It is 2020. Knowledge management and information gathering dominate the world. Therefore, he who owns and controls information is king. Globalization has made labor cheaper and abundant. Yet, the critical assets are inno-thinkers. They are the lifeblood of society.
With the majority of engineers coming from China and India in 2020, American companies lose their innovative edge in the marketplace. Many historians point to 2008 when US engineering schools did nothing to wave off the international threat. Some hoped things would change. Yet, the future remains uncertain for engineering in America.
As America marches to a different drummer, it finds there is an impending danger ahead. While globalization has become a menacing threat to some businesses, the major challenge for traditional academic institutions is to produce engineers who are intelligent, creative, and internationally savvy to handle the challenges of the 21st century. However, only 2% of the general public associate engineering with creativity according to Harris Poll sponsored by the American Association of Engineering Societies and IEEE-USA. In managerial decision-making, creativity involves the ability of a manager to discover novel ideas as possible alternative courses of action for the organization to use in solving a particular problem.
The lack of creativity by today’s engineers becomes critical as more businesses look for technical workers for the future workforce. According to a survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 63% of American business leaders said college graduates are not prepared for the global environment. From a market-oriented perspective, organizational leaders must be concerned with the present downward trend of American engineering schools in producing innovative students.
Academia must overcome several potential barriers that when transforming engineering schools to centers of innovation. Currently, there are 346 universities approved by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the national organization that sets standards for engineering schools. Although scientists and engineers make up only 5% of the United States population, they generate up to 50% of the Gross Domestic Product.
Sadly, fewer American students are earning degrees in engineering and science. This situation is creating a national crisis for businesses looking for innovation and creativity from the nation’s finest.
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In 2004, the United States graduated roughly 70,000 undergraduate engineers while other countries such as China (600,000) and India (350,000) were graduating more engineers. Traditionally, educators attribute the high attrition rate of individuals leaving engineering majors to their inability to cope with the intrinsic hardness of technical majors and do not view it as a major problem.
However, criticism of faculty pedagogy, together with those of curriculum design and student practices, constitutes the largest group of problems for students leaving technical majors.
Demographic changes also continue to shape the realities of engineering schools. Non-traditional universities are leveraging diversity as a competitive advantage while many traditional schools are not.
Thus, the demographic changes of more women, minorities, and low income students have created social pressure on engineering schools to find other pipeline sources than the traditional sources.
In order to the fierce realities of globalization, engineering schools need to shift their strategy toward a creativity focus. Technological and cultural influences are demanding new creative solutions. Many institutional leaders operate engineering schools in a manner that suggests that innovation happens by chance. Michael Michalko, author of Thinkertoys, argues that creativity is not an accident. In fact, it must be an organization intention to foster creative-thinking strategies.
Many times engineering students lose sight of creativity and focus solely on the technical aspects of engineering. A liberal arts education provides an exchange of fresh ideas and an expansion of the creative mind.
Researcher Gary Berg argues that higher education needs to balance applied and liberal arts curricula in order to be effective. Therefore, a new approach to learning is needed in engineering schools. In tomorrow’s universities, collaborative building will be in high demand.
Unfortunately, many times faculty members discourage engineering students from acquiring a broader educational experience. Therefore, engineering schools become a place where students are inhibited from growing creatively.
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Twenty-first century leaders in engineering departments must address the needs of students in becoming creative if they hope to take advantage of future opportunities in hypercompetitive environments. Some people wonder if these schools can change.
What challenges and obstacles prevent traditional institutions from producing creative engineers? How do domestic universities transition themselves into incubators of multinational innovation?
© 2011 by Daryl D. Green
February 21, 2011 at 3:35 pm
Where would the music industry and movie industry be if the requirement to produce creative works were tied to degrees from traditional educational institutions? Industry must learn what Hollywood and Motown Records identified over thirty years ago that creative talent is abundant but it takes leadership with vision to focus and harness mass creativity and talent. Our domestic traditional institutions are tightly focused on cookie cutter engineering skill sets that do not fit the highly diverse business needs of the global economy. Education institutions need to broaden the development of the effectiveness domain skills such as valuing, organizing and internalizing values as well as the psycho-motor skills of perception and adaption. Identifying problems and solutions are one thing but the ability to execute and adapt are core survival skills in any economy. Our institutions must recognize, internalize and reward the development of such skills.
February 21, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Lonnell, thanks for stopping bye and adding your wisdom to this discussion!
February 21, 2011 at 7:05 pm
The K-12 educational system must be re-engineered to cultivate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) proficiency. Innovative STEM education can’t begin at the college level. Lindsey Burke and Jena Baker McNeil point out multiple weaknesses in the Obama “Educate to Innovate” initiative. “America needs a real solution to the challenges in STEM education, one that fosters interest in the subjects from an early age and builds a strong base of STEM-educated citizens”. (Burke and McNeill). Obstacles to promoting STEM education include: inability to recruit quality educators, fixation on the traditional school model, limitations for parents to make school choices, and a one-size-fits-all approach to standardized testing. The national standardized test scoring is “a significant federal overreach into states’ educational decision-making authority, and will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity, rather than a minimum benchmark for competency in math and English”. Applying a blanket approach to standardized competency scores undermines innovation in STEM education. Universities educators should re-design engineering curriculum to include cross disciplines that foster creativity (not just the hard science) for those students who have been developing STEM skills during the previous 12 years of education.
Reference:
(Burke, L. and McNeil ,J). http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/01/educate-to-innovate-how-the-obama-plan-for-stem-education-falls-short. Retrieved on February 21, 2011.
February 21, 2011 at 9:22 pm
Kim, well stated!
Can the educational problem be complicated by political forces?
February 23, 2011 at 6:04 pm
The government has poured lots of money into education, yet proficiency scores continue to go down. The government programs have failed to establish educator proficiencies that would allow us to remove teachers who do not teach. “No Child Left Behind”, and Head Start programs have not improved proficiecies, just lowered the standards. Parents should have choices, based on competitive programs and not be directed by government mantra about improving unsuccessfully the education system in our country.
February 21, 2011 at 7:51 pm
A pretty smart man once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand” – Albert Einstein
Creativity is what drives individuals to success and not just fitting in or even falling behind. In a recent Newsweek article Bronson states the potential consequences of less creativity are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Information overload does not give us anytime to be creative.
References:
Article from Facebook by ImagiPLAY Toys retrieved on 2/21/11 from:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=313&uid=139449182741795
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in a Newsweek article retrieved 2/21/11 from:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/the-creativity-crisis.html
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Traditional institutions need to evaluate the professors and instructors used to teach engineering students. UT Knoxville is a prime example, it continues to hire professors under research pretenses and then those individuals do not take the teaching portion seriously. I know of several students who left the engineering field because of frustration with faculty and lack of mentors and information needed to be successful. Therefore the United States is losing potential engineers who are not only creative but who could become highly competitive in the global economy. In addition, both traditional and non-traditional institutions should focus on recruiting and educating American students as a lot of international students tend to receive training and then return to their home countries.
Companies now have to pick up the slack in trying to encourage students to pursue engineering degrees. Exxon Mobile is now in its 8th year in hosting “Introduce a Girl to Engineering” program. “Company employees will host students in various activities designed to encourage careers in engineering”. This even targets middle-school students and focuses on math, science, engineering and technology (Business Wire, 2011).
Works Cited
Business Wire. (2011, 2 21). Business. Retrieved 2 21, 2011, from pr-inside.com: http://www.pr-inside.com/exxonmobil-employees-to-introduce-students-r2430046.htm
Alexis, excellent!
Having the right people (aka professors) is important for the preferred organizational culture.