I think you under-appreciate how much engineering has changed in 100 years.
Back then, there might have been more classics and such in an engineering school, but there is a tremendous increase in the knowledge packed into a BS in engineering, much less a MS, in the last 100 years.
100 years ago, EE’s didn’t have to take any coursework in semiconductor physics. MechE’s didn’t have anywhere near the knowledge in their materials classes we see today, and so on.
Unlike the “liberal” arts programs, engineering hasn’t become soft and cushy. There’s a change in the material in the programs, mostly because we have created so much new technology in the last 100 years.
Another example: 100 years ago, we barely had vacuum tubes. We had no such thing as op-amps. Had a circuits course that was mostly op-amps and their applications in control systems and filters. Not exactly a cake-walk, and quoting from said class didn’t exactly impress girls in the campus bar, either. Engineers of 100 years ago would probably wash out of today’s engineering programs. They weren’t adapted to the speed of change in the fields... life was much simpler back then.
I'm a civil engineer by trade, which means I work in what is readily understood as the "original" field of engineering. I agree that the coursework has become more complex, but I also think we've managed to slowly turn engineers into technicians over the last 100 years. I consider an engineering education very incomplete these days, mainly because most of the engineers I've dealt with who have graduated from engineering programs (even the best ones) can barely write coherent sentences in English. And these are the American ones, mind you.
I think you under-appreciate how much engineering has changed in 100 years.I'm a licensed professional engineer with a master's degree in my field. I probably wouldn't have even been admitted to engineering school 100 years ago. 14 posted on 04/07/2013 10:27:44 AM PDT by Alberta's Child
That is an understatement. To become a PE 100 years ago you probably would not even attend college at all. There are two ways to qualify to take Part A of the PE exam in NY - get a degree from an accredited engineering school, or work under a PE for 5 (I think it was) years. To qualify to take Part B of the PE exam, a degree wouldn’t matter - you had to have the engineering experience. So you see, you could become a PE now (or at least 30 years ago when I considered it) without going to engineering school at all. But the only way to get a PE without the engineering experience would be to become a professor in an accredited engineering school.That traces back to the fact that when MIT was founded, engineering was considered a discipline of experience rather than study, and the idea of an engineering school was a controversial novelty. That changed after WWII, only because of things like radar - new technologies which no amount of experience would be likely to make you competent in. With radar in particular, the engineers moaned among themselves that they were reduced to plumbers for the scientists who had the math background to be able to deal with the behavior of microwaves. Professional engineers came away from that experience with a “never again” determination - and engineering school, with a heavy theoretical and mathematical course load, became the standard way to become an engineer.
That information came from
Up the Infinite Corridor: MIT and the Technical Imagination by Fred Hapgood (Feb 1994)You would find it fascinating.