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:
“Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The study of tools as well as of books should have a place in the public schools. Tools, machinery, and the implements of the farm should be made familiar to every boy, and suitable industrial education should be furnished for every girl.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)