PAGE 1 Issues in American Engineering Education: A Selective Review of the Literature A Draft Report prepared.for the Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress of the United States of America by Steven L. Goldman Andrew w. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Director, Science Technology and Society Program Lehigh University Bethlehem, Pennsylvania C 1987 PAGE 2 1 I. Project Description and Summary of Findings. ( 1. The objectives of this study and the structure of presentation. The objectives of this study are: (a) first, to place current concerns about engineering education in the context of a historical review of perceptions within the engineering community of problems and issues in engineering education; (b) second, to identify the distinguishing characteristics of engineering and engineering education in relation to science and science education, again, as perceived by engineers and engineering educators; (c) third, to relate engineering education and practice to the broader processes of technological innovation, and to the com-petitiveness of American industrial production with that of other nations. The study is divided into three parts, the first of which describes the project, provides a timeline of significant events in engineering education, and summarizes the findings. The second part is a discussion, also divided into three parts, following the order of the objectives listed above; the third is a bibliography of the materials on which this report is based. Social scientists are notorious for their methodological preoccupation, but their professional self-consciousness pales alongside the relentless self-examination pursued by the American engineering community since the first World War. This study is a review of the literature cited in the bibliography, which is only a small fraction of the materials that have been generated in the course of that self-examination. It is neithe~ a critique of that literature nor a systematic interpretation. No attempt has been made to integrate disparate characterizations into a coherent whole or to reconcile inconsistencies: for example, between a concern that undergraduate engineering education be matched to industry's immediate needs and a concern that, to avoid being mere instruction, engineering curricula need to be buffered from industry. All of the characterizations that follow --of engineering education and practice, of engineering professionalism, the engineering community, science and the scientific community, technological change, the social impacts of engineering and technology, and of engineering in relation to industrial production and competitiveness--are abstracted from the articles, reports and books listed in the bibliography and have been organized around a set of categories and sub-categories matching the objectives above. PAGE 3 2 As a result, the conclusions that can be drawn from this study are bound to the bibliography: if the materials studied are a representative selection of the engineering community's perceptions of engineering education and practice, then the findings of this study can serve as a guide in responding to current criticisms of engineering education and in distinguishing engineering and science. Because all of the major studies of engineering education --from the 1918 Mann report, "A Study of Engineering Education", to the 1985 National Academies of Science and Engineer'ing multi-volume study, "Engineering Education and Practice in the United States"--are included, together with scores of articles, smaller scale reports, conference proceedings and some book-length studies on a wide range of relevant topics and from a variety of individuals and institutions, it is likely that the bibliography indeed is representative. This conclusion is reinforced by a consideration of the scope of the categories and subcategories of Part II of the report. The apparent exhaustiveness of these, together with their derivation from the literature reviewed, reinforce the representativeness of the bibliography. --~----~At the same time, it must be acknowledged that the total body of literature relevant to the objectives listed above is vast. In the time available, it was not possible to survey systematically the contents of the American Society for Engineering Education's Journal of Engineering Education, or that of its predecessor, the annual Proceedings of the society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, yet these contain thousands of essays on, and analyses of, engineering education extending back almost 100 years and constitute a "real time" record of engineering education concerns. Historical, philosophical and sociological studies of engineering, science and their respective communities of practitioners have, primarily since the 1960s, multiplied greatly in number and increased in sophistication and disciplinary specialization, making access doubly difficult. This literature, too, has barely been sampled here, but as its authors are as a rule neither writing as engineers nor for the engineering community, this is less likely to skew the inferences of this review than would be a non-representative selection of materials explicitly addressing engineering education. Especially since Sputnik, institutions such as the National Science Foundation, the National Academies of Science and Engineering, the Departments of Education, Labor, Commerce and Defense, among many other groups inside and outside of government, have had almost continuous occasion to convene studies of engineering education in relation to issues touching on national security, equality of opportunity, industrial production technologies, research and development, and economic prosperity, as well as of engineering education itself and in relation to primary and secondary education. PAGE 4 3 Together with the almost continuous examination of engineering education pursued by the American Society for Engineering Education and other education-centered organizations, from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to the National Association of State and Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, these effo~ts have ,generated a formidable body of materials that would need to be studied before one could claim to have exhaustively reviewed characterizations of engineering education in relation to American society. The further question --beyond those of the state of U.S. engineering education and the nature of engineering practice and professionalism-of the relation of engineering to technological innovation and its social, economic and political consequences, introduces still another large body of literature. The findings of this study in relation to these issues are necessarily more tentative than in relation to the preceding questions, first, because the subject is itself unsettled, and second because the items reviewed here are a significantly smaller selection from the relevant literature and cannot with the same degree of confidence be supposed representative. The findings on engineering and competitiveness must, therefore, be taken in the first instance as sounding a cautionary note not to acquiesce unreflectively in stereotypical characterizations (of the relation of engineering education and prac~ice to innovation). These may not be critically defensible in light of our evolving understanding of the complex networks of interdependency linking technical knowledge-bases and their commercial exploitation. With these qualifications in mind, the findings of this study offer an opportunity to apply to current calls for reform of engineering education the wisdom of the historical record. Which current concerns are truly new and which are truly problems? Which proposed solutions have already been attempted and with what success? What patterns can be discerned when the present is perceived in developmental context? PAGE 5 I : I 4 2. Timeline of significant engineering education events. [An expansion of 1977: Grayson] 1833 -First U.S. engineering degrees awarded (West Point) 1852 -American Society of Civil Engineers founded. 1862 -Morrill Land Grant Act initiated explosive growth in engineering education, from some dozen degree-granting programs in 1862 to 70 just 10 years later to over 100 on the eve of World War I and some 260 today. 1867 -Reorganization of American Society of Civil Engineers, attempting to maintain its position as the one, comprehensive, engineering society.< 1871 -American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers founded, initiating break with ASCE and reflecting the growing diversification of engineering curricula, practice and notions of professionalism. 1880 -American Society of Mechanical Engineers founded. 1884 -American Institute of Electrical Engineers founded. 1885 Decisive shift of engineering curricula to "scientific" base begins: laboratory courses in_place of shop; science and mathematics. 1893 -World's Engineering Congress, concurrent with the (Chicago) World's Columbian Exposition, put engineering education on a par with engineering disciplines as a subject for papers. -First graduate engineering program, Harvard (electrical). 1894 -Founding of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE) after the Engineering Congress, the first volume of its Proceedings being the papers presented at the Congress. 1903 -First engineering experiment station created by University of Illinois, followed by Iowa State and .eventually all iand-grant engineering colleges. 1904 Evening courses introduced at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. 1906 Cooperative education int~oduced at the University of Cincinnati. 1907 -SPEE created Joint Committee on Engineering Education to conduct comprehensive examination of the state of engineering education in the U.S., at the time widely regarded as the finest system in the world. Wyoming inaugurated state1 licensing of engineers. 1908 -Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching agreed to fund proposed SPEE-Joint Committee study, chaired by Charles R. Mann. -First industrial engineering curriculum, at Pennsylvania State College. PAGE 6 1913 -Creation of National Association of Corporation Schools, later the American Management Association (1923), initially by 35 companies, today over 200 with at least 10% granting formal, fully accredited, doctorate degrees. 1918 .-Publication of the Mann Report, "A Study of Engineering Education", urging: return to fundamentals and unification of then-fragmenting curricula; union of theory and practice in coursework; introducing "real work", including "values and costs" into teaching engineering problem-solving; retention of shop experience; lab and industrial training, cooperative and Summer work, as part of curriculum; English mastery; repair isolation of technical from its human and social setting; closer university-industry linkage, especially in relation to research, to improve productivity and thereby national well-being; attention to developing discipline for work and "lifelong" study; selection of faculty based on teaching ability and work experience, not just research e~cellence. 1923 -SPEE created another committee to study engineering education, chaired by William Wickenden of A.T.& T., with H.P. Hammond as co-chair. 1930 -Publication of volume 1 of the Wickenden report, "Report of the Investigation of Engineering Education 1923-1929". 1932 -creation of Engineering Council for Professional Development (ECPD), first national accreditation agency for engineering curricula. 1934 -Publication of volume 2 of the Wickenden report, containing summary (pp. 1041-1116): no further fragmentation of curricula; promotion of graduate engineering education and continuing education for 5 years after graduation; development of other forms of technical education than enginering colleges; functional rather than professional model for engineering education; design project for 2nd and 3rd year st1Jdents with substantial writing component-(not lab notes), 3rd year based on project teaching, 4th year honors option; strengthen high school preparation; with industrial help, promote lifetime learning as expected of engineers; professional certification by engineering societies independent of state licensing; higher faculty standards; highlight engineering method, resting on pure and technological sciences, economics and social sciences and mastery of English; teach how society works and nature of values so engineers can understand social impact of engineering and determine their own responses. t 1939 -(H.P.) Hammond report for SPEE, "Aims and Scope of the Engineering Curriculum", recommending: diversification of curricula; parallel technical and humanities/social sciences (HSS) "stems'', the latter to amount to 20% of curriculum independent of composition and business courses; reconsideration of 4-year curriculum, possible move to I 5 or even 6-year program. 1941 -SPEE created Technical Institute Division. PAGE 7 6 1944 -(H.P.) Hammond Report for SPEE Committee on Engineering Education After the War: reaffirmed 1939 report; promoted expanding technician programs to fill industrial needs then being filled, non-optimally, by engineers and teaching focus on "art" of engineering, distinct from scientific method. 1945 -Vannevar Bush report "Science: The Endless Frontier" -ECPD began accreditation of associate degree programs at technical institutes. By 1987, 195 institutions offered 731 accredited 2-and/or 4-year degree programs in engineering technology and 28% of ASEE members were primarily in this area. 1946 -SPEE changed its name to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). 1947 -Publication of "Endless Horizons" by Vannevar Bush, reinforcing his 1945 report in a format for a mass audience. 1950 -Creation of National Science Foundation. 1955 -(L.E.) Grinter "Report on the Evaluation of Engineering Education" for ASEE, the final report shaped by the active participation of 122 engineering colleges responding to earlier drafts, recommending: five "stems" --HSS, mathematics and basic science, generic engineering science, engineering specialty subjects, elective&; two track undergraduate curriculum, one to immediate employment, the other to graduate study; twin goals for engineering education --technical (analysis and "creative design"; construction, production, operation) and social (ethics, general education, leadership in technological action); improve high school preparation and articulation, admission standards; integration of graduate education and research-oriented faculty into undergraduate curriculum; requirement of industrial experience for tenure and sound teaching ability; programs for gifted students; improve facilities; drop shop and upgrade labs; retain 4-year curriculum but encourage experimentation; focus on design as distinguishing feature of engineering; base curriculum on engineering science, not contemporary engineering practices; include social and economic factors in solutions to technological problems; unify ) analytical methods in all branches of engineering; lifelong learning. 1956 -Publication of (E.S.) Burdell report, complementary to Grinter report, "General Education in Engineering -Report of the Commission for the Humanities--Social Research Project" (of the ASEE). Conclusions: more HSS needed; widespread, but groundless, fears that this will either weaken engineering education or lead to superficial treatment of HS~. 1-959 -Report to President Eisenhower by Lee DuBridge, Chairman of PSAC, "Education for the Age of Science" urging: enhance image of teaching profession; improve high school education as preparation for science and engineering careers; curricular reform by unifying alDng basic scienti~ic principles common to engineering specializations, teaching relation ofengineering to social and governmental problems instead of parallel HSS stern; promote Ph.D. for engineers; special programs for gifted student3; expand technical institutes; faculty retention efforts. PAGE 8 7 1962 -ASEE created Technical Institutes Council (now Engineering Technology Council) parallel to Engineering College Council (today, 28% of ASEE members are primarily in engineering technology education). 1963 -ASEE launches "Goals of Engineering Education" study, Eric Waiker, Chairman. 1964 -National Academy of Engineering (NAE) founded, added to charter of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). 1966 -Project Hindsight report by NSF: together with Department of Defense TRACES study, it called into question direct relationship of basic research to innovation. -Engineers Joint Council response to Interim (ASEE) "Goals" Report: integrate teaching of engineering practice into its social context, preparing students for leadership in technological action; focus on fundamentals, not current information; .do .. not .. standardize curricula or accreditation; increase student-faculty interaction; promote lifetime learning within curriculum; expand role of engineering professional societies in linking education to state-of-the-art practices. 1967 -Initiation of B.S. degree in Engineering Technology (enrollment increased from 23,700 in 1967 to 58,000 in 1976 then levelled off). 1968 -Publication of Final Report of five-year ASEE study "Goals of Engineering Education": endorsement of Grinter Report on engineering science as basis of engineering education; add one year of graduate study to basic engineering education; limit prerequisites and open the engineering major to transfers; expand cooperative and interdisciplinary programs; reduce credit hours for graduation; improve teaching of social and economic factors influencing, and influenced by, technology by integrating HSS into the engineering curriculum, not tacking it on; integrate research and undergraduate teaching; hire faculty with industrial experience, regardless of degrees; expand technician programs; expand industry funding of engineering research; promote advanced engineering education (Ph.D.), continuipg education, lifelong learning, professional registration by faculty; predictions --M.S. will become basic engineering degree; fewer programs/institution; increasing use of engineering to solve social problems; 1/7 B.S. graduates will go on to Ph.D. by 1978 (1978 forecast: 50,000 B.S., 32,000 M.S., 8000 Ph.D.); Qeed for 1.37 million engineers by 1970. -Olmsted Report for ASEE: integrate HSS into 4-year programs, basing it on providing developmental and value context of technological action, not on utilitarian/cultural grounds; improve quality of general education; retain good HSS faculty who drift away from engineering schools; reduce the number of electives while retaining breadth. 1972/73 -Engineering doctorates peak at 3775 (having risen from 100 in 1943); decline to 2600 in.late '70s and climb past 300 in mid'80s. PAGE 9 8 1975 -Center for Policy Alternatives report (J. Herbert Holloman, Chairman), "Future Directions for Engineering Education: System Re~ponse to a Changing World", provoked by "precipitous decline in engineering enrollments" and of America's global dominance: engineering education too ~esponsive to "transient" changes; prepare for declining enrollments; restore art of engineering to curriculum by expanding teaching of design, requiring work experience, coop education; integrate HSS into engineering curriculum, also consciousness of "culture" of the sciences~ as opposed to their techniques; include teaching changing constraints on engineering deriving from social, economic, political and legal factors; expand 2-and 4-year technology programs; promote continuing education in engineering, as opposed to managem~nt-related studies; expand evaluation; promote engineering major as generic preprofessional training; use industry more as a resource and sponsor. 1979 -ECPD changed its name to Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). 1981 -NAS Cdmm1t~cee on tneutilization and Education of Engineers (E.M. Cortright, Chairman) recommended a comprehensive study of by NAS-NAE of engineering education and practice in the U.S.; it defined the need and identified what the parameters should be. The result was Engineering Education and Practice in the the U.S. (EEPUS), published in 1985/6 under the general chairmanship of J.A. Haddad. -Foreign recipients of engineering docto~ates from U.S. institutions exceeds 50%. -freshman engineering enrollment peaks at 115,000. 1982 -"The Quality of Engineering Education", prepared by the National Association of State University and Land-Grant Colleges, John o. Kemp~r, Chairman: overenrollment, faculty shortages, serious equipment, space and facilities inadequacies threaten quality of engineering education; increase faculty salaries; pursue increased industry support and major government funding to upgrade infra-structure. -Creation of National Technological University by 15 universities and 12 major corporations. 1983 -9566 women receive B.S. in engineering disciplines, up from 358 in 1970. In the same year, almost 19,000 women were enrolled as freshmen engineering majors. 1985 -EEPUS publication begins, seven volumes (see Bibliography). -NSF charter amended to increase support for engineering education and research. -B.S. degrees in engineering peak at 78,000. -NAE report to the NSF "New Directions for Engineering in the. NSF", Peter Likins, Chairman. f PAGE 10 9 1986 -National Conference on Engineering Education, convened by ABET. Consensus recommendations (>75% support): update undergraduate engineering education as follows --math concentration in probability, statistics and numerical analysis, more breadth in basic sciences, expand HSS and communication skills with close engineering college monitoring of eff~ctiveness, focus on design with attention on socio-economic factors included, intensify utilization of computers, introduce interdisciplinary coursework in real-world problem contexts, set admission standards that obviate need for remediation; strengthen faculty, requiring industrial experience and teaching effectiveness for tenure, continuing education, advisory committee of practicing engineers for each engineering education unit, fellowship stipends: at 1/2 industry starting salary to attract U.S. citizens to graduate study; tighten link of engineering education to engineering practice; encourage longer than 4-year curriculua but do not mandate them; engineers should play a role in competitiveness imrpovement efforts, not just executives, economists and politicians,. -Final Report, ASEE study, "Quality in Engineering Education Programs", w. Edmund Lear, Project Director: overenrollment severely straining institutions, insufficient and obsolete lab equip~ent, facilities shortage and deterioration require massive new funding; research values have overwhelmed production values in engineering education with increase in Ph.D./research oriented faculty; make industrial experience and teaching effectiveness conditions of tenure, on a par with research; require test of spoken English for teaching assistants; institute structured continuing faculty education; implement new educational technologies now, especially intensive utilization of computers; expand production of technicians; improve lab teaching, assigning senior faculty to it. "The Qu~lity of Engineering Education II", follow-up to 1982 report, James E. A. John, Chairman: enrollment pressure eased slightly; promote U.S. citizen graduate study by raising fellowship stipends to 1/2 industry starting salary; large scale facilities improvement needed as well as maintenance endowments; Ph.D. faculty can only be held -if campus provides research environment; far too few technicians. -"Engineering College Research and Graduate Study: A 20 Year Statistical Analysis", W.J. Fabric~y, J.E. Osbourne and R.C. Woods. -Creation o~ first Engineering Research Centers by NSF. 1987 -ASEE convenes Task Force on a National Action Agenda for Engineering Education, chaired by Edward David; report in preparation. PAGE 11 f 10 1:. Summary of findings. It is possible to abstract from the engineering education literature two types of issues --new ones and perennial ones--and a set of assumptions that recur in many of th~ reports without critical examination. By "new issues" I mean those that havd emerged primarily since the mid-1970s. Perennial issues are those that were already identified in the Mann and Wickenden reports and have reappeared in most, if not all, subsequent studies. A striking finding of this review is the number of issues of current concern that are perennial. A fuller account of both types of issues is given in the discussion section of the report (II, 1-4), but a number of, general observations are here appended to the following brief listing of issues and assumptions. A. A summary of perennial issues in U.S. engineering education. 1) Articulating a rationale, and making a place, for humanities and social science courses in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. 2) Integrating humanities and social science courses into the engineering curriculum in a way that communicates an understanding of the social context of the practice of engineering. 3) Determining the appropriate balance between courses in mathematics and physical science on the one hand and specifically engineering courses on the other. 4) Determining the appropriate balance between generic engineering science courses and specialized, disciplinary, engineering courses: a corollary of this is the problem of the fragmentation of curricula -at various times it has been considered desirable to have more, or fewer, curricular tracks to the B.S. degree. 5) The competence of engineering faculty vis-a-vis the "real" world practice of engineering: understanding, for example, how engineering problem-solving is constrained in industry by pro~it and market-related factors. 6) Continuing education and professional development for engineers, including engineering faculty, to maintain currency of competence; building life-long learning as a norm into the undergraduate engineering learning experience. 7) The limitations of the 4-year B.S. program and the desirability in. principle of adding at least one more year. 8) Making the M.S. the first professional degree in engineering, with the B.S. serving only as an entry point into engineering as a profession (by analogy with law and medicine). 9) The proper role of state licensing and/or certification by an engineering professional society, in addition to job performance, as determining membership in the professional engineeri~g community. PAGE 12 10) The distinctiveness of engineering vis-a-vis science. 11) The role to be played by industry in shaping the content of engineering education so that new B.S. recipients will be usefully employable as quickly as possible. 11 12) The undergraduate engineering curriculum as providi~g an education and not merely vocational instruction. 13) The responsibility of the engineer to society, at times in conflict with the responsibility to his/her employer, given the social impact of technological innovation and a recognition of the value-laden character of engineering judgement and design as shaping thpt impact: a coordinate problem is how to integrate a treatment of engineering ethics and the value structure of engineering judgement into the undergraduate curriculum. 14) Usingtechnology, and ipso facto engineers, to solve social problems, implying the need to integrate into the undergraduate curriculum an understanding of the social context of engineering, especially of the ultimately dominant role of non-technical constraints on engineering problem-definition and solution. B. New issues in engineering education. [The order of listing is not intended as a measure of significance. It follows, roughly, the chronology of their identification.] 1) Enrollment in engineering and the number of engineers in the American work force. 2) Recruiting women and minorities (especially Blacks and Hispanics) into engineering. 3) A demand for greater numbers of engineers with doctorates in engineering. 4) A dramatic shift away from engineering practice, and such distinctively engineering tasks as design [see the discussion, below], toward engineering theory as exemplification of scientific theories, methods and principles. 5) The emergence of cross-disciplinary engineering teams as the norm in industrial research and development., and the perceived need to incorporate preparation for this practice into the underg~aduate curriculum. 6) Engineering faculty shortages, as market conditions improved dramatically in the late 1970s and engineering enrollment soared to historic highs in the early 1980s. 7) Growing concern that engineering faculty lacked understanding of the industrial context within which approximately 80% of engineers worked as engineers. PAGE 13 12 8) A sharp increase in the number of foreign, especially Asian, students enrolled in graduate engineering degree programs, constituting, by the early 1980s, more than half of the TAs, RAs and doctoral degree recipients in engineering. 9) A perceived Meakness in engineering lab teaching, in part a reflection of faculty shortages such that graduate students ire assigned to lab teaching, in part a reflection of the low professional prestige associated with responsibility for lab sections, and in part an expression of the time, skill and special knowledge needed to make an engineering lab into an accurate experience of engineering problem-solvin~ rather than technical busywork. 10) Equipment and facility problems, especially at the so-called "second tier" institutions that produce half the B.S. engineering degrees in the u.s .. CRecurring assumptio~s in reports on engineering education. 1) That engineering drives technological innovation and thus bears ultimate responsibility for the social, economic and political impacts of technology. 2) That U.S. global preeminence in science, engineering and industrial competitiveness is the norm, such that its absence implies a failure on the part of some person(s-) --for example, educators, workers or managers--or of some institution(s) --for example, the home-, the family, the school system, Wall Street, corporate management, governmental policies, or the functioning of some agency of the Federal government. 3) That industrial competitiveness is a cons~quence of technology-driven production systems which are the direct product of engineering applications of basic science, which in turn rest on excellence in science and engineering education; 4} That education relevant to engineering and technology is the preserve of the nation's system of public and private schools, colleges, institutes and universities, effectively ignoring the enormous number of corporate education programs. In the process, an opportunity is lost for learning from these programs much that bears on industry's need for engineers and on the preparation industry would like them to have: for example, that industry has been providing, de facto, a fifth year of engineering traini~g supplementary to the B.S 5) That the engineer is an autonomous professional, obscuring the complexities introduced by the fact that some 90% of the people who work as engineers are employees of government or industry and as such lack the autonomy and freedom professionals are traditionally supposed to possess to judge when to act in accordance with values transcending employer interests. PAGE 14 6)That the intense, and intensely scientific, research orientation of graduate engineering programs benefi~s undergraduate education. 7) That U.S. engineering education, as well as U.S. research, innovation, production and even trade (except for the purposes of statistical comparisons) can be analyzed and responded to as national issues, without having to adopt an internat~onal perspective. 8) That engineering education should be directly responsive to anticipations of employability on the part of students (and doubtless their parents as well) and that the curriculum should be shaped by the employment needs of industry. 9) Virtual absence of any discussion of attracting to the engineering major students who do not begin their college careers as engineering majors or of special efforts at retaining the very large number of drop-outs from engineering (typically, 40~ fewer degrees granted than freshmen who began as engineering ~ajors, with an average B.S. completion time of approximately nine terms); of novel approaches to utilizing engineers (for example, by stopping the drift out of engineering proper into supervision and management) or to utilizing non-engineers to perform tasks currently performed by engineers or engineer-technologists (for example, by using workers and easing the schooling requirements for designation as technician, para-engineer or assistant engineer). 13 10) Absence of a recogniti~n of the recruitment value of advocating a unit on engineering/technology at the high school level, and of the need for college level engineering courses for non-engineers and for engineering outreach programming so that the general public will understand enough about engineering to appreciate technology policy issues in which they must participate as citizens. D. General observations. 1) Undergraduate engineering education in fact is strongly tied to the immediate needs of industry, which are unpredictably variable, and it is strongly influenced by public perceptiGns of the market for engineers. As a result, engineering enrollment as a whole, and the distribution of enrollment between engineering disciplines, varies widely even within time spans as short as five years. The creation of new institutional mechanisms as responses to short-term variations in enrollment thus seems inappropriate. It would appear to be more appropriate to address the more fundamental issue of the proper role of industry and its short-term needs as influences on engineering curricula. 2) Concern over the number of engineers in America should be seen in the historical context of 100 years of a doubling of the number of engineers every ten years. It hardly seems surprising that this rate of increase should have decreased at some point, as it did in the 1960s. Had it continued at its historic rate, the number of engineers today would be PAGE 15 14 approximately 5 million, instead of the actual 1.7 million. As shortages of engineers today are narrowly localized {in computer and aerospace engineering) and the starting salaries of engineers at all degree levels (in con(in constant dollars) are no higher than they were 25 years ago, it seems reasonable to conclude that the marketplace could not have assimilated the historic growth rate. Furthermore, there remains an indeterminate, but almost certainly very large, elasticity in the pool of people capable of performing the tasks industry calls on engineers to perform. It has only been since World War II that as ~any as half of the people employed as engineers had a college degree of any kind and even today not much more than half of the people employed as engineers in durable goods manufacturing have engineering degrees. Thus, the historic growth rate of the number of engineers was fueled to a significant degree by identifying as engineers people who were not college trained. Correlatively, the decline after 1960 in the historic growth rate was at least in part a consequence of a tightening of the determinants of who is an engineer. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, thatif people with degrees in engineering were truly in short supply, skilled workers could once again serve many (but obviously not all) production-related engineering functions. This conclusion is buttressed by two other facts about the utilization of engineers in the U.S.: that a substantial percentage (>20%) move out of engineering into managerial, as distinct from supervisory engineering, positions, and that the ratio of technicians to engineers in the U.S. is far lower than in other industrialized countries. Taken together, these imply that, except for particularly esoteric expertise, the supply of engineers is globally more than adequate to cope with demand at least on the timeline of the responsiveness of the educational system: 3-5 years, both for major structural changes in curricula and for enrollement shifts in response to market perceptions~ 3) The current concern with the number of engineers in, or available in the near-term to enter, the U.S. work-force seems misplaced. For one thing, given utilization patterns, the quality of engineering college preparation, especially in state-of-the-art related skills, seems of far greater consequence than the absolute number of engineers. For another, the pool of potential engineers is vastly larger than is reflected in engineeringcommunity studies of engineering. On one hand, this claim is based on the evolution of how people are identified as engineers, in particular, on the growing formalization of the requirements for professional status. People employed as engineers today almost universally have degrees from accredited institutions either in engineering or in physical science. This was not the case prior to World War II, a period overlapping the "Golden Age" of American engineering, and although technical knowledge has become much more esoteric and specialized since then, there are unquestionably many production-and construction-related jobs filled by college-educated engineers for which talent and experience are the equal of an undergraduate engineering degree, the only degree possessed by the overwhelming majority of engineers. PAGE 16 15 Little effort has been made to institutionalize mechanisms by which appropriately talented workers can move up to engineer or "para-engineer" status, outside of corporate training/educational programs, which are generally ignored or patronized in the enginering education literature. This stands in sharp contrast to longstanding mechanisms in other industrialized countries (for example, England, France and Germany) to this end and may be a reflection of the elitist and management-linked professional self-image of the engineering community. It may also explain the failure of technician, technologist and engineering technology curricula to attract as many students as had been anticipated. On the other hand, even within the formal accreditation scheme, the pool of available students overwhelms the predicted decline of; engineering enrollment based on demographic changes. The drop out rate for engineering majors is on the order of 40-50% and unlike comparable drop-out rates for humanities and social science majors, it cannot be made up by crossover transfers except with very great difficulty because of the density of the 4-year curriculum, yet very little effort has been made to retain these students, many of whom have been identified as of high caliber. Engineering colleges make no effort to attract into engineering students who do not begin their careers as engineering majors, which makes enrollment almost totally dependent on career decisions made in high school: surveys consistently indicate that the overwhelming majority of freshman engineering majors chose to major in engineering by their junior year in ~igh school. These decisions are clearly sensitive to a host of emotional, intellectual and social experiences capable of modifying them. In addition, it makes engineering enroll~ent dependent on still earlier decisions to take mathematics ~nd science courses in pursuit of a career in engineering that is very poorly understood, in part because no systematic effort is made to present engineering to high school students as a discipline and a profession distinct from the physical, life and social sciences. 4) The rate at which women choose engineering as a major/profession has increased dramatically since 1970: from 800 freshmen and 350 B.S. degrees to 17,000 freshmen and 9000 degrees. Although some today express disappointment with the current levelling off of this figure, it is an astonishing success story, especially compared to the significant but much less dramatic results of intensive recruitment efforts aimed at the Black and Hispanic communities. Understanding the factors underlying this turnabout seems very likely to be of great value for efforts at increasing the rate at which high school students of all kinds choose to major in engineering. 5) The view persists in the engineering education literature that the supply of engineers is directly related to technological innovation and the competitiveness of industrial production. A consensus exists among technology studies scholars, however, to the effect that managerial decision-making dominates the innovation process and that competitiveness is determined by a wide range of corporate, political and social policy decisions that make the coupling of innovation and competitiveness to engineering education very weak. PAGE 17 16 Improving either the quality or the quantity of engineering graduates, on these views, would have little or no impact on innovation successes or the competitiveness of American industry in the absence of relevant policy changes, while policy changes by themselves would almost certainly affect competitiveness and in the process precipitate complementary changes in engineering education. 6) Graduate education generally is ~idely perceived to be the great strength of the American educitional system. That many foreigners are attracted to graduate engineering programs here is not surprising and has only become a matter of concern because of the growing proportion of full-time doctoral students and graduate assistants they have come to represent. Americans were attracted into doctoral engineering programs in growihg number since World War I1 and especially during the period of greatest federal research expe