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ENGINEERING AND SOCIAL DYNAMICS 57 ADAPTABILITY IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM The focus of the delivery system for engineers is the engineering educational system, where stresses resulting from changes in the nature and intensity of demand are felt most acutely. Under pressure on the one hand from industry to provide specifically trained graduates, and on the other from students and many professional groups to provide versatile professional education under adverse classroom conditions, engineering schools must be resilient. Engineering education is subjected to conflicting pressures over the type of preparation it should provide. Essentially three divergent approaches are represented: (1) greater specialization; (2) broader, more general technical education; and (3) the inclusion of far more general content (e.g., liberal arts) in the engineering curriculum. Arguments For and Against Specialization The engineering profession has always undergone pressure to strongly specialize engineering education. Industry in particular is often insistent that students do not specialize early enough in their education. This belief tends to be reinforced by engineering faculty within the various disciplines. At the same time, as panel members from industry report, many practicing engineers regret that they did not focus more intensively on their areas of specialization while in school. However, because of changing technology and demand it is likely that many engineers will find themselves working outside the discipline in which they were educated at some point during their careers. Also, within a given discipline, engineers are likely to find themselves learning and using new skills. This transdisciplinary movement has already occurred on a large-scale several times in the past, and the capacity of engineers to accomplish it successfully has been valuable to industry and to the nation. Thus, educational institutions should be cautious about becoming more compartmentalized and providing more specialized training. Instead, what is needed is a good balance of specialization and breadth of courses in the individual's program as well as in the overall curriculum. There is a persistent school of thought that argues that, in addition to a broad engineering education, engineers should receive a much more thorough grounding in nontechnical subjects. The rationale here is that exposure to the more traditional elements of a broad, general education
