Engineering Education in 2050/Tools, Not Just Solutions

Introduction:

In 2014, Lockheed Martin claimed that they will create a fusion reactor that will have “no emissions, safe operations, and proliferation free” so that in 20 years, “we will have clean power for the world.” In 2016, Boeing redesigned their Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) system to account for stall characteristics for FAA certification. In 2023, Forbes reported that “AI computers make zero errors if programmed correctly,” such that they reduce human error. Of course, all of these claims led to failure of varying severity as: The Boeing 737 Maxes crashed due to the control of the MCAS system, AIs spread misinformation and are all error prone, and commercial fusion energy has yet to be demonstrated but still causes some to believe that innovation alone will solve the energy crisis. Lockheed Martin’s claims are especially false since not only did they fail to “have a prototype” that functioned in “five years” as they hoped, it was unlikely that their design “the size of a shipping container” was even theoretically viable. Also, even if fusion technology did become viable, it is unlikely to replace other sources so completely anytime soon. All of these failures have something in common. They result from useful tools being sold as complete solutions to a problem. In many cases these claims are made by engineers who are responsible for developing these tools. For example, the Boeing redesign was signed off by Boeing’s Chief Project Engineer and Lockheed Martin’s claims were made by the Doctor of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering who led the project. It is clear then that there is a grave need to better educate engineers about the distinction between tools and solutions. When engineers have the skills to refute these false claims and the personal integrity to speak the truth even when it goes against business interests, new technologies like these can be important parts of true solutions.

The field of Engineering is suffused with the false assumption that the job of an engineer is to "produce solutions". This can be seen starkly in the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology's (ABET's) certification requirements. In order to stay accredited, engineering programs must demonstrate each year that their students demonstrate "an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions". When the belief that engineers produce solutions is promoted, the role of the user in engineering is underrepresented. If an engineer has "solved" a problem, it is implied that the user is not responsible for solving the problem. In contrast, tools must be used to solve a problem and a user must be considered explicitly. The consequences of missing this distinction can be seen in the overrepresentation of electric cars as a solution to climate change in the mobility sector or in the marketing of AI as a replacement for lawyers, artists, and programmers. In order to truly solve problems like the decarbonization of mobility, engineers will need to be educated differently by 2050 to draw attention to the distinction between tools and solutions. Already, changes are being made to ABET certification requirements in order to promote this transition. For example, the Civil Engineering accreditation requirements for the 2024-2025 accreditation cycle make no mention of producing solutions and instead emphasize ethical and sustainable design. Though some branches of engineering, such as computer science, still require engineers to "produce solutions", we anticipate that this will have changed by 2050.

Collaboration Between Majors:

Historically, engineering has been an interdisciplinary career, with most engineers having other careers. Leonardo da Vinci was an architect and an artist. Benjamin Franklin was a politician, postmaster, and writer. However, engineering education has overly focused on specialization. This has led to a major problem in the professional world, with engineers encountering problems and attempting to create solutions that fail to help the people they are supposed to. There has been progress in moving away from this ideology, but there must be significantly more to enforce the "Tools, not Solutions" mindset that is essential to engineering.

Engineering is a highly interdisciplinary field, with most engineers having many transferable skills. Despite this, working with others is something that engineers struggle with. This can, in part, be attributed to engineering education prioritizing solutions over tools. Solutions do not exist in real life, but tools do. Making good tools requires collaboration between the engineers designing the tool and the people who need the tool. This is not something that is seriously covered in modern engineering education. An improvement to the engineering curriculum would be requiring engineering students to work with other majors over the course of their undergraduate career. Whether they enter the workforce or pursue further education afterwards, they will have to work with non-engineers on the regular. Therefore, they should spend their first year determining what they want to do and which kinds of people they will be working with. Biomedical engineers might work with pre-med students, computer engineers might work with business majors, etc. This will be a largely open selection. Engineers should have the freedom to decide what their career path will entail and find the right people to work with. Once they have found someone to work with, they should start discussing what their goals are and what project they will work together to create. Unlike other projects, which usually take a semester, this project will take until graduation to be completed. By working with someone outside of engineering, engineering students will be forced to consider the needs and wants of a partner and construct a tool, not a solution. At the end of their fourth year, the partnership will present their project, explaining what they learned from it and how they can apply it. Working for such a long time on a project would give both partners an experience of what their future jobs will be like. Beyond the obvious benefit of creating more skilled and wise engineers, this will also give the engineers a major interdisciplinary project on their resume, showcasing to employers that they are well prepared for the challenges of a career. The non-engineering student also stands to benefit. Communication is a two-way road. By working with an engineer, the student will gain experience that will help them work with engineers in their career. The world will be even more interdisciplinary in 2050. It is important that different professionals are capable of working with each other to create their visions, while also recognizing the fundamental difference between tools and solutions. .

Emphasis in Projects:

In today's engineering programs, projects are seen primarily as tools to educate engineers in solving problems that they may encounter outside of education. These projects place a great emphasis on the technical aspects of this problem solving, but often neglect to emphasize the social aspects of problem solving. By 2050, engineering programs will place a greater emphasis on the development cycle in projects. Doing so, they will emphasize that responsible development begins with diagnosing a problem that can be solved with the help of engineering. Then, students will work to create a tool that can be used to solve that problem. Afterwards, students will discuss the uses and limitations of the tool including an emphasis that the tool is useless without a user. By integrating this distinction into project based learning, engineers in the future will have concrete examples of the importance of considering the user in design.

Implementing a four-year project-based curriculum will cause some issues with students who are not sure of what major they want to do or those that change their majors. Therefore, instead of four years, a three-year project might be better. Engineering students at the University of Virginia declare their major in their first year. Other schools may have a different timeline and so may need a two-year project. Regardless of the length, the project would still encompass several years and provide a solid preparation for students. Since it would only start after major declaration, students would still have time to explore their major options. Additionally, students could also use the time before major declaration to find potential partners and come up with a project idea. They would then spend the rest of their time in college working on the project, taking in input from users, and showing their progress to an advisor. Finally, a report on the project, what challenges were faced, what problems it can be used on, and lessons learned can serve as the student's capstone.

Ethics:

A contributing factor to the misrepresentation of tools as solutions is the constant push by companies to develop systems that remove the user because “solutions” sell better than tools. A solution is something that works independently, while a tool requires a user to make decisions and interact with it. The danger of misrepresenting a tool as a solution can be demonstrated by the following. Say a person has high blood pressure, and their doctor prescribes them a blood pressure medication. If the doctor tells the patient the pill is a solution, then the patient will continue to make decisions that are not good for their health and assume that the pill will control their problem, whereas if the doctor tells the patient the pill is a tool, then the patient takes the pill as part of system to control their high blood pressure; a system that includes other tools like exercise and diet changes. Problems are not solved when people, whether they be designers or users, are removed from a system. To prevent the misrepresentation of tools as solutions, we must develop systems that keep the designers and users responsible and not pass technology off as standalone solutions. One way we envision doing this is increasing the teaching of ethics during engineer’s schooling. Ethics are defined by Oxford Dictionary as “moral principles that govern a person’s behavior”, and engineering education that teaches students ethics can provide them the background and skills necessary to make the strong ethical decision to keep users as a crucial part of the system.

More and more in society we see an increase in disdain for companies who push for unsound decisions because of monetary influence. A PwC survey found that only 30% of consumers trust companies (Segal 2022). This shift in societal thought will push companies to search for ways to gain public favor as a company that people can trust. Large corporations already donate money to college degree programs, for example the UVA mechanical/aerospace engineering 3D printing lab that is sponsored by Rolls Royce, so they will shift this action slightly and start to put money towards ethics programs in engineering in search of good publicity, which in turn will encourage schools to develop their own ethics programs in hopes of receiving these funds.

Another reason we foresee a shift in engineering education to have a more central focus on ethics is because of the increasingly negative view of capitalism combined with the increase in small businesses being started in the tech industry. It is a well known phenomenon that younger generations tend to have more liberal views that become more moderate as they age, but some claim that this trend is ending, starting with gen z. This is the first time in history where a younger generation is worse off economically than their parents generation, leading to a general distrust and want for reform in the current capitalistic economic system. Additionally, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small business applications are at an all time high. These two facts will converge in 2050 and lead to a market that is flooded with businesses run by people who care about their impact on employees, the environment, and the public, all of which are important areas to be considered when making ethical decisions. This market shift caused by younger, more liberal generations joining the ranks of business owners will contribute even more to the corporate sponsorship of ethics programs in academia, and will cause a snowball effect where the growth of ethical viewpoints in business will cause more ethics to be taught in higher education, which in turn will result in more ethical decision making by employees in the field. We believe this increase in ethics will include a heavy focus on not misrepresenting tools as solutions, because many of the current problems for employees and the environment stem from people being removed from the system. For example, material waste is at an all time high, and yet most citizens do not know how to properly dispose of different products because they falsely believe that generic recycling processes will solve these environmental problems. Young visionary business owners fed up with current systems will enter the workforce and begin slowly changing the tide towards a world where people are helped solving their problems, not where their problems are "solved" for them, and this reform will include the increase in the teaching of ethics in engineering higher education.

Specifically, we envision an engineering curriculum where ethics teachings are ingrained into classes across a curriculum in ways like requiring lab reports to feature a section explaining how a tested technology may or may not be the best tool for different scenarios, or discussions of past engineering project tragedies and successes involved in most lectures. Engineering education is slowly headed down this path on its own. At UVA the Science, Technology, and Society classes are a requirement for graduation and include various discussions of an engineer's responsibility to the public and their design. The class Advanced Software Development also includes a lecture on the Software Engineering Code of Ethics. This trend in higher education combined with societal pressures causing companies to put their money towards ethics teaching programs will result in an engineering curriculum in which ethics are a core component. An ethical engineer will know their responsibility to be a part of a system that uses their technology as a tool, as opposed to an outsider of a system that treats their technology as a solution.

References: