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The Engineers of the Future Will Not Resemble the Engineers of the Past

Former Community Member
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https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/at-work/education/the-engineers-of-the-future-will-not-resemble-the-engineers-of-the-past


This is dated  May 2017


I think it's relevant internationally even Engineering education and formation is different between countries.

I thought it would be good to share it in this forum.


Moshe W  BEET, MCGI, CEng MBCS, MIET
  • Thanks Moshe


    I picked up these points, obviously coming from a UK perspective.


    “Today, students are expected to be job-ready with a B.S. degree, so 75 percent of their education is technical courses. Freshman year is designed to be a filter; we send them off to take math and science and tell them to come back if they survive, so dropout rates are 50 percent or more,” Plummer explained.

    I’m not sure what he means by “technical courses” in his first sentence, I think perhaps he is trying to make a point that the focus is too narrow. I wouldn’t see the Math & Science “Boot Camp” mentality that he describes in the second sentence as making someone “work-ready”, although it might help for some roles. High drop-out rates seem very costly both financially and psychologically for those who had their aspirations for an engineering career sacrificed or damaged at this a particular altar.


    Stanford’s d.school approach of assigning student teams real-world problems, Plummer insists, is another important innovation. And dramatically changing the introductory electrical engineering course to organize it around maker projects instead of lectures.

    The academic elements of the degree apprenticeship that I managed were 80% project based, using real examples of projects that the company had either carried out or been asked to tender for (with permission).  The other 20% covered the more formal aspects of maths & science , which didn’t naturally emerge from real projects. Because the project teams consisted of  trainees with different specialisms including commercial and were ultimately presented to a panel of company senior engineers and academics, a wide range of other attributes were developed.  I interpret Prof Plummer’s remarks and these  http://epc.ac.uk/creating-a-new-breed-of-supergrads/    as coming from a similar position.

    Whilst I warmly welcome this “conversion”, those drawn from the more vocational tradition, focussed on “teaching” rather than “research” have found themselves regarded as “poor relations” by an academically snobbish and conservative establishment who seem according to Prof Plummer to be satisfied with “filtering out” good people (if they weren’t why were they admitted to the programme). In the UK this desire to “filter out” has the effect that most engineers “drop out” of professional registration opportunities, leaving mainly the fraction who survived the math & science “ordeal” and eventually looked back fondly on this “rite of passage”.  


    But masters-level programs, at least at brick-and-mortar schools, “will just go away,” he predicts. “Instead it will be about lifelong education and just-in-time knowledge, and that will be done online.” 


    A number of UK universities and employer/education partnerships have been doing this for at least a decade or two offering masters programmes often customised around work-based learning opportunities , with blended learning.  This is almost an historical observation rather than future prediction. We all remember where we were on Sept 11 2001, in my case receiving a presentation form 2 of my company’s employees who had just completed a one-week MSc module at Loughborough University of just this kind. The programme had an active employer’s steering group which I attended, influencing the programme content and the programme leader had carried out some research for us. Unfortunately, like many efforts of this kind, the niche markets that they tend to serve, makes financial models “difficult”. Most UK full-time post-graduate programmes mainly consist of overseas students which makes them financially sustainable.                   

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Roy,

    Interesting points and comparisons.


    Here in the US, for the PE licensure first step is passing of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. It's usually best to take it upon completion of 3 years in the engineering program.

    The changes that are made will most likely occur due to changes in technology, not empirical formulas.

    For example, one change in the PE involves the calculation of an HVAC system. This is now done with software and is broken up into smaller calcs on the PE exams and their work.


    Here students have joint internships (somewhat similar to an apprenticeship) it can be in the form of summer internships or after the 2nd year of the 4 year programme 

    a paid internship with IBM or other company that runs in parallel.

    As for foreign students in undergrad and post-grad programmes its somewhat similar situation. Out of state tuition is higher than in-state so usually, it's a significant boost 

    in to the budget of the university.

  • Hmmm...the article sounds very radical and exciting but actually, to my mind (and in my experience), is only stating what the situation has actually been for the last 40 years (at least). So I wouldn't disagree with his "vision for the 21st century", but do wonder where he's been if he has only just noticed!


    However, of course he's right that the western education system still at the very least appears to suggest that you get a degree and that tells you enough to be an engineer for the rest of your life, and we must change that perception - and of course it's never actually been true. (My mother was born in 1916, and we occasionally chat about the extraordinary changes that have continuously taken place during her lifetime, which are intimately connected with how engineering has developed.)


    Maybe to be a bit controversial here, but I do wonder if there's an attitude problem - both inside and outside the profession - because "engineering" covers "skills" areas that change slowly, and "knowledge and innovation" areas that change extremely rapidly. The skill in making a perfect hand soldered wire joint has hardly changed in 100 years, whereas todays skills in web app development will probably be irrelevant in 10 (5?) years. It doesn't mean one is less important than another, but they have to be learned and continuously developed in very different ways. Yet even now I occasionally hear remarkably senior people, outside and (depressingly) inside the profession, talking about "learning the trade" of engineering. Some of it you can do that, and it's needed. But for most of it the trick is learning how to keep learning - running as fast as you can to stand still. That to me is what engineering - as opposed to crafting - has always been about.


    On the other hand, I do really like the fact he brings in about engineering studies not allowing time for liberal arts studies. I know many people will disagree with me here, but I think it's hugely important that engineers to know more about the word than just the logic of solving engineering problems. The more you appreciate why a problem needs solving , the better your solution needs to be. But again, this isn't new, it's been a problem with engineering degrees probably since they were ever invented.


    This point about automation / robotics taking away jobs in the 21st century is one I find very "flavour of the month" for making exciting alarmist articles. (And again, to my mind shows how important an understanding of one particular liberal arts subject - history - is.) I don't know what the figures are for how many job roles that existed in, say, 1968, have now disappeared, but if someone was to say that 50% have now gone I wouldn't be surprised - it would be my guess. Maybe more. This is very, very true in engineering: when I started we had secretaries, draughtspeople, print room operators, technical authors - now we have engineers with their laptops. And those laptops have simulation tools which not only (thank goodness!) take care of much of the routine calculation that we used to do, but mean that vastly more calculations can be done, for a huge range of scenarios, then would ever have been possible. This replacement of roles isn't the future - it's happened, and will keep happening.


    So overall I do think it's great that these points are being made, it's hugely important that those running education and those going through it really understand what the context of their work is, but I get very frustrated with the idea that this is all only just happening, and that's it's going to affect "the engineers of the future".


    Still, maybe if you're going to get people to support change you have to present problems as new problems, it's not very sexy to say "we've still got this problem with developing and retaining engineers that we've had for the last 50 years, can you help?" So perhaps saying "oh no, we've just realised that engineering is about continuous innovation and development!" or "oh no, we've just realised that sometimes new technology means that a particular job role becomes redundant!" is, pragmatically the right thing to do.


    Whatever happened to all this leisure time we were promised through automation back in the 1960s???? 


    Cheers,


    Andy
  • Well said Andy.  As usual, we are completely on the same page, and I agree completely that this is hardly new thinking!  To support the point about understanding the wider context outside pure engineering, I would tell you about my current main assignment, which is all about what we do at Euston Station with Customer Information Systems to improve safety, pedestrian flow, and customer experience.  For me, this is one of the most attractive assignments I have been responsible for, for some years, and the reason for that is that pure engineering, if I 'm being honest about it, is really not especially interesting to me - of course, I do it, and it's where a considerable part of my expertise lies, and I am as conscientious as ever about ensuring engineering assurance, but what really does it for me is to know that what I am doing is aimed at providing an enhanced customer experience.  Frankly, I really get off on delving into human factors, human phsychology, the customer experience for somebody using what, frankly, is currently the most horrendous terminus railway station in the UK, and if, by my efforts, I can bring a significant improvement to the "people" domain, then I derive enormous satisfaction from my work. At least 60% of my expertise goes into understanding the customer experience, the way that people use information systems,. etc.

    I'm even instigating exercises to equip people with Virtual Reality headsets as they traverse the station to analyse what it is that they look at and focus attention on as they traverse the station.  How exciting is that?!!!!
  • Andy and Roy,

    I completely agree. I also remember the leisure time we were promised through automation, though I remember the promises being made in the seventies, but if you think about society you will realise it is here. It is not 'enjoyed' by everyone as some have to work full hours and others have plenty of leisure time (otherwise known as 'the unemployed'). It just shows the truth of the old saying "it is very difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future!"

    The investigations Roy mentions look fascinating - definitely an opportunity to gain an in depth insight into the problem.

    Alasdair
  • Hi Roy,


    Really well put. One of the questions I often get asked when I talk to school children is "what do you really enjoy about engineering?" Having thought about this quite a lot now (whilst answering those questions) I realised there are two things:

    1. The look on customers / clients faces when we give them a solution that is better than they expected,

    2. Solving engineering problems which appeared to be impossible (typically due to lack of time or resources - along the lines of the Apollo 13 "square filter in a round hole" problem) - a mix of intellectual satisfaction together with a special case of point 1. 

    The technology (and the understanding of that technology) is the means, not the end.


    I came across a brilliant, and simple, example of an excellent rail Customer Information System recently on the Oslo suburban network. When we bought tickets from the ticket machine it told us when the next train to that destination was, and which platform it left from. My colleague and I, both of whom had worked in the rail industry for rather a long time, were stunned by this!


    (And it didn't present us with a range of standard, off-peak, and super off-peak tickets some or all of which may have been valid or not valid at the time we were travelling. Grrrr....I often think that if I - as a railway geek working in the UK industry - don't understand UK ticketing, how on earth does a visitor to the UK manage???)


    Back onto the thread, I often think that a huge change in the industry since I started is that computing power and interconnectivity is now so cheap that the technology rarely seems to limit the solution to problems. As you suggest, understanding the underlying problem that the end user faces is often the clever, and fun, bit.


    Talking of which, here is a challenge for anyone - how to get rid of ticket barriers on UK railways. It's been wonderful travelling around various bits of Europe by train this year, and I particularly noticed the joy of no ticket barriers. Meanwhile, back here in the UK, my worst instance was just missing a train at Birmingham New Street because of having to go through two ticket barriers to get from one platform to another - neither of which accepted my, perfectly valid, ticket (for anyone who doesn't know, following the remodelling the station is now split into two halves). On another occasion credit to the platform staff at a station in North London who saw my wife and I running towards the barriers with large suitcases as a train pulled into the platform and heeded my cry of "we really need to get on that train!" and opened them ready for us. What they didn't know was that we'd spent the last 12 hours travelling from the far side of Germany...but I think they could see that I was determined to get on that train one way or another!


    We were rather late because we'd had an entertaining fault on the Eurostar, as it went from Belgium into France the emergency brake came on. After a while it was announced that the train thought it had already got to the UK, so it was surprised to find the signalling and power systems seemed to be French, and so it (quite reasonably) shut itself down. My wife, who knew I'd worked on Eurostar systems many years ago said "surely that can't happen?" We then had an interesting (to me smiley) conversation about software and hardware failures, safety and reliability. When I'd stopped laughing.


    Cheers,


    Andy
  • Andy,

    Yes indeed, one of the really good parts of what I'm doing currently is that, when we say Customer Information System, we really mean the whole system for imparting information to customers, including wayfinding, signage - just about anything that plays a part in it, not just the standard dot matrix displays we all know and either love or hate. Providing the bean counters don't deny us the funding, you can look forward to dynamic diplays and a system that's based on understanding what information people need at various points on their journey through the station.


    Birmingham New Street is another issue altogether and i really feel that, whilst fabulous as a shopping mall and architecturally, it definitely doesn't serve rail travelers well at all. But that's a subject for a chat when we next see each other!
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member



    Six of the top 12 graduate jobs are in engineering

    Engineers dominate a list of top-earning new graduates in figures that threaten to raise fresh questions about the value of arts degrees.



    An analysis of the paid graduate jobs ranked by the degree subject they studied shows that six of the top 12 were in engineering. General engineering graduates who were in professional jobs within six month


    See more in our article:  https://www.engc.org.uk/news/news/six-of-the-top-12-graduate-jobs-are-in-engineering/


  • I had the pleasure to spend yesterday lunchtime at the University of Plymouth graduation ceremony where I was presenting an IET prize for best overall student in the electronics streams. Whilst chatting to the winner he mentioned he already had a job, so I asked how hard he'd found it to find one. From memory the answer was: applied for four jobs, had four interviews, was turned down for one (which was the one he'd decided he didn't want) and was offered a position at the other three.


    That was very cheering! It would be interesting to know how general this is.


    We also had an interesting discussion with the new head of school for electronics, Toby Whitley, on the importance of failure. Toby is passionate about students learning from things going wrong in practical sessions, an attitude I heartily endorse. Undergraduates always seem to have this idea that everything they do ought to work, and that if it doesn't they've failed. Whereas we know in the real world that engineering fails all the time, the important thing is to understand those failures and learn from them - and to try to make sure as far as possible they happen in the lab, not in the field! But even then, with the huge possibilities of condition monitoring (or "Internet of Things" *) actually accepting that systems will fail in the field, but by gathering data they can be continuously improved is a Good Thing. It's a very serious point in safety critical systems - I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining to very capable engineers that their designs have a probability of failure, and that this needs to be accepted and controlled, and further that the worst thing they can do is stick to the mantra "if you are a good engineer then your designs won't fail". (I have no problem with the mantra that "if you have a good engineering team then the probability of your design failing can be reduced to an acceptable level", but that doesn't have the same snappy ring to it!) But also there's the general point across all engineering to encourage undergraduates to be bold and enquiring, to think "oh, my project's just blown up in a cloud of smoke, that's really interesting, I'm going to find out why."


    Cheers,


    Andy


    * I loath the phrase "Internet of Things". Almost as much as I loath the phrase "Industry 4.0". Once again it feels to me like management and marketing consultants trying to create a new bandwagon for something we've all been working towards for many years. I suppose I don't like them because it feels like people are trying to pretend (for marketing reasons) that evolution is revolution. Maybe I'm getting old...
  • Andy,

    You have touched a sensitive nerve there. I and a colleague spent large amounts of our time saying to engineers submitting proposals "But what happens when [that item] fails?" There seems to be an assumption that everything will work with 100% reliability which I can definitely say is not the case. I work on the basis that the design hasn't failed if it has maintained safety (which is not necessarily the same as functionality). After all, if there is a short circuit and the fuse or circuit breaker isolates the fault, the design has worked. I think the phrase should be "If you are a good engineer, your designs won't fail dangerously".

    Alasdair