<p>If you think about it, although social sciences and liberal arts are not lucrative today, they are traditional education type majors. Engineering is a new discipline in higher education. Ivy leagues are not known for their engineering degrees, but for their tradional liberal arts programs.</p>
<p>How does ivy league involvement have any bearing on whiter engineering is a real education?</p>
<p>Honestly, the only people who think an engineering degree is just fancy job training in the sense you imply are people who haven’t taken engineering classes. Engineering classes teach you the physics of the problems and how to think analytically, not procedures or solving all the problems you will encounter.</p>
<p>Bonehead, the sole purpose of an engineering “education” is to learn how to create something specific or to find out how something specific works.</p>
<p>College was intended to teach students to become better writers and readers.</p>
<p>First you have to consider what does it mean to have a real education? Can you define that for us?</p>
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<p>According to who? The focus is different. Instead of discussing Shakespeare or complex political theory (which some engineers are quite capable of doing anyway,) engineers are focused on ascertaining “why” the world is the way that it is. Engineers are being heavily recruited by the finance and banking industries to determine “why” the recession occurred. Engineers also fair extremely well in not only admissions to law and medical school, but also in actually completing these degrees.</p>
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<p>You are correct in assuming that generally, people do not think of engineering when they think of Harvard. This does not mean that Harvard produces poorly trained engineers, nor does it mean that engineers are in some way inferior to other graduates with “traditional” degrees.</p>
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<p>What’s that assumption based on? I see college as just an institution that passes along knowledge to others in a variety of fields.</p>
<p>I’d say it’s 50/50, half job training and half education. If you want pure education, major in physics.</p>
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<p>This, right here. Any discussion is meaningless before “real education” is properly defined.</p>
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One can get good at these things by reading a lot.</p>
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<p>Your assumption about engineering education is incorrect. An engineering education teaches you how to become a good problem solver and a lifelong learner. You are taught the necessary theories in mathematics, physics, and other relevant fields (depending on your specific field) and you are trained to use such knowledge to solve a variety of engineering problems whether it be in research or design.</p>
<p>Engineering is more real education than liberal arts.</p>
<p>Liberal arts teaches you how to BS and/or memorization of useless trivia.</p>
<p>Engineering teaches less specific knowledge and more of “how to think” quantitatively and scientifically.</p>
<p>I can see where Knowledgeiskeyy is coming from. College was intended to teach students to become better writers and readers and for students to become more “educated” in the liberal arts.</p>
<p>That mode of thinking would be an ideal way of the world and even the United States.</p>
<p>Here is the problem. In the United States, everything COSTS as far as survival so training for a job became more needed and practical for many students of families who are not wealthy. Yes, the students of wealthy families could major “Nordic Literature” because once it is time for that student to live on his/her own, their parents can just give them one of their houses/properties and pass on other wealth for that student to live on…so that student is not concerned with COSTS.</p>
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I don’t think so. Maybe for some majors, but a major like political philosophy or something is bound to improve the student’s analytical skills. That’s why you’ll often see mathematicians or engineers successfully try their hand at philosophy/logic, because there is a fundamental similarity between the two seemingly unlike fields. That’s one reason I think I was able to go into an upper-level philosophy course with no prior experience and get one of the best grades in the class. </p>
<p>Anyways taking many classes in both engineering and the liberal arts, I think there is a value for each one. Certainly engineering classes have taught me things besides problem solving skills that I think will be useful later on in life, even if I don’t become an engineer (like knowing how tools, or buildings, or machines “work”). And I’m not even a quarter way through my engineering courseload.</p>
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<p>Good point. How many people would actually attend college today if it didn’t benefit them in their job search? Going to college just for the sake of learning is a thing of the past.</p>
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Ideal? If you’re some ascetic maybe. </p>
<p>Think about what you typed your response on (a computer), how I was able to see your response (the internet), how you can have a screen-name GlobalTraveller (airplanes). All these things you take for granted would never have existed if everyone majored in the liberal arts. I guess maybe your ideal world is some type of hunter-gatherer society. Mine is, but I digress.</p>
<p>Fact is, to maintain and advance the world we live in, engineers are essential. Along with many other professionals (economists, policy-makers, scientists, mathematicians, teachers, doctors, etc.). How is it ideal for the world to have its most capable students majoring in something like Nordic Literature?</p>
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When I said “ideal”, I was merely referring to old traditions and if the traditions were still kept. Engineering (to many people) should not even be part of “college” but should be studied where more “trades” are taught.</p>
<p>I know the importance of engineers, but I was replying in a tone that would sound like the folks who are definitely into what the OP was saying.</p>
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Maybe because in the days when people did this, it was generally only the wealthiest class attending colleges. So it makes sense that the majority of students then wouldn’t be so worried about getting a job versus today, when the middle and lower classes are allowed entry into colleges and universities. </p>
<p>Being upper class today isn’t much different. Upper class kids I’ve found are either comforted by the safety of their family’s wealth or disillusioned by it. I’m the latter, although both have the similar result of not feeling much pressure to get a high-paying job out of college.</p>
<p>Senior, many of the greatest inventions were created by people who did not attend college. The point is that you don’t need school to learn how to create something “essential”. Did the Wright Brothers go to college to major in aerospace engineering? The engineers who constructed the NYC skyline in the early 20th century did not have formal education. Indigenous people created dug out canoes without even knowing how to read and write.</p>
<p>Well, modern technology is rapidly changing and becoming increasingly more complex. I don’t think it’s fair to compare modern innovations to the invention of the wheel. Whether you go to college or read lots of books on your own, you’re going to need substantial and continuous education in order to enter and stay in the field of engineering.</p>
<p>I should also add that the point of an engineering education is to prevent or reduce “guess-work”. You have to be able to come up with an idea, design it, simulate it, and test it, sometimes all before even building a prototype.</p>
<p>Supergrad, I agree, but most innovations of the 20th century were brought on by people who did not have formal education.</p>