Standardised testing. 14

[oldfieldguy]

Recently read else where on the Internet:

"To be minimally fair, a good high-school education is still essential, and college is (if you're lucky) where you go to get one."

old field guy

 

[IRstuff]

The US median income of $51k (2012) is only about 3.2x minimum wage wage, and that's for a household of 4. For certain fields, like most of engineering, that's the starting salary. So, college does get you a better salary, but only in certain fields, which most students shy away from, given that the most popular major is still psych, or something like it.

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[GregLocock]

There was an article I read recently that looked at the CBA for various degrees/professions, and compared them with non university outcomes.

Thirty or more years ago an engineering had a huge multiplier compared with most degrees, it is still ahead, but not by as much.

This is not that article but covers much the same ground

http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci20-3.pdf

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Sparweb]

rconnor,
Thank you for your well through-out contribution. You've managed to explain what I couldn't. I knew when I started that I was going against the grain, but my opinion is the product of years of thought, and discussion with friends and family. It reassuring to see that a logical analysis, from a different perspective, can remove the perception that it is biased by elitism or prejudice.

IRstuff,
I had a similar advantage entering university, and skipped a large part of first year going in because of prior credit. It did not help me deal with the absent instructors, underfunding, or bureaucracy, which I cited as my main obstacles. But different institutions can have radically different cultures so your son may (if he is lucky) not have to overcome these hurdles. Rather, the diversity in his education so far may make him a much better student and he'll get more out of it than the average work-work student.

It seems the thread has moved on to bashing US education in general. I won't participate in that so I'm still done with it.

I do want to leave with a positive note: I believe that today's society has never been in better hands than with the GenX'ers that are now taking the reins from the boomers, and that western culture will do even better when the torch is handed to the Gen-Y generation that is starting to leave post-secondary schooling now.


STF

 

[TomDOT]

Greg - Nice article. It would be interesting if they also broke out the non-Bachelor's concentrations - at the very least, breaking out the "trades" (Plumbing, electrical, etc) from just working a cash register.

 

[Debaser]

rconner "I don't consider Oxford to be a "trade school" but a school "focused solely on a specific technical understanding/knowledge" for engineering; the latter was the definition that I ran with."
And yet despite this 'focus solely on a specific knowledge of engineering', somewhere between 20% to 30% of UK engineering graduates somehow know enough about 'how to think' to get jobs outside engineering, notably in finance, the law, etc.

IRstuff "I have heard/read that some countries are supposedly less creative than the US, specifically because of their educational philosophies."
Oddly enough I've heard that UK engineers/scientists are also considered rather more creatve than some of their overseas colleagues, presumably despite our system not teaching them 'how to think', but only 'how to do'.

As other Brits have said, I think maybe our system attempts to do the 'rounding' a bit earlier than the US system - perhaps why we can't compete with Asian countries at secondary level maths, but they still come to us for the expertise, and yes, creativity of our engineers.

 

[SomptingGuy]

20% to 30% ?

More like 70%+ of my class of '90 ended up in some form of think-related non-engineering employment.

- Steve

 

[ScottyUK]

In 1990 70% of my course didn't come back for start of the second year.

The survivors largely went in to engineering-related roles after graduation, at least early in their careers. I lost touch with most as I was living out of a suitcase a couple of years later, so I have no idea what they are doing now.

 

[rconnor]

SparWeb, thanks. I was merely building off your argument. I think you made a lot of key points.

Debaser, are you suggesting that someone with an engineering degree (only) can work as a lawyer or accountant in the UK? I don’t know the standards of qualification that well for British lawyers and accounts but I’d venture a guess and say that they can’t. They’d need to return to school to do a law or finance degree. In which case, I have no idea how that is an argument against, or for, my position.

KENAT, I appreciate your efforts to clarify your position and try to understand mine. The key thing is that I’m not trying to say a technical focus is bad as much as I’m trying to defend the inclusion of some humanities. Thus far, the post have all had to do with the former and no one has really touched on the latter, except a few disparaging, throw-away comments attacking the arts. I’d argue that this actually supports my point; a lack of education in the humanities leads to a lack of appreciation for the humanities.

Furthermore, no one has defended how more technical classes would improve the quality of engineers. Aside from anecdotes, there is no real evidence to suggest that the quality of engineers is degrading. Technological development continues at an exponential rate. Planes aren’t falling from the sky, buildings aren’t crumbling to the ground. The “kids these days” argument was said about your generation and the generation before that. I feel the voice that says “this generation’s fresh grads don’t know enough coming out of university” comes from businesses. It allows them to pass the buck for training back to universities, it allows them to undervalue new grads and it allows them to get more H1B visas (and my issue is not with immigrant workers “taking” local jobs, my issue is with the fact that H1B workers become indentured servants). I see nothing, aside from improvable anecdotes, to support the position that the quality of new engineers is fading. Furthermore, I see nothing to support the claim that replacing the humanities with more specialized technical education will solve the problem (which I don’t believe exists).

I do agree that more internships and real-world placements can improve the quality of young engineers but that is normally always done as an extension of the degree or in-between the school year. Co-op terms or internship programs never take away class time, they are in addition to it. Therefore, this argument cannot be used to call for less humanities courses as the two do not overlap.

I'd also add that it's rather odd that many of the same people that are arguing for an increased focus on the specialized technical elements of an engineering degree, at the expense of a few humanities classes, also argue against the usefulness of doing a masters or PhD. So is more specialized technical education a positive or non-beneficial thing?

Your comment about the period where a “well-rounded” education arose affecting the reasoning behind it is an interesting one. However, the increasing depth and number of sub-disciplines is, to me, more of an argument against a more specifically focused technical education than for it. The amount of things someone can do with a “mechanical engineering degree” is so vast that it is impossible to teach, at depth, all those areas. Furthermore, the students themselves don’t know which sub-discipline they will end up in. If we want to sacrifice the universal benefit of education in ethics, critical thinking and cultural understanding that the humanities provide, what specific technical area should take its place? More thermofluids, stress analysis, hydraulics, pneumatics, machine design, FMEA, vibrations, acoustics, coding, calculus? It’s a guessing game where over half of the technical classes you take will not be applicable to your job.

(IRstuff, although slightly off topic, I did want to say how much I agree with you that “sports culture” skews priorities and places emphasis and praise on the wrong areas. I say this although sports have been a major part of my life; I played and now coach soccer at a fairly high level. At times I feel I’m complicit with promoting this sports-mad culture however, as a coach, I have always placed emphasis on using sport to develop positive personality traits (teamwork, dedication, dealing with strife and criticism, etc).

But it’s insane how lost this message can get, particularly among the adults. Some of the most talented kids I’ve worked with have been the most problematic. The problem is that other coaches and technical directors think that producing talented players will reflect positively on them, so they constantly gloat over their star players and shower them with praise and love, as a farmer would over his prize-winning pumpkin. They become the golden child of the club and can do no wrong. When you have adults kissing your feet from a young age, of course you will develop a superiority complex - you begin to accept that you can do no wrong. So when I get these kids that don’t want to work, don’t want to be a teammate and don’t want to listen, they get a rude awakening when I’m on their back. They complain and threaten to move their kid to another club and some technical directors bend at the knee. It’s a shame to see these kids be encouraged to be selfish, conceited, jerks. So I completely agree with you and am happy to see there are others that can see the issues as well.)

 

[IRstuff]

" buildings aren’t crumbling to the ground. "

Well, there have been a few, recently... But, arguably, that might be because of corner cutting, as opposed to technical design issues.

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[SomptingGuy]

This long thread is way OT now, but rconnor has exposed some of the oddities that exist in our higher education systems. Putting obsessive focus on sports to one side...

UK Employers in the financial/management/consulting/finance/law industries flock to the recruitment fairs of science/engineering universities. Graduates in engineering are in big demand outside of the field of engineering. I suppose the mech eng degree is the fundamental measure of a candidate's relevant (latent) (suit)ability for them. Numerate, logical thinking, problem solving, hard working, not too nerdy, not too much of a party animal. Professions with their own entry barriers, such as law and accountancy, required mech eng grads to sit a year or two of trivial studies in some minor college before getting their stripes. Then again, so did those who'd done straight law or economics, and employers chose the mech eng grads over them. My own student house had three others on my mech eng course. They became lawyer, accountant, management consultant.

So I can only agree that three intensive years of maths/fluids/thermo/stress/materials/dynamics is not going to be useful for most of those who sat it - even those who became engineers. But in our crazy British employment world, it's the yardstick that many employers use. Successful mech eng grads are a good bet. I'm probably VERY unusual in that I regularly use most of the things I studied back then (not materials).

The other aspect is that most UK posters on this site will have had the brilliant/lucky experience of a totally free 1st degree at a UK university of their choice, course of their choice (based on merit, nothing else). The older of use will also have had living expenses thrown in too (beer grants). We had a single shot out of whatever background produced us, with no need to include expense/debt/future plans/etc in any decision. Those who chose arts were taking a three year expenses-paid holiday. Those who chose engineering were getting an extension of school, albeit in a far-flung location that had cheap beer. Now that UK students have to pay for their courses, there may be a shift in this mentality, especially if technical courses start to cost more than arts courses. The removal of the maintenance grants has already made it less likely for students to study in faraway places.

- Steve

 

[SomptingGuy]

Addendum.

If you were one of those who sat through the UK Maths/Science A-Levels and a UK mech eng degree, you'll almost certainly have needed no further (external) technical education to function in most engineering functions. That small-ish percentage of mech eng grads that became mech eng practitioners got lucky.

- Steve

 

[IRstuff]

So, is there just a massive excess of ME grads? Seems to me that one of the issues with a free education is that it removes the return on investment calculation that one might do when choosing a major. If I had to pay $40k/yr for and ME education, but only have, say, a 10% chance of getting an ME job, that might skew my decisions a bit.

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[SomptingGuy]

No, not at all (excess of ME grads). More like an excess of art history, PPE, classics, etc grads. The 3-year holidays that I mentioned. ME was too much like hard work.

- Steve

 

[IRstuff]

That's the other side of that free education, again, because the ROI calculation is whacked. Otherwise, you'd consider the overall lack of a decent job, based on how much money you're investing.

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[KENAT]

Sompting, if you thought ME grads were in demand you should have seen the scramble for the aero folks at least at Southampton, Anderson Consulting etc. were willing to take much lower grades from Aero courses (and a couple others) than other courses. Off the top of my head I want to say they required 1st from most courses, 2:1 from most engineering and as low as 2:2 from a couple of others including Aero.

(I'm not claiming my doing aero makes me smarter than you or others btw, I definitely was at the low end of the bell curve for my course as a whole.)

RConner, if nothing else I'd think the cost of college education was one reason to second guess how many non core classes should be required.

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[IRstuff]

EE and CS are the e-tickets this year. Pretty much everyone my son knows in his major is already employed, compared even to other engineering majors.

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[SomptingGuy]

So KENAT, As you see I've argued our case into a corner. The city of London is packed with suits who have a dim distant memory of Newtonian mechanics, Navier-Stoke equations and matrix inversion techniques. Took me years before I could even afford a black cab, let alone commute in one.

- Steve

 

[KENAT]

Does implying that other industry sectors/professions are eager to recruit 'trade school' grads imply that the trade school education is too narrow in nature and should be more rounded?

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[IRstuff]

Either that, or the other industry sector/profession majors are woefully unprepared for the real jobs. Almost everything involves math (maths) these days; I can see why someone might hire an ME, or EE, with an overkill in math, who might be more easily taught finance than a finance major with "just enough" math, and that engineering major would be more appealing as a new hire.

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