Dr Chuck Pearson

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October 17, 2005

Science and engineering education, and associated bitterness

News item: There is increasing concern over the "brain drain" in hard-science and engineering education in the US.

My general response to that is simply: big, fat freeking surprise there.

Who wants to study the physical sciences or engineering, after all, when the disciplines have the reputation of being absolutely brutal and soul-destroying, when in the name of "character-building" students are left to fend for themselves without proper support, when high schools undersell the importance of mathematics and leave students to be broadsided by teachers who expect just a fundamental understanding of algebra? trigonometry? God forbid - calculus?

I came across this article on one man's engineering education experience and read things that I have watched happen to people I care about, and recently:

In high school I had grown accustomed to math classes that featured clear, helpful instruction from teachers who liked to teach and excelled at teaching. At Smartypants U, the jewel in the crown of American academia, my math instructor was a twenty-something teaching assistant whose classroom style never deviated from the following pattern:

1. Greet class.
2. Ask if there were any questions about the previous evening's problem set.
3. If so, work out the problem in question on the chalkboard, without further explanation.
4. Repeat step 3) as needed.
5. Announce the pages in the textbook from which the next problem set would be derived.
6. Perform a sample problem from the new problem set.
7. Ask if anyone has any questions.
8. Give the problem set assignment.
9. Dismiss the class.

Total elapsed time: never more than 25 minutes.

Clutching the shredded tatters of my pride and dignity, I trudged to the office hours of my math instructor every week, seeking an explanation for the increasingly mysterious problems in the textbook. My instructor welcomed my presence as she would welcome the Angel of Death. Irritated? She was terrified. Explain…the problems? Articulate…the steps? Relate…the concepts? I would ask questions, and she would respond by completing yet another sample problem as fast as she possibly could, blushing nervously. I felt like I was on a Star Trek episode. "Captain, I think I understand…the creature communicates through multivariable calculus problems!"

I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong. She was as American as I am. Spoke perfect colloquial English.

Now, I was a blessed man. I finagled tuition to the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology out of my parents, and got a sequence of mathematics professors in Roger Lautzenheiser, Elton Graves, Steve Carlson ("What's the derivative of one-half y squared?" "Um, y?" "Because I want to know!") and Robert Lopez, all of whom made themselves available, some of whom directly and forcefully challenged me to excel, some of whom made me comfortable and confident with the material, all of whom influenced me in a positive way in learning not just the mathematics, but the whys of the mathematics.

But the more stories about people going to the big state schools to learn the math that I hear, the angrier I get. And the more convinced I get that there must be a better way.

It's not just the quality of teaching that angers me about that post, though, and that resonates - it's the quality of the care for the individual...

Engineering physics was only marginally better. The harried teaching assistant could actually explain the occasional physics concept. But he made sure you understood that a poor grade on any assignment reflected upon your merit in the eyes of God. "If you get a 60% below on ANY quiz," he wrote on the chalkboard on day one, "YOU ARE NOT STUDYING HARD ENOUGH." I wondered what would happen if you got a 30% on a quiz. Were you branded? Expelled? Excommunicated?

The social-life-killing workload was the stuff of gallows humor among the three or four upper-class engineers who could still laugh. "Sleep is for the weak!" they bellowed, when gathering at the listless engineering parties. "Your underwear has two sides," they whispered, pressing their furry acne-ridden faces into the ears of bewildered freshmen. "Use them."

This is written as one great big joke. If you are a person who (like this author, who eventually fled to a liberal-arts degree and law school, God bless him) can build an alternate vision for your life, then that's a wonderful thing and you can laugh. But if engineering is the only desire you have ever known, and you find that desire ripped away from you by people who care not one whit for you and by a workload that destroys any love you ever had for the stuff...then the only reason you're laughing is to avoid the tears that will stream from your face otherwise.

I live in a state where there is one school that runs roughshod over engineering education. If you want to be an engineer, pretty much you're going to Tech. And Tech is, please forgive me, evil. How many people have I heard complain to me that "the only thing you learn to do at Tech is teach yourself"? How many people have I talked to who have had their lives fall apart at Tech, and felt loneliness and gloom envelop them while everybody else (wrapped up in all their OWN work they had to do) didn't lift a finger to help?

How many people have lost their love for science, engineering, and all they have known in life at Tech? Or at Smartypants U? Or at any large research-university outposts of engineering education?

And I've heard many people call the people who have flunked out, gotten kicked out, or had "other personal reasons" for leaving school "weak individuals who didn't need to be engineers anyway." Well, by that standard, I'm a weak individual who has no business being a physics professor. The only reason I'm here and I'm doing the stuff I'm doing is because, throughout the process of my education, I have had people who took an interest in me and making sure that my talent was going to be used, to the fullest extent possible. If I had been left to my own devices, I would have been the same kind of washout that this guy Kern was - if I was fortunate.

I suppose that, more than anything else, this post is simple venting and a simple reminder to myself of why I have the priorities that I have. And that somewhere, deep down in my soul in the place that I dream, I would love to see a challenge leveled against engineering education as it's currently structured by a group of people who want to do things better, with a greater amount of care for the student and care for only one bottom line - percentage of students admitted who leave with degrees.

Posted by Chuck at October 17, 2005 07:59 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Nancy at October 19, 2005 07:02 AM

Posted by: Jane at November 4, 2005 09:47 AM