Engineering Education in Its Relation to Training for Engineering Work

Abstract

It is conceded that the true engineer is a man of action, resourceful, ingenious, and possessing considerable executive ability; the sort of man who should succeed, whatever line of work he might have been thrown into at the beginning of his career. Computing quantities, calculating strains and stresses, making minor experiments, etc., as a rule, is not paid for at any higher rate than ordinary clerical work, while advancement is well nigh impossible for the majority of men who confine themselves to the minor details of engineering design and construction. That the foregoing facts are not fully recognized in engineering schools is apparent to the majority of engineers in active practice, hence the amount of criticism leveled at them and the men who are conducting them, much of it unjust, and much of it merited. The writer does not wish to be classed with those who are wholesale in their criticism of engineering schools, but he does believe that the time has now come when a number of changes can be made, to the advantage of the schools and of the graduates of the future.