The Case for Abolishing the Senior Year in American Undergraduate Engineering Education

This paper discusses the feasibility of reducing the conventional undergraduate program in engineering from four years to three years by merely abolishing what is now the fourth or senior year. No change in the existing duration of the academic year is called for in this plan. Some radical though desirable changes in curriculum packaging are, however, implied. The plan is presented on its own merits as a serious proposal for adoption on the American scene of engineering education. It is compared with the trimester plan of curriculum compression, with the European "pass" and "honors" pattern, and with the other extreme, often suggested, of extending the conventional four-year program to five years.