Level of engineering education in the US

Hi,

Having the opportunity to work in an international environment - as no doubt many of you – when talking candidly with my fellow colleagues afterhours, a I have come across an opinion which is quite perplexing to me, i.e. as compared with the engineering education in the US the level of engineering education in their respective countries is ‘much higher’, ‘more selective’, ‘way tougher’, and that us US educated fellow engineers somehow had it ‘easy’. This seems to be true for all levels (BS, MS, and PhD).

I will not form my opinion just yet (although ‘Could our system really be so lame?’ is the question on my mind), as I am curious to hear from you, especially those individuals who got their degrees both overseas and the US, and hence are in the best position to make a revealing comparison.

Regards.

carlitoUK said:

Hi,
Having the opportunity to work in an international environment - as no doubt many of you – when talking candidly with my fellow colleagues afterhours, a I have come across an opinion which is quite perplexing to me, i.e. as compared with the engineering education in the US the level of engineering education in their respective countries is ‘much higher’, ‘more selective’, ‘way tougher’, and that us US educated fellow engineers somehow had it ‘easy’. This seems to be true for all levels (BS, MS, and PhD).

I will not form my opinion just yet (although ‘Could our system really be so lame?’ is the question on my mind), as I am curious to hear from you, especially those individuals who got their degrees both overseas and the US, and hence are in the best position to make a revealing comparison.

Regards.

Click to expand...

No, the U.S. engineering education is not 'lame' and is not lagging behind other countries (in my experience). Whoever is feeding you that crap is just blowing smoke up your ass to make themselves feel better about their education. If other engineering programs were really so much better then the U.S. I don't think we would see so many international students applying to U.S. institutions of higher learning.

I'll second what RoadWreck said, but from a different angle. My company is building a couple ships in a Chinese shipyard. The "engineers" from China and India that I deal with are what we call "Design Draftsmen" here. I will say that most of the western europe "engineers" I work with are very good. In the field that I work, the US and UK are the top of the heap.

Freon

I was talking to an engineer from the UK about this a few years back. He said the UK engineering was very specific and the US education was quite broad. His example was that he was a fan engineer, whereas I was a mechanical. He could do nothing for the rest of his life but do fan engineering. I was free to pursue anything in engineering, even outside of mechanical. At the time I talked to him, I was teaching tech school. he said he couldn't do that.

May have been BS, but that's what he told me. guy was a hell of a fan engineer.

If the level of engineering education in the US is so bad, why are there so many engineering students from abroad begging to get into our universities? Are these students just stupid, and they want to attend substandard schools compared with those in their home country? I worked abroad on and off in the semiconductor industry for many years with engineers from all over. IMO they were about the same level as engineers in our country but their egos were enormous. Apparently humility was not part of their curriculum. At least those that I met.

And if they could solve all the problems themselves, they wouldn't have had a need for all of us.

To a certain degree it probably does depend on what school you are talking about. There are a lot of engineering programs in the US.

Now, our K-12 education is another matter.

If their education level is so superior they are more than welcome to come and take the EIT/PE tests only once. If they pass, good, if they don't...get the hell out of here and never come back. Just a cranky thought....I am not in a good modd today for BS

I worked for a German company for 13 years. There were a lot of German engineers placed in America as a stepping stone to be eligible for promotion when returning to Germany. Most of the ones I worked with were pompous and looked down on American engineers because most American engineers have only a 4-year degree. In Germany, the government pays (at least at that time) for higher education as long as you want to go. The result is that there are a lot of over-educated people with no opportunity to apply their knowledge. The additional education didn't make them better engineers. I think their engineering degree programs are much more "strictly academic" than ours. They can get an advanced degree without any design or application classes. Just book knowledge is impressive, but won't take you far in the real world. The Germans had engineers with doctorate degrees who did very specialized work, like airflow or finite element analysis. They tended to get caught up in the awesomeness of their ability to make very complex calculations, even if they didn't represent the real world.

The other thing about working with German engineers was that they didn't have female engineers. I was an anomoly. They have a low tolerance for diversity and don't appreciate differences. I think this prevents them from advancing. They get stuck on what was proven correct by their calculations.

Mary made me remember something. I worked with a guy that worked for Messerschmitt-Blohm-Voss. He said the Germans were smart, pompous, and couldn't design worth poo. He said they had brilliant ideas, but the American engineers had to turn the ideas into reality.

I'm sure he had a little bias, but you're kinda cnfirming what I heard.

mary said:

I worked for a German company for 13 years. There were a lot of German engineers placed in America as a stepping stone to be eligible for promotion when returning to Germany. Most of the ones I worked with were pompous and looked down on American engineers because most American engineers have only a 4-year degree. In Germany, the government pays (at least at that time) for higher education as long as you want to go. The result is that there are a lot of over-educated people with no opportunity to apply their knowledge. The additional education didn't make them better engineers. I think their engineering degree programs are much more "strictly academic" than ours. They can get an advanced degree without any design or application classes. Just book knowledge is impressive, but won't take you far in the real world. The Germans had engineers with doctorate degrees who did very specialized work, like airflow or finite element analysis. They tended to get caught up in the awesomeness of their ability to make very complex calculations, even if they didn't represent the real world.

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In doing peer reviews for engineers from Germany I must 2nd Mary's comment.

One time I found this engineer was calculating the clamping stress on a washer for a properly torqued bolt in a standard hole. At the end of the 1 page calculation my only comment was "thanks for wasting 15 mins of my time. You're checking a **** washer."

I have no experience with the actual educational curriculum in any foreign country, but I have worked with and around foreign engineers for all of my 17 years of professional experience. In particular, I have worked around engineers from just about every Asian country - China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and India. With the exception of most Japanese engineers, who I respect a great deal, the vast majority of people who call themselves "engineers" from those other countries are more what we in the U.S. would refer to as engineer techs, or draftpersons, just like Freon said. Maybe the smart folks from these countries move on to the U.S. for the graduate programs?

Someone posted an article that summarized a study of the quality and number of foreign engineers graduating from Asia a while back in this forum. I believe the study was performed by someone at Stanford(?), and basically refuted the rumor that the US was falling behind the Asian countries in terms of numbers of engineers being produced, and proved this primarily through showing the major differences in what passes for "engineering" in these countries' descriptions of their degrees. I'll try to find the article and bump it.

As for European engineers being superior to American engineers, I have encoutered this attitude before. Just like I have encountered the attitude that everything European is better than it's American counterpart. In practice, I have met some excellent European engineers, but no more so than the American engineers I have met, which by far outnumber them in America (I guess the Europeans are happy to stay in their own countries. Good for them.)

kevo_55 said:

One time I found this engineer was calculating the clamping stress on a washer for a properly torqued bolt in a standard hole. At the end of the 1 page calculation my only comment was "thanks for wasting 15 mins of my time. You're checking a **** washer."

Click to expand...

You talk big now, but anybody with 1/2 a brain knows it was washer failure that brought down Building 7

(Insert black helicopter smilie here)

Dark Knight said:

If their education level is so superior they are more than welcome to come and take the EIT/PE tests only once. If they pass, good, if they don't...get the hell out of here and never come back. Just a cranky thought....I am not in a good modd today for BS

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I am sorry. I couldnt just take it anymore looking at the disparaging comments.

I studied my engineering in 3rd world country. And i studied in one of the premier engineering colleges. The admission rate for my institution was about 5 per 100. My grades were in the middle of the class. For the masters degree, the competition for seats in the premier engineering colleges was so intense that i decided to do my masters in USA . I flied through my masters program here, about half of the topics were already known to me. And, i passed FE & PE in first attempt, obviously.

My point is that dont just classify every foreign engineer in the same boat. There is difference between people who studied in premier engineering institutions of even a third world country and other institutions. And believe me, it is easier to get into MIT or Stanford or Harvard than those institutions. :true:

... now li am ready to

What!! said:

I am sorry. I couldnt just take it anymore looking at the disparaging comments.
I studied my engineering in 3rd world country. And i studied in one of the premier engineering colleges. The admission rate for my institution was about 5 per 100. My grades were in the middle of the class. For the masters degree, the competition for seats in the premier engineering colleges was so intense that i decided to do my masters in USA . I flied through my masters program here, about half of the topics were already known to me. And, i passed FE & PE in first attempt, obviously.

My point is that dont just classify every foreign engineer in the same boat. There is difference between people who studied in premier engineering institutions of even a third world country and other institutions. And believe me, it is easier to get into MIT or Stanford or Harvard than those institutions. :true:

... now li am ready to

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One thing is what you are saying and another is to go and talk trash about the engineering education in America. There are good engineering colleges all over the world. USA is not the engineering capital of the world. But there is no need to despise the education of the country that is giving many of them the chances they will never have in their countries.

See?We are not that bad.

Dark Knight said:

One thing is what you are saying and another is to go and talk trash about the engineering education in America. There are good engineering colleges all over the world. USA is not the engineering capital of the world. But there is no need to despise the education of the country that is giving many of them the chances they will never have in their countries.
See?We are not that bad.

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See... How does it feel if somebody talks trash about you or your country's education system?

I am glad to have gotten opportunity to live in this land of opportunity. I totally love the system here. One thing i am concerned about here is that the R&D which made this country head and shoulder over the rest is slowly disappearing. The school system is not letting out as many good students as it used to before. This is very much due to the fact that the teachers just can not control the kids because the system has become loaded in lazy kids favor. In my country teachers still hit the kids and keep them in control. Here the teachers have to play music for kids when they are giving exams (true story i heard from teacher friend of mine). During my senior year in engineering, one teacher even used to stand us up on the bench if we did not pay attention or did not do the homework (but this was exception).

Lets hope and pray that the school system controllers come to their senses and start giving teachers some kind of power.

What!! said:

See... How does it feel if somebody talks trash about you or your country's education system?

Click to expand...

If I am not wrong what started this thread was the fact that someone was talking trash about the engineering education here in the states. I might be wrong.

Some of the most brilliant engineers in my field are from third world countries but I have never heard them bashing the engineering in the USA . If this works as an apology my engineering degree is not from a continental state college. It is ABET but if from an American territory. I did not mean to trash your engineering education system.

You mentioned you pased the FE and PE on the first try as a response to one mf my posts. That was a poor choice of words on my part. There are thousands of American engineers that pass the tests on their first try( I am not one of them :true: ) so to measure the competency or quality of an engineer by the times he/she had to take the FE or PE is just stupid. My bad.

I completely agree with you on the issues with the teachers and the lack of power they have.

Again, sorry if my comment offended you.

To play off DK's post, you get out whatever you put in. If you go into the lion's den covered in meat, you can expect to get eaten.

I wouldn't say that all engineers comming out of the US are piss poor. Yes, some are but not all of them. If you could rate them you would see some sort of normal distribution. I'd would bet that this could be repeated in any other country and each curve would be more or less the same.

I would also like to add something to my German engineer comment. From what I've seen from peer reviews the calculations are overanalyzed. The other side of the coin is that with more experience many of those engineers would be a force to be reckoned with.

I want to add one more comment. I said before that some of the most brilliant engineers on my field (EE P&C) are from "thirld world" countries( in my opinion that term is outdated). They are darn smart and good on their area. But that is it. Do not ask them to go to another field. They will have a lot of trouble trying that. They are specialists. I have seen this many times.

Engineers that come from American engineering schools, are more rounded and this I mean it without any reserve. We have a good foundation and our knowledge is not limited just to one area or field.

No one likes to see their origin, or education bashed. But it is beyond my understanding why will somebody dump trash on the fountain of the water they are drinking.

Bottom line is: All depends on the individual. You can go to the best engineering school in the world and come out of there being a mediocre engineer or "viceversa". To pin all the weight on the school is unreal and not fair at all.

Dark Knight said:

But there is no need to despise the education of the country that is giving many of them the chances they will never have in their countries. See?We are not that bad.

Click to expand...

I understand your intention; however, whether we are good or bad by providing the oppurtunity to various individuals to pursue a decent, honest, life is not what's being debated at all here (quality of education is).

Also, someone has made a point that it is tougher to get into a prestigious foreign institution (unknown to the average Westener), in an undeveloped country, than it is into MIT or Harvard. This may be true in countries with an overpopulation problem (Southeast Asia - China, India, Bangladesh, Japan), but to me it is likely caused by the fact that there are probably way more candidates per a university spot - simply by way of demographics and underdevelopment.

Thanks to all for for sharing your comments.

benbo said:

If the level of engineering education in the US is so bad, why are there so many engineering students from abroad begging to get into our universities? Are these students just stupid, and they want to attend substandard schools compared with those in their home country? I worked abroad on and off in the semiconductor industry for many years with engineers from all over. IMO they were about the same level as engineers in our country but their egos were enormous. Apparently humility was not part of their curriculum. At least those that I met.And if they could solve all the problems themselves, they wouldn't have had a need for all of us.

To a certain degree it probably does depend on what school you are talking about. There are a lot of engineering programs in the US.

Now, our K-12 education is another matter.

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I agree... I think the K-12 is a whole other situation. Maybe a lot of their fundamentals are so strong in the K-12 that it helps them out in college. I know some people who went to elementary school in Africa and then high school in Europe. They had it easy in the bachelor's level of engineering here. They were able to have "majors" in high school, and had already taken courses in high school that you could not even have access to in the U.S. even if you were top of your class and in Advanced Placement courses.

I agree though with their being good and bad programs all over the world. Mainly depends on the individual.

I could bring up a point though that could pertain to them coming to the U.S. Maybe if they are so advanced they come here to receive better jobs, more pay, and to compete with other hires and/or students who are less competition to them. That's just a possibility. Most likely not true, but could be an argument as why they would come here. Also, most companies are trying to become diverse... might even get a second look for being intelligent plus minority.

JoeBoone82 said:

I could bring up a point though that could pertain to them coming to the U.S. Maybe if they are so advanced they come here to receive better jobs, more pay, and to compete with other hires and/or students who are less competition to them. That's just a possibility. Most likely not true, but could be an argument as why they would come here. Also, most companies are trying to become diverse... might even get a second look for being intelligent plus minority.

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I don't buy it. If their programs are so superior, then why are all the good jobs here? They can't develop their own companies? It makes no sense for someone to say a program is lousy, then change countries to attend it.

Now, I know that there are superior schools all over the world. You can't make blanket statements about everything. I know IIT (India) is almost impossible to get into, I know the Technion in Israel is exceptional, and I know there are schools in Asia (ie Taiwan - I can't remember the name) that are fantastic. They are on a par with our top schools but that doesn't necessarily make them better than MIT or Caltech. Look at the Nobel prize winners US schools attract and produce (and I know a lot of them are foreign students).

On the other hand, I'm sure there are a lot of programs worldwide that are more rigorous than the state school I attended. But it was good enough for me.

And for more proof, don't forget our EB.com insiders, our schools produced both

1. An honors graduate from a top three school with practical experience and a million dollar company.

2. THe top Florida engineering firm which masters stormwater modeling.

(this is a joke btw)