Education
Education in systems engineering is often seen as an extension to the regular engineering courses, reflecting the industry attitude that engineering students need a foundational background in one of the traditional engineering disciplines (e.g. automotive engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering) plus practical, real-world experience in order to be effective as systems engineers. Undergraduate university programs in systems engineering are rare. Typically, systems engineering is offered at the graduate level in combination with interdisciplinary study.
INCOSE maintains a continuously updated Directory of Systems Engineering Academic Programs worldwide. As of 2009, there are about 80 institutions in United States that offer 165 undergraduate and graduate programs in systems engineering. Education in systems engineering can be taken as Systems-centric or Domain-centric.
- Systems-centric programs treat systems engineering as a separate discipline and most of the courses are taught focusing on systems engineering principles and practice.
- Domain-centric programs offer systems engineering as an option that can be exercised with another major field in engineering.
Both of these patterns strive to educate the systems engineer who is able to oversee interdisciplinary projects with the depth required of a core-engineer.
Read more about this topic: Systems Engineering
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Very likely education does not make very much difference.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.”
—Jean Piaget (1896–1980)