Physics in the engineering curriculum at the universities in Belgium

At Belgian universities, the Faculty of Engineering offers a 5-year program leading to the degree of “burgerlijk ingenieur,” comparable to the USA “Master of Engineering.” Until the seventies, the greater part of the first two years was largely devoted to mathematics, physics, and chemistry; however, curriculum changes over the last 25 years gradually introduced more technically oriented courses at the expense of these basic sciences. In this paper the impact of some recent changes in the engineering curriculum at the university of Gent on the teaching of physics is discussed (1).