Why Students Are Leaving Engineering

Ted writes "A former engineering major has written an interesting article explaining why he thinks many smart students are not studying engineering anymore." Many business leaders have commented on the lack of engineers and several companies have even started initiatives to help bolster our diminishing ranks. Will these measures be enough, or does the system require much more drastic measures?

No Sex.

[Anonymous Coward]

No sex.

Re:Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can build a bridge that stays up, an elevator that doesn't plunge, or a building that doesn't collapse in an 8.0 earthquake.

It's the engineer's job to make sure the bridge barely stays up, the elevator is almost too heavy for its cables, and the building will only come down in an 8.1 earthquake.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Why?

[slughead]

5) No girls in class, and at work after you graduate.

That's usually why universities MAKE you take liberal arts classes.

Freshman Engineering Physics Exam

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember my engineering physics final exam. Only six problems. Three could be done by the freshman class if you knew more physics material than what was covered. Two had to be solved by graduate physics students before the TA's could figure out whether we actually got them right. The last question hadn't been solved yet in Physics.

Re:Article summary

[macdaddy357]

Railroads are an anachronism. We don't need more people to drive trains. Don't become an engineer.

Re:Students leaving engineering but no shortage ?

[mrchaotica]

But the benefits suck.

...and in the case of crack whores, literally!

Re:Article summary

[Butterwaffle Biff]

I went to a local state school, and I have to say that after meeting quite a few graduates of "better" universities, I'm happy to have gone to the state school. My curriculum was solid and the faculty did a good job teaching it. The problem with the big name universities is that most of them are focused on research; they just don't give professors credit for teaching. For a graduate school, the big names are great because that's their specialty. For an undergraduate engineering degree (not necessarily a science degree), look for a university that encourages education and not research. Find a well-known teaching university. Or better yet, if you're only interested in a bachelor's degree, find a few companies you'd enjoy working for when you get out of school and ask where they recruit. Unless the companies suck (or hire engineers for non-technical work because they know we tend to have a good work ethic and focus on problem-solving -- which is I guess a particular kind of sucking) those universities will be good teaching universities. Even if only functionally (i.e., they'll help get you a job at a company you'd like to work for).

But as for the article's complaints about low test averages -- well, it's clear the poor guy didn't have the soul of an engineer. I get particularly upset when I hear people complain about low averages on tests. There's nothing necessarily wrong with a low test average! It dismays me that people are so unprepared for a test that's hard. Welcome to real life! Engineers sometimes face problems without good solutions; get used to it. Hard tests are often there to see how students respond to problems they haven't been trained to solve because that's what happens in real life. Engineers should expect to find problems they haven't seen in a textbook, and it's important for professors to know how students respond to that. Do you want someone who just incorrectly applies textbook techniques to new situations designing your car?

Oops. Sorry. That was Shakespeare.

[weston]

"Every one of use who's stumbled through this kind of course and walked out with a 45% average and a B+ knows that something is rotten in the state of Denmark" Sorry about that. Every one of us might not know that something is rotten in the state of Denmark -- that's a Hamlet reference, for you humanities-deprived folks.

Re:Article summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to a uni with nursing school. It works out nicely. :)

Betrayed by your spelling

[Percy_Blakeney]

Your onto my plan.

Im in the middle of Indiana.

one must interact with many differant langauge backgrounds

What more can the government due to encourage higher education?

Let me guess... you were the TA that was trying to communicate with Kern. No wonder he had a hard time.

I repeat HAHAHAHAHAHA!

[zogger]

uber leet engineers of de phtasmagorikal futah can't sneak past a snoozing "union" janitor and fix a door on a hinge.
HAHAHAHAHA! Can sneak over to someone elses college and steal a mascot, figure out how to beat vegas, dissasemble and reassemble the profs car inside his bedroom, stuff like that, but a DOOR floors them!

teehheee hee, take yer razzin! No engineers street cred until you can brainstorm your way to fixed desks and doors! In the real world you have to deal with marketing weasels and deadlines based on when their car payments are due, clueles bosses who order you to do three different things simultaneouylsy that conflict with each other, government regulations that only make sense to people who are required to eat with spoons only, and all sorts of other impossible crap, yet the work still needs to be done, and it gets done. Figure it out, it ain't rocket surgery!

p.s. I was in a union long time ago, wouldn't have bothered me *one bit* if my work mysteriously got done when I wan't looking, because the CHECK would still show up!
hehehehehehe, engineers, whooo hawww1one

Re:Article summary

[Philip K Dickhead]

Work hard, play hard. I recall the parties on the Engineering campus being much better.

Yeah. No pesky girls, or conversations to get in the way of the drinking...
Heh heh! Just me, and my beer-opening robot!

Re:I repeat HAHAHAHAHAHA!

[jedidiah]

Speaking of Vegas.

If you muck around the network wiring in a Vegas casino and you aren't one of the union electricians they will commit grave acts of sabotage to the network: like sever the whole thing with a chainsaw.

A colleague of mine once got impatient with the pace of work in a Vegas casino.

Underestimating the potential responses of trashling laborers is a bad idea.

Re:Article summary

[CreatureComfort]

My favorite was the T.A. teaching my Circuits II class. Very nice Tiawanese gentleman, who at somepoint had a practical joker for an English teacher. Every time he wrote a circuit on the board, or worked a sample problem he reversed "off" and "on", and "open" and "closed". Took all of us much longer than it probably should have to realize what the problem was. then we spent the rest of the semester trying to convince him he had it backwards, and he complained to the department head that we were trying to trick him.

Author not fit for engineering

[Dr. Mu]

He writes well, uses good grammar, and knows how to spell. How could he possibly imagine himself in an engineering career?

Re:Article summary

[utnow]

unless you happen to be engaged to the president of the nursing class. then 2 years later she rips your heart out for no good reason and makes you want to go on a killing spree blanketing hospitals with napalm...