Engineering education throughout the world: A synoptic view

The United States has benefited in the past by adopting approaches to education that were being used in countries in Europe. Engineering education, in particular, was influenced significantly by ideas initially developed in other nations. In the past few decades, however, with the tremendous advances America has achieved in science, technology, and scholarship, we have become insular as a nation with respect to outside ideas. Studies of the changes that are occurring in the educational systems in many countries, and of the results of those changes, can provide us with new insights to think imaginatively about solutions to the problems that exist within our country. This article describes the systems for engineering education in four nations: West Germany, France, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. Although necessarily succinct, it provides enough information so that the reader can judge whether he or she would wish to study a particular idea or development in depth.