To: Dave Mesecher, Chair, IEEE Long Island Section

I was glad to read Resting on our National Laurels in the April issue of the Pulse. Engineering education is one of my favorite subjects.

But, of course, I wouldn’t write to you unless I had a complaint. There are things wrong with engineering education in the United States and in the world, but I do not think that the quality of technology education in the US is in a dangerous state of decline.

I trust and admire the professors who teach engineering in undergraduate and graduate schools and the teachers who teach science in high schools. I know that they work to bring modern advances into their courses and to present ideas in as clear a way as they can. There may be some problems with professors who devote more attention to their research than to their students, but since some of their best students participate in that research, many people would not consider that a decline.

How about the students? Every old professor seems to be willing to say that today’s students are not as good as yesterday’s students. I know of at least two reasons for this view. First, each year we get older and know more, while our students are the same age as our students were last year and they know just as much as our students did last year. The gap between us grows every year and it is easy to blame it on the students.

Second, science and engineering advance each year and there is more to teach. We are rightly proud to add the latest advances to our courses but are wrongly reluctant to decide which topics are important and to drop those at the bottom of the list. How many times have we heard, “But they need to know that”?

Engineering education is not easy. Walk through the cafeteria of a university and students are talking and reading the paper. Walk through the cafeteria of an engineering school and they are doing their calculus homework. As our country grows more prosperous fewer native-born Americans are willing to choose a difficult, but rewarding, education when there are easier options. Students from low-income households and foreign students know that the world does not plan to give them anything and that engineering is a fairly sure way to escape their background. These students, whose families can support them every way except financially, often must work almost full time jobs to afford engineering-school tuition and expenses. One has to admire anyone who can work even twenty hours a week while going to engineering school. Many prosperous countries provide free college education for their students who qualify.

There is another aspect of technical literacy. We need people who are experts in wireless networks but we also need the other 99.999% of our population to know a little mathematics, science, and technology. Voters in a democracy have to have a rough idea of when their leaders are not quite telling the truth, of how soon the earth’s oil and fresh water will be used up, the benefits and dangers of nuclear power, the destructive power of a hydrogen bomb, how to calculate the real cost of electricity from coal-burning plants and from solar energy, what exponential growth means, and the difference between a billion and a trillion. We need engineering teachers who can put these facts in a simple form and teach them in high school and college.

Finally, I thank you for taking a leadership position in the IEEE and therefore in society. One of the qualities of a good leader is courage. At one time we lived in the land of the brave. Now our national leaders tell us that we are in great danger and that we should be afraid. These things are not true. They sap our courage and weaken us. I am disappointed that the lack of courage is so contagious it has spread to the Pulse.

Please do not tell us to be afraid.

Don Scarl
8 Woodland Road
Glen Cove, NY 11542
516-671-0686