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Conclusion - Engineering at the Crossroads

Implications for Educational Policy Makers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2015

By
John Heywood
Edited by
Aditya Johri  and
Barbara M. Olds
John Heywood
Affiliation:
Trinity College Dublin and Chartered Management Institute
Aditya Johri
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Barbara M. Olds
Affiliation:
Colorado School of Mines
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research , pp. 731 - 748
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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  • Engineering at the Crossroads
    • By John Heywood, Trinity College Dublin and Chartered Management Institute
  • Edited by Aditya Johri, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Barbara M. Olds
  • Book: Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013451.044
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  • Engineering at the Crossroads
    • By John Heywood, Trinity College Dublin and Chartered Management Institute
  • Edited by Aditya Johri, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Barbara M. Olds
  • Book: Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013451.044
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Engineering at the Crossroads
    • By John Heywood, Trinity College Dublin and Chartered Management Institute
  • Edited by Aditya Johri, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Barbara M. Olds
  • Book: Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research
  • Online publication: 05 February 2015
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139013451.044
Available formats
×