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Engineering Students' Challenges

10/13/17

The engineering field is one of the most versatile and ever-changing areas across the globe. This is a field that can beat individuals to their knees, and it is for this reason that it is not meant for ordinary individuals (Trevelyan, p.3). The field is made tough by the fact that it is a technology field that separates scientific concepts from technology. Despite being this tough engineering is known for being the most sought-after course by individuals after high school. This is because individuals firmly believe in the superiority of specific classes over others. Individuals think that courses such as engineering are more superior and have a better promise for a brighter future as compared to courses in art and commerce. For these reasons individual dive into engineering for higher learning without fully understanding what they are getting themselves into just because they want to be associated with the superiority of this course.

While life as a college student is generally hard, it is definitely harder for a student pursuing engineering. These students have met with a large share of unique challenges again due to the fact that they pursue a complex scientific field. This paper will analyses the various challenges that engineering students must go through in the course of their education an also recommend ways of overcoming them.

The first major challenge facing students is the dilution of course content. Today, the college intake rules and guidelines have been lowered way below standard, and this enables weak students to be part of the system both in the private as well as public institutions. The number of weak students admitted to this course is higher than that of the qualified students in our institutions. As mentioned above the course content of engineering students do not favor mediocre and average students since it is highly complex. It is a course for the most elite individuals. The admission of such a large number of weak students has therefore caused many educational institutions to dilute the course content in consideration of the weak students.

The engineering classroom today is one where a greatly innovative mind which is well deserving to be in an engineering class studies or competes with an individual who has never plugged in a PC in their life. In general, this has lowered the quality of education that is delivered to the engineering students. The elite minds in the classroom, who are deserving to be there have nothing much to gain since the course only teaches the basics in so as to accommodate the weak student.

In the end, this means that the students do not gain the skills they need to be competitive in the world. The result is less innovation since the innovative skills of the elite are killed, and the weak do not gain any of them. It is for this reason that many of the engineering students merely looking for employment anywhere rather than making explorations, innovations, and inventions or even taking up jobs that are challenging as it should be. The poor quality course content results to half-baked engineering students and this reflects in the substandard work that they do in the society. If this problem is not resolved the role of the engineering in the society will continue to diminish over time.

The second challenge facing the engineering students is high student-teacher faculty ratio. This is a problem that has also been caused by the lowered student entry standards. This simply means that there are way too many students and very few faculty lecturers attending to them. The main cause of this problem is the fact that the high intake of student both qualified and under qualified or this cause has led to overcrowding of the classroom. The high student-teacher faculty ratio has further contributed to the degrading of education delivered to the student since there is too much workload on the lecturer hence affecting their quality of delivery and concentration on students (Lucena, p.10). Furthermore, students are not able to gain personalized attention from lecturers to help enhance their skills in the course. A lecturer, therefore, comes in class generally teaches or delivers the course content to all without impacting or focusing on the development of the individual skills of a student.

This is bad since it does not help improve the engineering skills of students which differ from one student to another. Too many students in a classroom also put a strain on the course resources available. Being such a technical course, there is the need for higher student – lecturer participation where students are able to get personalized attention from lecturers, and this can only be done by bringing down the number of students in a classroom by only admitting the qualified. This can help increase the level of engagement between the educators and the students and hence higher quality learning outcomes.

The third challenge facing students in engineering classes is the use of outdated syllabus. The field of technology and science is a constantly evolving field which faces new inventions, innovations, and problems each day. Engineers, therefore, need to constantly update their skills to ensure that they are able to adequately handle the emerging problems in the society (Sidhu, 30). Schools need to equip their students with skills that they need to solve current and upcoming challenges.

It is sad however, that most of our institutions that train the engineers still make use of old syllabuses. This means that students are equipped with skills which have most probably gone obsolete due to the emergence of new problems and challenges and also the advancement if new technology. This also makes the whole engineer training process useless because after all the skills gained cannot be applied in the modern society to solve modern problems and meet modern needs.

Due to the high level of innovation and inventions in science and technology, there is great need for schools to update their curriculums from time to time to ensure that the syllabus reflects the current information needs of the students an also ensure that the skills which the impact on the student are relevant for today's society and can be used to solve future needs and problems. Students should be well equipped with real-time information by ensuring that they can easily gain access to current journal and books on engineering. The manner in which the educators implement the curriculum also needs to change to ensure that what is delivered to the students is on track with the changes in the industry.

Students also face the challenge of lacking opportunities in industrial training. Students struggle with trying to land an opportunity in the industry to apply skills learned in skills, to get further training and also gain experience. This challenge arises from the fact that the bad reputation of engineering training in our institutions has affected the perception of industry leaders on the engineers that are entering the industry. Due to the low quality of education delivered in the institutions, students mainly come into the industry half-baked.

Most of them do not have the skills necessary to be competitive in the industry. Organizations, therefore, do not see the need to give opportunities to individuals who deliver substandard value and so much cost in training them. The gap that exists between content taught in class and industry requirement is the main cause of this problem. In the long run, this undermines the chances of ever having a career for students.

To solve this, there is need to bridge this gap by ensuring that training delivered is quality in term of meeting the industry requirement. This means that the syllabus used should be updated and educators should work to ensure that student gain relevant skills throughout their course. What universities should do is promote cooperation with engineering companies which can take up a percentage of students and offer training to the students, they can also create additional training centers where the focus would be students' projects alone (Felder & Brent p.270).

The final challenge to be discussed in this paper is the attitude of the students and educators. As mentioned earlier the field of engineering does not belong to every individual. A rightful student needs to have the right vision and attitude for this course. The problem, however, is the fact that we are taking students that are under qualified for this course and taking them through the complexity of the course. For a student to do well in this course, they need to elite students with great analytical, technical and innovative skills. When weak students are taken up for this course, it doesn't take long for them to realize that they do not have what it takes to go through the course to completion and also be competitive. This results in lack of student motivation and high levels of drop out since they see the course as being very complex. As earlier mentioned, most individuals also seek to study engineering since they see it as superior course and want to be associated with it.

This means that they come into the cause without a clear vision and with the aim of only going through the course and completing it. Such attitudes have led to poor examination performance and even worse driven students to care more about just passing the exams and not gaining skills that make them competitive. They end up memorizing their course contents the last minute before exams just to make sure they pass their exams. The only solution to this is ensuring that students admitted to the program are qualified that is have the right vision, skills, and mind for the course. Educators, on the other hand, may be qualified but also lack the zeal and motivation to deliver quality.

It is important for high school students to understand clearly what engineering is all about, the expectations as well as the challenges that students face while undertaking this course before sending their numerous applications to pursue it. This is because engineering is not a field for any student who is average or below average. It is a field that requires only the refined minds in the society since it requires a lot of innovative, technical as well as analytical skills (Johnston, Gostelow, and King, p.23). A lot of the challenges mentioned above are either caused or are effects of having a course that is highly flocked by so many average students. For example, this has caused the unproportionate student-teacher ratio, lack of faith on graduate students and lowered the quality of education. In order to resolve most of the above-described problems, we need to restore the competitive nature of the field to make sure that it maintains its relevance in the world. Engineering being such an important area of our society, there is need to ensure that we do not allow human greed to degrade the field and also disadvantage those who are deserving of it.

Work cited

Felder, Richard M., and Rebecca Brent. "The Intellectual Development of Science and Engineering Students. Part 1: Models and Challenges." Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 93, no. 4, Dec. 2004, pp. 269–277., doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00816.x.

Johnston, Stephen, J. P. Gostelow, and W J. King. Engineering and society: challenges of professional practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Print.

Lucena, Juan. Engineering education for social justice: critical explorations and opportunities. Dordrecht New York: Springer, 2013. Print.

Sidhu, Manjit S. Technology-assisted problem solving for engineering education : interactive multimedia applications. Hershey, PA: Engineering Science Reference, 2010. Print.

Trevelyan, James P. The making of an expert engineer : how to have a wonderful career creating a better world and spending lots of money belonging to other people. Leiden, the Netherlands: CRC Press/Balkema, 2014. Print.