The Standard of Engineering Graduates

[Merlin3189]

Do you worry about who's designing your cars,aircraft, buildings, bridges, oil refineries, ...? (I don't worry about most of the electronic technology, because I just wish most of it didn't work! Like mobile phones, game boys, i-anythings,..)

Just recently I've come across two posts (not here btw) from engineering undergraduates asking for help with "final year projects" . In each case they asked questions revealing ignorance and misunderstanding of very basic concepts - the sort of things that I would have expected them to have learnt in a school science course, before they even contemplated going to university to study engineering. At this stage in their course they've done most of their learning, passed most of their modules and are picking the topic which most interests them and which they know most about to do an assessed project on. Next year they'll be out there and making things or checking what others are making. If they were going to be making burgers or cups of coffee it would be bad enough, but if they're making machines and structures our lives depend on ...?

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

If they were going to be making burgers or cups of coffee it would be bad enough, but if they're making machines and structures our lives depend on ...?

I think (hope) that they will continue the tradition of engineering extremely low-cost, low-quality products to be sold in dollar stores and Walmart-alikes worldwide, to disappoint consumers when they don't work properly from new, and break after a week or two and end up in the local landfill.

 

[Arouse1973]

Oh dont get me going on this one. I have had several very clever people (on paper) try and teach me electronics and circuit theory. Guess what I said to them when they got it all wrong, yep fu** off. Some even forgot npn and pnp.
Adam

 

[shrtrnd]

You's gots your engineers, and you's gots your engineering managers. Maybe the managers are directing the engineers these days.
It sure seems that way sometimes where I work. The idea seems to be to market the product and move on to the next big money-maker, ...
whether or not the last product worked.