I just saw an article on SlashDot about Why students are leaving Engineering. As a graduate of Mississippi State University‘s Electrical and Computer Engineering program with a Master’s Degree, I thought I could lend some information to this.

First off, Mr Kern is absolutely right about one thing: Too many professors are there for research first, and education last. They don’t get fired because they bring in too much prestige or grant money, but they have to teach classes just because it is a university afterall. So they get stuck teaching classes they don’t want to, and generally make sure the students are at least as unhappy about it as they are.

But this, I believe, is a chance for other smaller schools to step up to the plate. Personally, I spent two years at Meridian Community College, taking most of the classes mentioned in the article. I took engineering physics, all my math courses, and alot of other stuff there in nice small classes. Community College’s don’t really do any research work, so the teachers are there solely to teach, and generally enjoy doing it. I had alot of good experiences with the people there, and I consider the two years well worth it.

Now, when I got to MSU my junior year, I still got plenty of labs taught by TA’s that either a) couldn’t speak english or b) had alot of other things they’ld rather be doing during that three hours. Not much you could do about it, but just suffer through it. Same applied for alot of classes. The professors, and I’ve been told this applies to all schools not just MSU, weren’t interested in the undergraduate classes. Once you got into the Graduate Program or the Split-Level classes, it was a totally different “vibe” in the classroom. Same teacher, same students, but those were the classes that the teacher wanted to teach. Smaller groups, vastly more complex topics, and usually closer aligned to the professor’s field of research.

Personally, I think the engineering programs here in the US don’t need any significant changes. I’ld like to see all universities find some way to refocus on education instead of making money, but that’s across all disciplines. Engineering is hard stuff, just as hard as Medicine in alot of ways. Just like you don’t want schools slacking off on doctors that slice you open to work on your insides, you probably don’t want schools slacking off on engineers that build the bridges that you drive on every day, or design the airplanes that you fly in.

Just like Medicine, the bulk of the curriculum isn’t actually learning facts and figures, but learning a problem solving strategy and techniques for converting new problems into sets of familiar problems. The army says it the best: Gotta tear em down before you can build them up.

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