The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
May 2003
L. B. Grinter
Responsibility
in Engineering Education
The Journal of Higher Education
Volume 25, Issue 5
May 1954, 258-261.
Engineering education
should represent the highest type of professional preparation for engineering
practice, but it cannot do this if it consists largely of a miscellaneous group
of courses with individualized objectives ranging from contact with the arts to
a study of pure science. Every course
taught by a professor of engineering should carry forward the multiple
objectives of professional education: that is, to develop and work from basic
principles, to learn how to study after graduation, to make use of the
engineering or scientific method without permitting it to become restrictive,
to consider every engineering operation as it may influence the public welfare,
to encourage a willingness to accept responsibility for decision, and to
express through individual work the highest ideals of the profession. No course that is either mainly craftsmanship
or primarily pure science can do this job for engineers, because art and
science are mixed inseparably in every piece of engineering work. Also, neither in the application of art nor in
pure science is there the same quality of responsibility that is carried by the
professional engineer.
Perhaps wholly, or at least
in large part, these characteristics of engineering education, when properly
restated, apply to all professional training. However, one other characteristic, which in
some degree must be a distinguishing feature of all professions, seems
paramount in engineering. The engineer
is inherently creative. His work
probably demands more creative activity than that of the lawyer, the physician,
or the minister, but he is somewhat less dependent upon creativity than artists
or research workers in science. The
engineer must be sufficiently creative, if he is truly professional, to bring
any work undertaken to a successful conclusion. He cannot do
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this by the application of craft rules or by using
inextensible specialized knowledge of science. He must have at hand basic principles that he
understands so well that he can transfer their usefulness across boundaries to
analyze new situations and reach a solution through a synthesis of concepts,
techniques, and experiences never before put together in the pattern needed. This is indeed great engineering, but anything
less is inadequate as an objective for engineering education.
In contrast to law,
medicine, and theology, engineering education proceeds from basic laws of
science as transformed and applied through mathematical analysis to physical
situations. Physical properties of
materials, which form important constants in such analyses, are necessarily
determined by laboratory experiment; and the properties of complex physical
systems can sometimes be determined in the laboratory through model analysis. Engineering was an art until it applied the
methods of mathematics, physics, and chemistry and merged these sciences with
engineering art in a professional way to provide for the convenience and
welfare of the public.
For nearly a hundred years
engineering proceeded with startling success to use specialized science
superimposed upon, or, rather, superficially integrated with, its basic art. However, since 1930, engineers have steadily been forced to delve more and
more deeply into basic science for their significant developments such as
radar, jet propulsion, synthetic materials, and atomic power. The narrow interpretation of basic laws as
specialized knowledge applicable only to a limited field seems to have passed
the peak of its usefulness as the primary method of engineering. New advances are now more likely to be
achieved by those whose knowledge of basic laws is so fundamental that
boundaries for them cease to exist between civil, electrical, mechanical, and
chemical engineering. Attempts to train
general engineers based upon a technological rather than a science background
have not been highly successful because it is impractical to give any student
all of the specialized knowledge from several branches of the profession of
engineering. Such individuals without
basic scientific principles as their tools of integration can be no more than
craftsmen or handbook engineers.
It is also important that
specialized science not be confused with engineering. There may be teachers of mechanics,
electronics, or metallurgy who serve the engineering profession well without
being engineers themselves in the professional sense. It would be unwise to ask such persons to be
registered as professional engineers. They
teach and advance a branch of science, an applied science it is true, but they
are not necessarily teaching engineering. Only when their science is combined with the
technological arts and taught in relation to design, thus introducing the
creative aspect, does it take on the character of professional engineering. Otherwise, the value of the educational
experience is primarily the acquisition of a background of science, with the
usefulness of that experience left to future development.
It appears that engineering
differs from other professions in another way. It is doubtless possible to ask the question
propounded by Elliott D. Smith, “What - all things, not just legal things, considered
-should be done?” But it is not proper
to substitute “engineering things” for “legal things” in this quotation. The reason this should not be done is that the
verb “to engineer” has as its accepted meaning “to bring to a successful
conclusion,” a definition which necessarily requires that “all things” be taken
into consideration. Engineers who
neglect economics, law, politics, international relations, or unionism can only
perform in restricted fields; those who neglect ethics or the social aspects of
their work appear in retrospect as even more limited in their
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achievements. All
successful engineering must be professional engineering unless it is recognized
as craftsmanship or scientific analysis contributing to, but not controlling,
an otherwise planned project.
Certain aspects of
professional education are seldom neglected in engineering. Economics, once an addendum, has been well integrated
into engineering education. Ethics,
which is professional honesty, seems to be inherently understood as a natural
transfer from the study of physical laws which the engineer must respect. Practice and practicality cannot be divorced
from any phase of engineering study. Responsibility
comes so early in the practicing engineer’s life that teachers seldom neglect
to train their students to welcome it. The
weakness of engineering education has been neither the neglect of craftsmanship
nor of specialized science, but insufficient attention to welding these
together so that the student can explain the rules of craftsmanship from his
scientific knowledge, and insufficient depth of scientific study to enable him
to understand the interrelationships between the half-dozen or more specialized
sciences with which he deals.
In engineering education,
as in every other type of professional education, the key to professional
success is to learn how to learn without a teacher. We can cover only a little of the art of
engineering and a few basic principles before the graduate must leave the
university. If this represents his
entire education, the graduate will remain professionally illiterate for life. However, if he has learned how to study and to
learn on his own, he has every opportunity to grow into professional stature. Instead of passing on codified knowledge, the
teacher must learn to place the student on his own initiative to a greater
extent than is usual during the undergraduate period.
The reason why students are
not given greater responsibility for their own education is often that in its
early stages the process results in frustration for the teacher as well as for
the students. Since students have been
studying for at least twelve years under a system that requires only the
learning of facts, any change in the form and objectives of the educational
process is certain to prove disturbing. For
several months the results are likely to appear ineffective and the process
inefficient. Examinations based upon a knowledge of facts are easy to prepare and mark. Those that demand capacity to originate a
solution to a problem are difficult to plan, full of surprises, and
discouraging in the tangible or measurable results returned. Nevertheless, such accomplishment is the true
measure of the progress being made toward professional education as contrasted
with technical training.
It is possible for every
engineering teacher to encourage creative activity in the minds of his
students. The teaching of the art of
engineering should proceed in an attempt to explain every rule so that it may
be modified to meet new situations. Specialized
science must be associated with or drawn out of basic scientific principles and
related to other specialized science through such principles. And all of this needs to be done largely by
the student, rather than the teacher, under the influence of the need to solve
problems as novel to the student as each new project is novel to the
professional engineer. If technical
tools are used and re-used without change, the result is craftsmanship. Only by repeated attempts at refinement of the
tools at hand can the student or the engineer develop a professional attitude. In this sense every professional engineer is
engaged in continuous research upon his own practice. It is a fallacy to consider that training for
research should be restricted to a minute fraction of engineering students.
In summary, the profession
of engi-
260
neering requires the same elements of education as all other
professions, but with greater emphasis upon creative aspects. The highest professional education in
engineering will weld art or practice with basic science into an approach so
sound and fundamental that it will level the walls of narrow professional
specialization which have been raised primarily by the pride of craftsmanship. The key to professional education is
stimulation of the desire to learn beyond the classroom and beyond the college.
This requires more than the mere
transfer of knowledge from the teacher to the student. It demands the acceptance of responsibility by
the student for much of his own education through
willingness to attempt the solution of new problems. Through such experiences and under the
guidance of those who have themselves carried responsibility, the student will
begin to sense his coming accountability for operating in the framework of
society for the general good and in the highest traditions of his professional
group. The teacher who stimulates such a
sense of professional responsibility in his students is a great teacher,
deserving of the applause of his university and of his profession.
[Vol. XXV, No. _1
261
The Competitiveness of Nations
in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
May 2003