2ab. Well, we’ll have to wait and see if the engineers produced by the program are competent, I suppose. But I think that they are.

2c. Yes, which is why we should teach the humanities alongside engineering. Smith’s program seems to be an attempt at something like that.

Why wouldn’t you want engineers to be better people? Perhaps this is me wanting to give the workers the means of production or something, but I would love to have engineers themselves able to think critically about what they’re engineering. Otherwise, what’s to prevent a Jurassic Park sort of thing? (Engineering produces what it doesn’t understand, whatever it is kills people, etc.) I’d rather have people thinking about the aims of engineering education and practice–and those people should probably be engineers. And you may argue that that’s specialized knowledge, but I think that it doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be.

Related Posts

1. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down?
2. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part II)
3. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part III)
4. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part IV)
5. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part V)
6. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part VI)
7. Engineering Education: Dumbed Down? (Part VII)