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THE PRESENT ERA: MANAGING CHANGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE 44 ing school enrollments, resulting from a decline in general economic activity, a recession in the aerospace field, and changing attitudes among the young. Yet student demand for engineering education later rose as sharply as it had dropped: Fluctuations at this end of the "engineer supply system" can create stresses as great as fluctuating industry demand can create. Figure 1 depicts changes in engineering enrollment, and their primary causes, over a nearly 40- year period. Engineering schools and departments of engineering have to cope in different ways with both of these stresses, usually under conditions of declining resources and diminishing faculty. This is not an easy task; it has led to calls of "crisis" from many quarters in recent years. Fortunately, government and industry are now paying attention to the seriousness of these problems and to the need to devise ways of easing the strain on the educational system. Industry, for example, as an alternative to hiring engineering faculty members, has begun to emphasize such creative approaches as shared staffing, fellowships to encourage graduate study, support for young faculty, and "forgivable" loans. Cooperative industry/university R&D programs in such fields as manufacturing engineering, robotics, and computer-aided design and manufacturing are also a positive step. The Professional Societies Much of the pressure to manage change in the present era has been put on the engineering professional societies. The role of the societies has largely shifted, over the last 50 years, from that of a business information clearinghouse (in essence, a club) to that of an educational society. The societies are all active in publishing technical papers, sponsoring conferences, etc.; through technical communication they follow advancements in the state of the art. To some extent they also function as spokesmen for the interests of their members in the policy- making process (whether state or federal). A third, and very important, function is their participation in the voluntary standards-setting process for techniques and products relevant to their respective disciplines. Relying on member support and participation, societies develop standards and submit them to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for authentication and publication. A fourth function of increasing importance for the societies is representing the engineer to the public at large. This public relations function is relatively new, deriving from the late 1960s and early 1970s, when mistrust of technology was more prevalent in society. In essence,
THE PRESENT ERA: MANAGING CHANGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE 45 Figure 1 Engineering degrees and 1st-year enrollments: Historical factors influencing changes in engineering enrollments.
