American engineering education: current issues and future directions

Calls for major changes in American engineering education have been heard with growing frequency in recent years. The proponents of change call for attaching greater importance to teaching in the academic reward system, movement away from the traditional lecture format to more active and cooperative learning methods, and the use of industry-derived assessment techniques to evaluate and improve program quality. Resistance to these proposals has concurrently arisen among administrators and faculty members who believe that the present system works well and should not be changed. This paper presents a briefhistory of the antecedents of the debate, lists the focal issues and outlines the opposing views on each issue,