Educating geeks with a business sense
Yossi Sheffi, a professor at MIT, makes clear that engineering students need to do much more than engineering to succeed in the 21st century.
The kind of engineer
who can succeed and lead in this global market -- one that is increasingly fed by graduates of schools in China and India, notes Sheffi – may no longer be the type educated at MIT. The Institute is top-rated, but is mired in an approach “fit for mid-20th century manufacturing-based society,” and is now “resting on past laurels.” Yet, why change, Sheffi ponders. “We are #1. Rah rah.” But look at MIT’s School of Engineering “among friends,” he suggests, and you must admit there’s “significant calcification, duplication and conservatism.” He finds multiple fluid mechanics and thermodynamics courses among the various departments. “How many courses have ‘control’ in their name? 228!” Students are a key barometer of this stodginess, says Sheffi. There’s been a 20% decline in engineering graduates in the last eight years.
It's quite amazing (and to some extent a relief!) to see that even the best engineering schools will find big errors in their type of education. Further he suggests
... a School of Engineering-wide undergraduate program, where all the fundamentals courses are rethought and taught differently. This means sacrificing problem sets for case studies, and “learning how a subject fits into the grand scheme of things.” MIT should integrate humanities with engineering subjects, ensuring undergraduates understand business, ethics, legal language, environmental concerns, organization and process design. There should also be a formal leadership workshop, required time in a foreign culture and along the lines of the European Union, a five-year educational model. If MIT builds it, others will follow, assures Sheffi.
Before I changed departments at my university in my first year of study (electrical engineering) additionally to the "regular courses" we also had basics of mechanical engineering, physics, business and english as a foreign language. And even in the second part of the undergraduate study we had engineering ethics, project management, communication/leadership as compulsory courses. It was a good concept, but I still have recommendations to make.
Extracurricular activity
During my time working at an international student organisation (in my case, AIESEC), I learnt much more than I could have studying about project management at university. I learned about pressure, about failing, about dealing with mistakes - and about success, about determination and about teamwork. Much more than in a pseudo-teamwork environment set at university.
I was in the executive board for a year, and we had several occasions where we had to work intensively as a team, e.g. we were going to get kicked out of the office - we searched long and hard, looked for free spaces, asked around in our networks - and a few weeks before getting kicked out we got a really good office space - making our office one of the best from the 50 or so chapters in Germany. That's just not something you learn at university.
I am now active in the Sustainability Group at my university - unfortunately I am the only student there. We have about 10 members, many of them professors (by the way, GREAT place to network when you're the only student). But being member of some more sustainability groups and initiatives, I get a better feeling of real world problems.
Will this be on the exam or can I forget about it after class?
A professor once lectured on control engineering and made a short explanation on the real-world implementation of controls. He had worked for a medical company which developed testing equipment and he had demonstrated how controls are used in the real world.
He also - similar to Prof. Sheffi - made the case that students need to learn more than just engineering. They should also learn english, maybe even further languages, and get some internships to learn about the real world.
I was quite sad to overhear later that some students were talking about that lecture: "Man, that professor's crazy, telling us to learn two additional languages." - "I know, and what was up with the medical device? Weirdo."
I guess for them if it's not on the test, it's not important.
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