Page 168 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

The Global Engineer

Linda Katehi
Purdue University

As I was preparing for this panel, I read The Engineer of 2020 with
great interest (NAE, 2004). One particular section attracted my atten-
tion. It describes scenarios for the future, four alternative environments,
all futuristic, each one taking us in a different direction. When I fin-
ished reading, I was thankful that none of them was real and intrigued
by a future so wonderfully unknown. And yet, the unknown that makes
the future beautiful and wonderful in the eyes of some, also makes us
vulnerable. This vulnerability has become clear in the present economic
environment.
In the last few years, the U.S. engineering workforce has undergone
trends that we would never have anticipated 10 or 20 years ago—
the outsourcing of mainstream engineering jobs; increasing reliance on
foreign-born Ph.D. graduates; and the need for retraining engineers to
enable them to change careers a number of times before retirement.
As we try to predict the future of the engineering profession and
engineering education, we must take into account some important fac-
tors. First, history has shown that changes in the engineering profession
follow changes in cultural, social, and political environments. Evidence
shows that these changes in the profession have led to technology break-
throughs that helped or harmed social progress, depending on the po-
litical environment surrounding them.
Second, as we think about the engineering profession of the future

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