| What if after the carpenter finishes building the house, a part of it falls down. The carpenter doesn't know why. Or what if we want to extend the house so that it is not a typical house? The carpenter doesn't know how. It's true that the carpenter's skills are more than adequate, but to truly stand out and impress people, he/she needs to know the fundamentals of house building.
This leads me to believe that a lot of engineering schools are churning out engineers that can adequately use math tools for their applications, but can not adequately do mathematical research in their field. This is why the grad student I'm tutoring will probably have a very hard time with his PhD even though he was an excellent student. |