Keeping Engineering Students in the Program as “Happy Customers” is Wreaking Havoc on American Manufacturing.

America’s Chip Renaissance Needs Workers – WSJ

See my comment on the article. Here is what I wrote.

Many universities, like the “elite” one where I taught engineers, want happy “customers”, not educated ‘students”.

That America doesn’t have the excellent engineers it needs is not a surprise to me.

When I taught differential equations, the engineering deans and math chair were far more concerned about not losing a single student and making the class a “cookbook” course, than they were about the students learning. That’s okay, they did learn, simply because I required them to do so. (Well, there is a little more than having standards, but without standards, nothing else matters.) Not only did they learn, they learned from the excellent MIT material that I used for the course. But the course went right back to the “cookbook”, “happy customers” standard, the course where students could get an A and have trouble with MIT problems.

See “A Tale Out of School” on my blog inside-higher-ed for the details and much more.