Professional education for the 21st century workforce

This paper offers a brief history of the development of professional `engineering´ curricula across the last six decades. The affects occasioned by Sputnik, Japanese quality triumphs, the growth of microelectronics, and how subsequent skills deficiencies were addressed by IBM and the professional society community are discussed. Future curriculum or educational problems need cross- or inter-disciplinary solutions. The adoption of project-based learning regimes, emphasizing collaboration, students learning together to solve ambiguous problems, and acquiring modules of theory as necessitated by the problem being dealt with is recommended. In short - “learning by making and creating rather than from the simple consumption of content”.