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<p>I agree wholeheartedly – I think while fundamental classes should introduce the derivations and have one understand them properly, the more advanced classes should prepare one for real work. </p>
<p>Do you have in mind a particular branch of engineering you think fails especially badly at this in terms of Cal’s departments? My impression has been at least computer engineering classes are brutally practical, and have one do lots of improvisation while churning out results to hard projects. Depending on the EE classes, there is a huge practical component, entailing projects. And the one advanced EE class I sat in on was practical even in the examinations, in that it was a lot of conceptual stuff (taking equations into account not even just to answer simple questions but also to think about what assumptions are involved in writing the equations, relative to the real world, etc). In short, it was far from straightforward, and very research-minded. But again, this was an advanced, specialized class whose primary purpose was to give basic training for potential researchers.</p>