Rethinking Engineering Education

The necessity of restructuring engineering education has been recognized for many years, but for a number of reasons reform is becoming increasingly urgent. It is not just that current engineering education methods are increasingly obsolete; student cognitive patterns are changing in unpredictable ways, and the complexity of the environment within which engineering is practiced is also increasing dramatically. Half measures that might have been seen as adequate a decade ago are no longer sufficient. What is required is a thorough rethinking of the engineering education framework, centered around a division of engineering students into technical, single expertise, and design capable cohorts.