Tag Archives: engineer

Why is it so hard to change engineering education?

In the last two decades we have seen waves of advocacy for changing engineering education, while at the same time we have entrenched the existing model ever deeper through international standardization and accreditation models like the Washington Accord.

Our research on engineering practice, what engineers actually do, demonstrates the need for changes – see my recent blog post on Dave Goldberg’s Big Beacon site.

Students know that they will never have to solve partial differential equations as engineers, so why do we continue to teach that, and not teach them the things they will actually be doing in practice? Continue reading →

Some key issues facing young engineers

Just now, the main issue is how to get an engineering job, to get the experience a young engineer needs to start a career. A big part of the problem here is a simple lack of knowledge: most engineering schools don’t teach their students anything about the engineering employment market. That’s why you see so many young engineers applying for jobs online, not realising that companies get 300 to 500 responses to every advertisement. After they send off maybe two hundred job applications with hardly any response, maybe one interview, they get really frustrated. What’s interesting to me is that few seem to realise that maybe they’re doing something wrong.

That’s why there’s a chapter in the book on how to find engineering work. Networking and visiting engineering component suppliers is a much better way to find work, especially in tough times.

Continue reading →