Engineering education yesterday, today, and tomorrow

IF A HIGH SCHOOL BOY were to ask any one of us how to come by an engineering education, I suppose we would immediately answer: “By attending a recognized College of Engineering.” Now you, who are practicing engineers, and I, who have been a teacher of engineering for nearly 40 years, know this would be far from the complete answer. An engineering education is a jewel of many facets, the polishing of each of which requires different disciplines, some acquired in college, some elsewhere. It has been said that if you wish to educate a man you should begin with his grandfather; but if you wish to educate a man as an engineer it would seem that there is no beginning and no end. You take what you can find, you soften it up with a little heat, you hammer it into rough form in the forge, you temper it with the oil of precedence, you polish it with the abrasive of experience. Eventually, you will have an instrument which is serviceable for a time, and then, before you know it, the thing becomes obsolete and you have to begin all over again.