November 2005
Copyright © 2005 World Expertise LLC – All rights reserved
A periodic electronic newsletter for engineering education leaders,
edited by Russel C. Jones, Ph.D., P.E., and Bethany S. Oberst, Ph.D.
5 – Employment
6 – Journals
7 – Meetings
Woman scientist becomes German Chancellor - Angela
Merkel is the first female Chancellor in German history, according to an article
by Andrew Purvis in the October 24th Time.
Following several weeks of wrangling between her supporters and those of
deposed Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the country’s major parties agreed to a
coalition government with Merkel at its head. Germans credit the outgoing
government with making the country a more tolerant, eco-friendly place, but with
unemployment running at a post-World War II high of 11.2%, young Germans are
more interested in finding jobs than saving the world. Merkel
was educated in Templin
and at the University of Leipzig, where she studied
physics (1973-1978). Merkel worked
and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the
UNESCO General Conference emphasizes education – Almost 4000 people participated in portions of its 3-week long biennial General Conference in October. Delegates from 188 member states recognized education’s intrinsic value as a human right and its fundamental role in the eradication of poverty, and acknowledged that UNESCO’s mission is to create learning opportunities for every child, youth and adult from every background in every part of the world. Upon his re-election as Director General of UNESCO, Koϊchiro Matsuura reiterated that education is the priority program of the organization. A $635-million budget was proposed for the 2006-07 biennium. (See http://www.unesco.org)
UK’s Chinese bubble bursts - The
number of Chinese students enrolling in UK universities dropped 22.5% this year,
according to an article by Tony Tysome in the October 29th Times
Higher Education Supplement. The drop leaves a major financial hole in the
finances of British universities, and reflects the first time that the
Payoff for
Tufts’ microloans: doing well by doing good – Tufts University (USA) is making use of a 100 million US$ gift to provide microloans in developing countries, thereby proving that this is a legitimate form of financial investment for a university. The gift, writes Paul Fain in The Chronicle of Higher Education, comes from Tufts graduate Pierre Omidyar, co-founder of eBay. The microloans will amount to about $600 for three months, and will likely carry a 5-6% interest rate. Many of the loans are expected to go to female heads of households who can double their income once a bit of capital is available to them. Eventually, Tufts students are expected to be involved in administering the loan process. (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005110406n.htm)
Italian government to modernize academic appointments – After
almost two years of debate,
From Marx to marketing – Central European universities in
ex-Communist countries are competing hard in the global education bazaar,
according to an article in the November 5th The Economist. Universities in countries once yoked by
Russian Academy agrees to post-Soviet crash diet – The Russian
Academy of Sciences has compromised with the government in reconciling the
scientific legacy of the Soviet Union with the realities of modern Russia,
according to an article in the October 7th Science by Bryon MacWilliams. By 2008 it will close or reorganize
dozens of its 452 research institutes and withhold funding from as much as 20%
of its staff. In return the government has promised a 150% rise in state funding
of the sciences, from $1.6-billion to $3.9-billion. The academy comprises only
6% of
Colleges protest call to upgrade online systems – The
USAID and higher ed organizations strengthen emphasis
on development – On November 10 the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) and six
Engineers point to flaws in flood wall’s design as probable cause of collapse – Members of a team of experts assembled by the National Science Foundation say that a failure to drive sheet piling deep enough probably led to the collapse of protective walls around New Orleans, flooding many residential neighborhoods and surrounding the Superdome with several feet of water. According to an article in the October 24th New York Times by Christopher Drew and John Schwartz, geologists had identified a potentially weak layer of peat soil about 15 feet below sea level in the area while the Corps of Engineers was designing the walls in the 1980’s. Yet corps officials acknowledge that they did not drive the steel pilings – the main anchor for the walls – any deeper than 17 feet. Corps officials say it is possible that their engineers made a mistake, and in rebuilding the broken sections they are planning to hammer the new pilings three or four times as deep. (See http://www.nytimes.com)
NSF Board suggests how to thrive under stress – The governing board of the US National Science Foundation has drafted a long-term plan for running the organization without the promised doubling of the budget, according to a note in the November 11th Science by Jeffrey Mervis. The Board’s prescription is to give project managers more leeway, and not let grants to large centers erode support to individuals. Congress asked for the plan after concluding that current economic conditions had destroyed hopes of a 5-year doubling of NSF’s budget which was spelled out in a 2002 reauthorization. (See http://www.sciencemag.org)
College leaders' earnings top $1-million – A
survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education shows five presidents of
private universities earning over $1-million in compensation in 2003-04, nine
earning over $900,000, and 50 over $500,000. The latter figure shows a 19%
increase from the previous year. As reported in an article in the November 14th
New York Times by Michael Janofsky, the upward spiral indicates that
effective college presidents are a hot commodity, and that governing boards are
going to unusual lengths to recruit and retain them. The US Congress and the
Internal Revenue service are examining the finances of nonprofit institutions,
including universities as tuitions soar. Presidents of public universities
generally earn much less than their private counterparts, but the survey also
showed a jump in the number earning more than $500,000 – 23 for the current
academic year, up from 17 in 2003-4. Some pay packages and spending practices of
university presidents have become controversial in recent years. The president
at
US Congress set to reduce funding for physical sciences – The American Physical Society was angered by recent actions by the US Congress to cut funding for nuclear scientists by over 8% despite a National Academies report, written at the request of members of Congress, to increase federal spending in the physical sciences by 10% annually in support of technological innovative and economic competitiveness. Jeffrey Brainard, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, noted that this cut and others in science funding came in tandem with an increase in earmark projects which are noncompetitive and seen as politically motivated. (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005111102n.htm)
Presidents of colleges cite finances as main issue – According to a new survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, college presidents are more preoccupied with financial issues than with educational ones. As reported by Karen Arenson in the October 31st New York Times, five of the top six concerns they cited related to money: rising health care costs, rising tuition, financial aid, technology costs, and inadequate faculty salaries. The sixth was retaining students. More than half of the presidents (53%) said they spent part of each day on fund raising, and the next most mentioned daily activity was budget and finance matters (44%). Only 41% said they dealt with educational leadership on a daily basis, and only 28% said they attended to student life matters every day. (See http://www.nytimes.com)
Control of the Internet a futile pursuit? -
As the reach of the Internet has extended worldwide, an
international political battle over its control has arisen, according to an
article by John Markoff in the November 14th Wall Street Journal. A
major issue is whether US control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN) should evolve toward international control. ICANN says that
it is advised by more than 80 nations and has had citizens of many countries on
its board, but it operates under a memorandum of understanding with the US
Commerce Department. The Bush administration has taken the position that the
Other nations hope to loosen
US fights to keep control of global Internet
oversight – At the World Summit on the Information Society, the US has
fought back complaints by a host of nations and has retained oversight of the
technical underpinnings of the Internet, according to an article in the November
16th Wall Street Journal by John Miller and Christopher
Rhoads. At the same time, the
Students prefer high tech AND high touch –
A survey of over 18,000
Low cost laptop to bridge digital divide – A
$100 notebook computer developed for students in developing countries has been
unveiled at the World Summit on the Information Society, according to an article
in the November 17th Financial Times by Maija Palmer. The
prototype has hand-cranked power for areas where there is no electricity, a dual
mode screen that can switch from color to black-and-white to make it easier to
view in bright sunlight, free Linux software, wi-fi connectivity, and a flash
memory rather than a hard drive. It was designed at the MIT Media Lab with
support from Google, AMD, Rupert Murdoch and other sponsors. It will be sold
only to ministries of education in poor countries. This laptop is the latest in
a series of low-cost devices designed to bridge the digital divide: a
Poor nations are littered with old PC’s – Much of the used
computer equipment sent from the US to developing countries is often neither
usable nor repairable, creating major environmental problems in some of the
world’s poorest places, according to a report by an environmental
organization. As reported in the October 24th New
York Times by Laurie Flynn, the report written by the Basel Action Group
alleges that the unusable equipment is being sent to developing nations as a way
to dodge the expense of having to recycle it properly. According to the National
Safety Council, more than 63-million computers in the
ABET study indicates graduates have improved – Engineering graduates in 2004 were better qualified to enter the profession than were students who graduated in 1994, according to a study reported at the recent ABET annual meeting. As reported by Burton Bollag in the October 27th Chronicle of Higher Education, the three-year study conducted by the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University concluded that changes in ABET’s accreditation standards played an important role in that improvement. The changes introduced as Engineering Criteria 2000, phased in from 1996 to 2001, emphasize “outcomes” rather than “inputs”. The new standards depend more heavily on “soft skills” such as teamwork, oral and written communication, and appreciating the global context of engineering solutions. The study indicates that traditional technical competencies of graduates appear not to have suffered from the adoption of the new standards. (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/10/2005102703n.htm)
Women in engineering – The October 2005 ASEE Prism is a special issue on women in engineering. Articles
cover topics such as why medicine, law and business are better at attracting
women; women and the tenure maze; and how women are helping each other. In
addition, 2004 statistical information is provided on degrees awarded by gender,
schools with the highest percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women,
and the percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded to women by discipline. The
numbers for degrees awarded to women are bachelors 20.3%, master’s 21.9%., and
doctoral 17.8%. (See http://www.asee.org/prism)
Extraordinary Women Engineers Project – A nationwide coalition
of professional engineering societies, universities and technology companies is
developing a new program to attract young women to engineering and to keep them
in the career. An article by Prachi Patel-Predd in the October 2005 IEEE
Spectrum describes the Extraordinary Women Engineers Project. It is the
brainchild of Patricia Galloway, past president of ASCE, in response to her
observation that university enrollment of female engineering students was going
down. The project has started by interviewing and surveying high school girls to
assess what is keeping them from engineering. The study showed that girls do not
choose engineering because of the perception that engineers lead boring and
isolated lives, and that they want jobs that will make a difference in the world
by affecting poverty, health care, and the environment. The project’s flagship
book, “Women Engineers: Extraordinary Stories of How They Changed Our
Lives”, due out next year, will challenge those views. (See http://www.spectrum.ieee.org)
Consensus on basic college skills – Despite a growing consensus on what skills a student should master in college, there is evidence that those skills are not in fact mastered by graduates. This is the conclusion of a report, “Liberal Education Outcomes: A Preliminary Report of Student Achievement in College,” released by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Good communication, strong critical thinking and the capacity for team-work are all basic skills, but standardized tests and employers’ comments indicate important weaknesses in them across college graduates. The report recommends the development of multiple ways of measuring learning outcomes, and getting out ahead of the problem before the government intervenes inappropriately, reports Burton Bollag in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005110704n.htm)
Engineering gains a younger following – About a third of the
316 high schools in
50 million US$ requested to support study abroad –
The Commission on the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program was
appointed by the US Congress and President Bush last year to create a funding
program in support of study abroad by US college students.
Currently, about 191,000 students study abroad each year.
The goal is to increase that number to one million over the coming ten
years. The Commission recommended
the establishment of a national competition among individual students for
fellowships of up to $5,000. Along
with that would be an institutional competition for funds in support of study
abroad programs. About 88% of the $50 million budget requested would be spent on
the individual fellowships. Students
would be required to earn at least three academic credits applicable to their
degree program, and emphasis would be placed on studying in less traditional
locations such as the
The real price of a college education today – College graduates in their 30’s could be the most indebted generation in modern history, according to a major report by Susan Berfield in the November 14th Business Week. Two major economic realities are at work – many students had to borrow serious money to attend colleges that are ever more costly, and many have accumulated thousands of dollars of very expensive credit card debt. Some 24.8% of this generation of graduates from a public college graduated with debt, averaging $8,226. For private colleges, 69.2% graduated with debt, with an average amount of $17,125. A college degree is now the minimum required to find a place in the working world that offers some job satisfaction and material comfort. But it does not offer protection against turmoil in the labor market as it once did. And real earnings for college graduates without an advanced degree have fallen four years in a row, for the first time since the 1970’s – down 10% since 2000 for college grads between 25 and 34. (See http://www.businessweek.com)
Complex figures
about international enrollments –
Eugene McCormack, a reporter for
The Chronicle of Higher Education, attempted
to draw together information on foreign student enrollment and US study abroad
trends derived from both “Open Doors,” the annual report from the Institute
of International Education, and the Council on Graduate Schools’ survey of
graduate institutions, as well as interviews with leaders in the field of
international education. The article
reflects the difficulty of trying to discern trends during a time when
enrollments have been so broadly influenced by international events. For
example, the total number of foreign students enrolled in
New Carnegie classification system won’t replace the old – The Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching has just released an entirely new system of grouping US institutions of higher education. The new system creates a large number of new categories for types of institutions, with individual colleges and universities potentially sorted in several ways depending on the nature of their programs. Under the old system, two institutions that offered a large number of doctorates would be grouped together, even though their undergraduate programs, for example, might be quite dissimilar. Some of the advantages of the new system, according to officials of the Endowment, are better ways of looking at community colleges and the grouping of for-profit and nonprofit institutions. While Carnegie has never ranked universities within the classifications they created, the famous U.S. News and World Report ranking uses the old Carnegie system as the basis of its groupings. The traditional Carnegie system will not disappear, however. It will be released in the near future with some modifications, says Scott Jaschik in Inside Higher Ed. The new system is available at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/. (See http://insidehighered/com/news/2005/11/18/carnegie)
Speaker outlines disruptions, opportunities for
higher education – A speaker at Educause recently cited revolutions
that had already taken place and were disrupting business as usual for colleges
and universities. The growth of
iPod, the persistent complex issues about copyright, the desire for content, and
the availability of information through services such as Google are all making
it clear that colleges which define themselves as providers of information
rather than knowledge are facing extinction, reports Doug Lederman in Inside
Higher Education. The speaker,
James Hilton of the
5 – Employment
Shortage of engineers or surplus? – Many
company executives say they are facing an increasingly severe shortage of
engineers, and they are urging Congress to act to boost funding for engineering
education. But according to an article by Sharon Begley in the November 16th
Wall Street Journal, some unemployed engineers say there is actually a
big surplus. The dueling perceptions of engineer shortage lie behind some big
policy debates in
Tech transfer on the upswing – A record number of start up companies emerged from research conducted by professors and students in fiscal year 2004, reports Goldie Blumenstyk in The Chronicle of Higher Education. This figure comes from the annual survey of the Association of University Technology Managers. In addition, there were a record 15,000 “invention disclosures” indicating that someone had obtained research results potentially leading to commercialization. In 2004 licensing revenue was the second best ever, bringing in 1.034 billion US$, 20% of which was earned by two New York institutions, Columbia University and New York University, and much of which came from drug sales. Most start up capital for new ventures came from personal contacts, including family and friends, as well as “angel investors,” rather than venture-capital funds. (See http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005111801n.htm)
India concern to design IBM chips – IBM has
announced an agreement with an Indian outsourcing company to become the first
design center outside its own walls for its Power Architecture chips, according
to an article in the November 18th New York Times by Saritha
Rai. The availability of skilled, English-speaking workers at lower costs is
prompting chip companies to expand in
Engineers have good job prospects in 2006 –
Job prospects for spring 2006
The new diversity – As companies do more and more business around the world diversity is not simply a matter of doing what is fair or good public relations, it is a business imperative. According to an article by Carol Hymowitz in the November 14th Wall Street Journal, companies wanting to sell products and services globally need a rich mix of employees with varied perspectives and experiences. They also need top executives who understand different countries and cultures, and executives around the world who intuitively understand the markets they are trying to penetrate. A wide swath of corporations do not realize that, however, and their numbers show management ranks and boardrooms which remain almost exclusively white-male enclaves. Companies such as PepsiCo, IBM and Harley-Davidson have taken major steps to add women and minorities to their management ranks, with good results. (See http://www.wsj.com)
6 – Journals
International Journal of Engineering Education – The current
issue is comprised of two substantial books, volume 21 numbers 4 and 5. Part 1
is a special issue of 16 papers on MATLAB and Simulink in engineering education,
edited by Ahmad Ibrahim of RCC Institute of Technology,
Journal of Engineering Education – The October 2005 issue of
this ASEE journal contains seven research based papers on topics such as
instruction in computing, gender bias in engineering education, development of
professional identities of students, summer research experience, and indicators
of student success and persistence. (See http://www.asee.org)
IEEE Transactions on Education – The November 2005 issue is a special issue on web-based instruction, containing some 24 papers on the topic. Guest editor Rob Reilly notes that the special issue showcases exemplars of web-based instruction as a “modern technology” that has justified an imperative for developing increasingly diverse classroom experiences. (See http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/es)
Change – The November/December 2005 issue contains seven
articles on the changing lives of faculty, covering such topics as caregiving,
work/family policies, attracting and retaining a diverse faculty, academic
careers, the aging professoriate, connecting the university to the community,
and collaborative work. (See http://www.heldref.org)
7 – Meetings
World
ABET Annual Meeting – The annual meeting of the Accreditation
Board for Engineering and Technology was held in
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