbolizes a major difficulty of engineering education. Years ago a liberal arts college could carry with it a school of engineering. Nowadays, it's like having an extravagant wife, but not as much fun.

Engineering, is probably the most expensive kind of education, the hardest and costliest to keep up to date, and, lately, a victim of undergraduate scorn. I talked recently with engineers, scitists, students, and school administrators hoping to discover what has gone wrong and what is needed to rejuvenate engineering education.

I believe the trouble started when engineering education drifted away from its world - the world of change. Engineering, the bridge between science and the everyday world, is supposed to be change, yet ironically its resistance to change has fostered unnatural barriers that hinder the efficient transfer of new ideas from scientist to engineer to industry.

Why has this happened? Partly because of inertia or — to be brutal - laziness. It is easier to teach thermodynamics in 1964 as it was taught in 1963. A classmate of mine of fifteen years ago, now an engineering teacher, says: "If you earned your Ph.D. in 1910, you could teach for the next thirty years on what you had learned. Now you can't go five. I find that I can't teach the same thermo course two years running, because the field is changing too fast."

But for every professor whose course does change from year to year, I fear there is another fellow somewhere who is teaching thermo circa 1948 — perhaps even unaware of the profound effects of, say, magnetohydrodynamics on his field of proficiency. This may account, at least in part, for the dilemma of so many young engineers: men not six years out of school who find that their brand of engineering is obsolete and who now must be "retreaded" if they are to stay in engineering. What is demanded, it seems to me, is a vast change in the way engineering is henceforth to be taught - and where it will be taught. Perhaps any school that wishes its engineering school could be abolished should abolish it ... unless it intends - and can afford - to make engineering education a strong academic activity.

DEAN Dale Corson of Cornell's College of Engineering recommends the "clinical" approach: "Great engineers should be brought to the classroom to teach the design and synthesis skills - the trading off of technical and economic factors, which is at the heart of any engineering design."

This begins to get at the problem. If great engineers who are also great teachers are imported continuously and the barriers around them are so porous that new ideas can seep to other rooms - excellent. But invite a great engineer to teach for a year and you probably must pay him a great engineer's salary, i.e., probably more than anybody else on campus. And if you want ten such men around . . .

And what about laboratories equipped for the engineering described by the great engineers? The old materials-testing apparatus won't do. It seems to me that this means that the already large schools of engineering will continue to grow. On campuses where it has never been more than a fringe activity, engineering will decline. It also suggests that good undergraduate engineering education will disappear at schools that fail to provide good graduate engineering education.

Years ago some little schools deliberately de-emphasized graduate education. They said that it detracted from their mission of providing "four years of good basic engineering preparation." (You could go to MIT or CalTech after-ward.) But technology is moving too fast to tolerate this separate-but-better doctrine. Nowadays schools with strong graduate programs frequently are better places for undergraduate study as well. Some little schools, and some departments within big schools, have lost touch. They haven't been teaching fundamental courses in feedback control, information theory, computer technology, plasma physics, computer-aided design, and the dozens of other post-World War II disciplines.

Meanwhile, those schools - big and small - that were developing strong graduate programs and generating the ideas that made postwar technology accelerate, were experiencing this technological upheaval in their undergraduate programs. In many cases their faculties created the new ideas. This, in turn, put pressure on the physics departments of engineering schools to include some of these modern concepts.

At MIT the undergraduate upheaval happened first in electrical engineering. Engineering Dean Gordon Brown, head of the department a decade ago, felt that an engineering school could provide undergraduate education only through a "close faculty-student association in research, a strong program for teaching advanced concepts in graduate courses, and a faculty that is enthusiastic about integrating these ideas meaningfully and teaching them coherently and stimulatingly to undergraduates."

This idea may sound perfectly logical today, but it was not popular in the early 50's. It meant the end of old-style electrical engineering - with its DC machinery and power-plant design courses, dear to the hearts of the power engineer and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Instead, Brown and his faculty would teach more science: "During his early training, the engineering student . . . [must] gain essentially the same mastery of the basic sciences as ... a scientist."

In time, as Brown puts it, the AIEE "came around." But for a while it appeared the old-style power engineers of AIEE might refuse to accredit the new program. Indeed, there is still some question whether a less powerful school than MIT could have worked this change that affected engineering education as few others ever had. To be sure, great areas of engineering education remain untouched. Nonetheless, the trend at many schools - notably Stanford, MIT, CalTech among others — is toward more science and math.

But not all educators agree. "I believe the trend in this country toward engineering science at the expense of engineering is a very dangerous one," says Dartmouth's Dean of Engineering Myron Tribus. He wants his engineering candidate to show he can "synthesize optimally and use his resources economically. Once he has learned this ... then we think he will master all the science he needs. But if he wants only to master the science and contribute to it - but not use it - then we think he ought not call himself an engineer."

Similar feelings exist at UCLA. Says Prof. Allen Rosenstein: "The use of the name 'engineering science' is particularly unfortunate, since it further confuses the public image of engineering. Design is the essence of engineering. It should be the keystone of engineering education. Here the problems are usually more complex and more urgent than those of present-day pure scientific research." It is not mere coincidence that Rosenstein's and Tribus' philosophies jibe. Before he moved to Dartmouth in 1960 Tribus worked with Rosenstein and Daniel Rosenthal in a three-year examination of the UCLA engineering curriculum. One of their conclusions: "We believe it is possible to synthesize an engineering curriculum that teaches human values, that offers a strong fundamental science stem, and yet also contains a well-organized and articulated engineering design experience."

MANY educators are even more critical of UCLA's effort than of the math-science emphasis at Stanford, MIT, and CalTech. This criticism is directed not at the design emphasis, but instead at the "unified" engineering curriculum UCLA has had since the late 1940'5. This was the idea of Dean L. M. K. Boelter who believed - and believes - "that specialization in engineering can be postponed until after the completion of the undergraduate curriculum." UCLA does not confer specialized degrees in chemical engineering, civil, electrical, etc., but only in "engineering." Critics say this fails to inspire a strong research activity and thus fails to give the undergraduate program new ideas to feed on. But UCLA's Rosenstein says that the unified curriculum gives the student a "fine foundation - organized around the unifying elements that derive, from math, science, the humanities, and engineering. We show him the common elements underlying electrical, mechanical, civil, structural, and so on, and prepare him to undertake problems in a broad spectrum without being fooled by the specialized languages that have developed in the specialized disciplines."

The science-math schools - notably MIT and CalTech - deride such talk. But Boelter's idea has not met with total rebuke: The Ford Foundation has granted UCLA some $1.2 million to evaluate the idea's impact and continue its program. Further, there is Dartmouth's version of UCLA's program. And other schools have unified programs. Indeed, Stevens Institute, in Hoboken, N. J., can claim to have had a unified curriculum before UCLA. Case Institute has adopted it, as have George Washington University (Washington, D. C.), Washington University (St. Louis), and New York State University's Stony Brook (L. I.) campus.

But science vs. design aside, all schools agree that the real issue is that most schools don't equip the engineer sufficiently to do engineering. All agree that he must learn design . . . but when? As an undergraduate? And all agree he must know science and math - but how should he be taught? As a scientist, or as a designer? The educators are split over these issues, but they unite to worry over the fact that many recent technological creations are the work of scientists rather than engineers: Fermi, Lawrence, Libby, Glaser, et al.

If the engineer is again to be the one who forces technological change, he must master the art of design. But how to teach him? Many engineers say engineering design differs from other technical activities because it involves synthesis. Purdue's Paul Chenea, once head of mechanical engineering and now vice-president of the university, disagrees: "Engineering design is the continual search for a better way. Optimization and its techniques ... ought to provide the solid core to engineering design ... [but] design courses do not generate the excitement, motivation, and interest on the part of the student that the engineering science courses do."

Most design courses introduce some things a current designer does. But, says Chenea, when we merely copy we lag five to ten years behind current industrial practice. And many current designers' formal education is 15 to 25 years old. That makes the gap from 20 to 35 years.

Chenea advocates that all design courses begin by showing the student how to apply the engineering sciences to the problems of synthesis and optimization. And to elevate the teaching of design, he proposes research in design techniques: "The healthy state of the engineering sciences is primarily due to the active pursuit of graduate research which continually feeds new ideas into the undergraduate program. Perhaps we could generate for the first time some real research in design techniques and thus have a graduate program in design that would be worthy of the name. Universities might become the leaders ... instead of the blind copiers of the past."

THE statistics of engineering enrollments and degrees bear out Chenea, Brown, Tribus and others - namely that traditional engineering education is no longer enough. The chart of enrollments - engineering vs. total college enrollment - clearly shows that bright students are not inundating engineering schools. Where do they go? Some into mathematics, others into physics and chemistry, though not so many as to make the difference. These fields, too, are apparently losing luster. Not into medicine - the number of MD's graduated in 1962 was only 191 greater than in 1955. But fields relating to medical research grow stronger, as do psychology and the social sciences. Is the young campus crowd trying to tell us something?

But what is to become of engineering? Many educators expect engineering enrollments to pick up "if only we stop calling every successful rocket launching a 'scientific achievement' and every fizzle an 'engineering failure'." But perhaps we don't need more engineers anyway.

The question is clearly how good, not how many. This moves the emphasis from number of degrees to graduate education where the great change is taking place. Never before has the ratio of doctorates to total graduate degrees been so high. Throughout the U. S., engineering doctorates awarded annually increased from 460 in 1950 to 1,378 in 1963. Master's degrees totaled 9,600 in 1963, more than double the number produced seven years earlier. Meanwhile, engineering baccalaureates fell from nearly 53,000 in 1950 to fewer than 30,000 in 1963.

Though engineers appear to be moving toward "professional" status, many feel they are not yet moving fast enough. Stanford's Provost Frederick Terman, former head of the engineering school and himself a doctor of engineering, is unhappy that only one engineering student in 25 earns a doctorate today. Terman's experience as adviser, trustee, officer, et al., to a broad range of research organizations adds considerable weight to his comment: "I have seen more than one program washed out because those working on the project did not have the competence to find answers to problems fast enough."

Terman serves on the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on Scientific and Technical Manpower. This group, headed by MlT's Edwin Gilliland, started what is probably the most important drive in this century toward massive excellence among the nation's scientists and engineers. Its so-called "Gilliland Report," delivered to the President in December 1962, set the nation four goals:

(1) Increase the number of doctor's degrees awarded each year in engineering, math, and the physical sciences ... to reach 7,500 in 1970. Some 2,000 of these would be engineers, as against 1,378 in 1963.

(2) Increase the number of students who complete a full year of graduate training in these three fields, to reach 30,000 in 1970.

(3) Encourage the strengthening of existing centers of excellence in these fields and develop new ones.

(4) Promote wider geographic distribution of centers of educational excellence.

The committee's goals seem, at least, to have money working in their favor. Congressional appropriations for the National Science Foundation have been increased to pay for the cost-of-education portion of the program: tuition, additional allowances for faculty salaries, laboratory operations, building maintenance, etc. It does not cover all costs, by any means - student support (research assistantships, cost-of-living stipends) and construction and equipment, for instance. The total cost is about 3 per cent of the estimated federal investment jr. research and development that involves manpower from engineering, math, and the physical sciences between now and 1970.

BUT even before the first subsidized Ph.D. candidates receive their degrees, the participating schools face grave manpower problems. "The job of teaching at the doctoral level, of conducting advanced research, and of supervising doctoral theses," says Gordon Brown, "call for capabilities that are already in short supply." And as more graduate students enroll, the colleges themselves will need many more faculty members with doctor's degrees. Inevitably, industry and the colleges will compete strongly for the limited number of advanced-degree engineers.

Brown's solution is to "update" the most promising men now in both industry and education through formal programs. Here again, engineering is breaking tradition. One of science education's primary objectives is to educate scientists who will educate other scientists, but engineering education's objective has been to furnish professional talent to industry. But if industry is eventually to have enough advanced-degree engineers, it must get along with fewer new graduates until technical-school faculties are strengthened and until those advanceddegree engineers are trained.

How are these "key" practicing engineers to gain technical strength - along with faculty people and advanceddegree candidates? Several years ago, UCLA introduced a six-week program in "modern engineering" to which a practicing engineer - perhaps ten years out of school - could go for intensive study in new disciplines, some of these not even taught when he was in school. Some industrial organizations encourage their technical people to take courses at local engineering schools at company expense.

But the demand for such training exceeds the supply. Only a few large companies can undertake such a program and only a few engineering schools are equipped to offer the advanced courses demanded. Last year MIT established a program to give the practicing engineer and the engineering professor a chance for "sustained advanced study in the scientific fundamentals of new areas of engineering." This Center for Advanced Engineering Study was made possible by a $5 million Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. At MIT the engineer can elect one-, two- or ten-week courses for "both study of new sciences and active association with the full' spectrum of an academic community."

How does the demand for high skills on campus jibe with the demands outside? Can the defense program - with half of its budget allotted to technical development - postpone its demand for new talent? Can the space program? Can industrial research and development? A manpower-demand study by the Department of Labor of recent trends and company estimates says 90 per cent more engineers will be employed in 1970 than in 1959. That's 81,000 a year more in 1970. The Engineering Manpower Commission, using different criteria, projects a more conservative 45 per cent (or 48,000 more a year) increase from 1961 to 1971.

But all is not lost. A fundamental change has occurred. Both studies assume that tomorrow's engineers will work pretty much as today's do. The computer is changing all that. The engineer can now identify in hours — or minutes - an optimum design that once required many days. Such developments conserve engineering manpower and also inject a new opportunity for imagination into engineering.

"The most promising approach to achieving better utilization of professional engineers," says Bell Telephone Labs' Sydney Ingram, former chairman of the Engineering Manpower Commission, "is to support their efforts with those of semi-profession ally trained technicians." Unfortunately, as Ingram says, the number of technical-institute graduates - with two years of training - "remains stubbornly constant at about 16,000." The Gilliland Committee says this problem of the 16,000 plateau "is critical enough to warrant Federal legislation." The committee wants to elevate the status of technicians and attract many competent youngsters from lower income groups or depressed areas to realize a much greater share of their potential.

But who really wants to be a technician? The ceiling is limited; the status low. And the good technician is forever a frustrated engineer. The number is unlikely to rise enough to give engineers the support Ingram feels they should have, unless perhaps the technician field is opened to women. Consider: In 1970 - for the first time - America will grant more doctorates in engineering, math, and physics than in medicine. That year, if present trends continue, graduate nurses will outnumber MD's four to one while there will be only two technicians for each'engineering-math-physics doctor. Who will be engineering's Florence Nightingale?

Brooklyn Poly President Ernst Weber has cited the Morrill Act of 1862 as "the prime impetus to the development of technological education in the U.S." Maybe a century from now something will be cited as the force that changed the course of engineering at mid-20th Century, when it was becoming technology's custodian, and gave the engineer his bigger role: to compose ... to design. Indeed, if nothing is recalled, this will signify that the engineer is gone and that scientists built the bridge to the everyday world.

THIS ARTICLE by David Allison, associate editor of International Science and Technology, is a condensation of a more extensive story of engineering education that he wrote for that magazine. It is distributed by Editorial Projects for Education, Inc., in cooperation with International Science and Technology. All rights reserved.