ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 13, 1997 TAG: 9704110034
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SAMUEL C. FLORMAN
JIANG ZEMIN, the new leader of China following the death of Deng Xiaoping, is an electrical engineer who headed the nation's Ministry of Electrical Machinery before becoming, in succession, mayor of Shanghai, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and president.
The president's son, Jiang Mian Heng, earned an engineering doctorate at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Ambitious young people from all over the world - children of leading families in almost every nation - flock to American engineering schools for their education.
For many years now, more than half the engineering doctorates awarded in the United States have gone to foreign nationals. This is in keeping with the idea - which has historical roots in France - that engineering should be the ``study of choice'' for those who aspire to leadership positions, not only in the industrial sector, but in every part of society, including politics.
For a variety of social and economic reasons, engineers in the United States developed a more modest tradition. They took pride in Yankee ingenuity, and in a hands-on, muddy-boots approach to solving problems, caring little for the niceties of ``culture'' and social status. This was very much in tune with the no-nonsense mood of the nation as Americans spanned the continent, developed into a leading industrial power and won two world wars.
Following World War II - and especially after the launching of Sputnik in 1957 - leaders in government and industry became fearful of ``falling behind,'' and saw to it that the mathematical and scientific components of the basic engineering course were considerably enriched. But the nontechnical aspects of the profession received little attention, and nobody thought to address problems relating to social position.
Then, suddenly, in the 1980s the economic dominance of the United States - so long taken for granted - was challenged, most dramatically by Japan but also by other nations in Asia and Europe. There followed an explosion of alarm about American engineers: The stress on science, introduced in the 1950s, had weakened their sense of practical know-how; they didn't understand the nuts and bolts of manufacturing; they didn't know how to work effectively in groups; and, perhaps most serious, they didn't know how to communicate effectively, either in speech or in writing. Once again, there was a rush to revise the curriculum, to cope with the needs of the new era.
It is high time that we go beyond tinkering with the course of study and address the more basic question of the role that engineers play in our nation. Something is terribly wrong when our ablest young people - ambitious, entrepreneurial and, most important, idealistic - decide that their best path to the future lies through law school or the study of business administration. There is something terribly wrong when young women represent only 10 percent of the engineering students, when most minority groups show similar lack of interest in the profession and when the overall number of students studying engineering has dropped during the past decade.
We must look out at the other nations of the world and recognize that our basic attitudes about engineering must change. This is a technological age, and we need engineers who are leaders and leaders who want to study engineering. American engineers have done well - brilliantly, in fact - helping make us the most successful and technically proficient society in the world. But the graveyards of history are filled with the remains of nations that failed to recognize the need to change when the world around them was being transformed.
SAMUEL C. FLORMAN, a civil engineer and author of ``The Introspective Engineer,'' wrote this for Newsday.
- LOS ANGELES TIMES-WASHINGTON POST NEWS SERVICE
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