Page 139 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
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122 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

themselves felt were important. But as with any group in a larger soci-
ety, the engineering profession could not determine its shape without
taking into account the ideas and expectations of others; indeed, engi-
neering leaders always were sensitive to the opinions of outsiders about
engineering.
One of the challenges of engineering, according to historian Edwin
Layton, has been the close relationship between engineering and large
corporations, the most important outside voice in debates about engi-
neering education. Layton noted that other professions—notably law
and medicine—established their professional identities and ethical
norms in ways that emphasized their independence from sponsors and
employers; both explicitly identified the highest goal as service to soci-
ety (Layton, 1971). Engineers, however, placed greater emphasis on loy-
alty and service to employers, arguing that they could best serve society
in this way.
It is hardly accidental, then, that engineering educators and em-
ployers have always had close ties. Until the 1950s, engineering faculty
members, most of whom had practiced engineering before turning to
teaching, considered it their goal to train young men for positions in
business and industry. William Wickenden, who ran the great study of
the 1920s, came to the job from AT&T, and many faculty members
spent their summer vacations consulting for industrial firms in order to
remain familiar with real-world problems. Large corporations, as histo-
rian Thomas Hughes observed, found engineers perfectly suited for the
strategic task of incremental research and development (Hughes, 1989).
Today, industrial advisory boards to engineering departments, colleges,
and universities mark the ongoing ties between industry and engineer-
ing education.
Business corporations were not the only outside influence on engi-
neering education. Some engineering education reforms were motivated
by events in society at large or by legal or regulatory imperatives. In the
former category, we can place the effort to turn engineers into gentle-
men who received the rewards of social status and prestige. Respect for
expertise was a basic element of the American value system at the turn
of the twentieth century, and recognition of engineers’ expertise fit nicely
into the emergence of a middle class that valued professionalism.
Attitudes and outlooks in American society were never static, how-
ever, and as expectations changed, the efforts of engineering educators
also changed. Adjustments appeared almost every decade, most often in

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