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Not Ready to Compete
ASEE Prism, Mar 2008
ENGINEERING
AMERICAN ENGINEERING requires a substantial upgrade in all aspects, ranging from how it's taught to how it's practiced, according to a 131-page "roadmap" for the profession by James J. Duderstadt, emeritus professor at the University of Michigan.
"To compete with talented engineers in other nations with far greater numbers and with far lower wage structures," Duderstadt writes in Engineering for a Changing World, "American engineers must be able to add significantly more value than their counterparts abroad through their greater intellectual span, their capacity to innovate, their entrepreneurial zeal, and their ability to address the grand challenges facing our world."
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Drawing on a number of recent studies, Duderstadt concludes that engineers need a boost in status and influence.
But for that to happen, engineering education should follow the lead of "all other learned professions" and be pursued at the post-graduate level after students first acquire a "broad liberal arts baccalaureate education." At the same time, engineering and technology should become part of undergraduate education. Research, he maintains, should be redefined and directed toward "compelling social priorities."
A "guild-like culture" ought to be developed, similar to that in medicine and law, in which engineers come to identify themselves as part of a unique profession, rather than as employees of a company. Licensing requirements may have to be changed to make sure engineers continue learning throughout their careers, states Duderstadt.
In addition, everyone involved in the profession needs to be committed to giving engineering "a racial, ethnic, and gender diversity consistent with the American population."
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