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., aerospace engineering, automotive engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering)—plus practical, real-world experience 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 Engineers
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—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)