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  • Print publication year: 2014
  • Online publication date: February 2015

Conclusion - Engineering at the Crossroads

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Summary

Introduction

In a recent report Sparks and Waits (2011) for the U.S. National Governors Association (NGA) faced the association with a crossroads in the development path of higher education. They suggested that the governors should make a radical change in direction. They recommended that the states should redirect their support away from traditional four-year programs of general education toward the provision of courses that would “better prepare students for high paying, high demand jobs” (p. 22). At the same time they should also consider the provision made for shorter programs. To determine the requirements for these courses the states should take much more notice of the comments of employers than they had in the past. Although these proposals result from a review of labor market trends in the United States there is no reason to believe that they are not representative of trends among the labor markets of the industrialized nations. In any case it is clear that higher education is facing a crisis of enormous proportions that some believe will be solved only by revolutionary changes in the structure of higher education and the curriculum in particular, irrespective of developments in educational technology.

It seems that the cliché that individuals will have several if not many changes of job during their lifetimes is becoming a truism. If that is the case, then the relationships among employers, employees, and society will have to change.

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Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research
  • Online ISBN: 9781139013451
  • Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013451
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