Comment Not cut out to be an engineer (Score 1) 1218
When engineers screw up, people can die. When a writer writes a shitty column, people just make fun of him.
The guy couldn't even perform a simple titration. How hard is it? You just slowly let the liquid drip until you see the slightest hint of pink. If he couldn't even follow the instructions for such a simple experiment, he had no business being an engineer.
But wait, people say, "Is an engineer ever going to have to perform a titration on the job? Why should we care about stuff like that?" Well no, you probably won't be many engineers performing titrations and all the other bullshit you do in freshman chem, but if you don't have the attention to detail required to do it right, you're either going to kill people or lose your company a lot of money.
Yes, there are definitely problems with engineering education. Yes, we need to find a way to get professors to be a bit more interested in their students. Yes, we need professors who are capable of communicating (although my five years of experience at Georgia Tech have shown that it really isn't as bad as he says). Yes, the language barrier with foreign TAs and professors can be frustrating (but that's going to be a reality in the workforce too).
But his solution is to make it easier. "Inflate the grades!" he says. Everyone in engineering knows that the good schools don't inflate their grades, so they understand the achievement that a 3.0 GPA represents. So sure, we need to do a better job of teaching. But that doesn't mean we should make it easy enough to let morons like this guy slip through.
The guy couldn't even perform a simple titration. How hard is it? You just slowly let the liquid drip until you see the slightest hint of pink. If he couldn't even follow the instructions for such a simple experiment, he had no business being an engineer.
But wait, people say, "Is an engineer ever going to have to perform a titration on the job? Why should we care about stuff like that?" Well no, you probably won't be many engineers performing titrations and all the other bullshit you do in freshman chem, but if you don't have the attention to detail required to do it right, you're either going to kill people or lose your company a lot of money.
Yes, there are definitely problems with engineering education. Yes, we need to find a way to get professors to be a bit more interested in their students. Yes, we need professors who are capable of communicating (although my five years of experience at Georgia Tech have shown that it really isn't as bad as he says). Yes, the language barrier with foreign TAs and professors can be frustrating (but that's going to be a reality in the workforce too).
But his solution is to make it easier. "Inflate the grades!" he says. Everyone in engineering knows that the good schools don't inflate their grades, so they understand the achievement that a 3.0 GPA represents. So sure, we need to do a better job of teaching. But that doesn't mean we should make it easy enough to let morons like this guy slip through.
