I would like to take up an original point about the teaching of Engineering in University. From my experience it is fairly useless, as the students end up knowing nothing very useful, and an awful lot which is either wrong or very unlikely to be useful in any real work. My favourite question when interviewing potential new graduates was to ask about the details of their project. How exactly did some part work? How did they design this section (electronics) or in some cases mechanical actions or mechanisms. An interesting range of excuses for knowing nothing then usually followed, typically:

Fred did that bit

The supervisor said I should do it that way

I copied the circuit from the internet, I don't understand it fully

The current in R3 controls everything, so I chose it with a resistance box until it worked

I only wrote the software, I don't know how the hardware works

etc....

This is because learning practical skills, even how to design a circuit is very time consuming and expensive, and testing it is done correctly even more so. It is much easier to teach (actually that may not be the word for what actually happens) some course which sounds good like electron dynamics for example, when the lecturer did not even answer the question "if electric current is movement of electrons, how can electric current propagate at c, as electrons clearly cannot". You should hear the answers to that one, mainly vague hand waving, even from supposed University lecturers.

When I was at University my course had 40hours a week of contact time, homework, private study etc. and was a full time exercise 7 days a week. Half the time was spent in laboratory exercises which taught practical abilities to those who did not have them already. Now paying £9250 per year results in a few hours contact time, occasional lab sessions and loads of "free" time. That is why we now have difficulty getting "Real" engineers, who usually cannot do maths either BTW.

I would like to take up an original point about the teaching of Engineering in University. From my experience it is fairly useless, as the students end up knowing nothing very useful, and an awful lot which is either wrong or very unlikely to be useful in any real work. My favourite question when interviewing potential new graduates was to ask about the details of their project. How exactly did some part work? How did they design this section (electronics) or in some cases mechanical actions or mechanisms. An interesting range of excuses for knowing nothing then usually followed, typically:

Fred did that bit

The supervisor said I should do it that way

I copied the circuit from the internet, I don't understand it fully

The current in R3 controls everything, so I chose it with a resistance box until it worked

I only wrote the software, I don't know how the hardware works

etc....

This is because learning practical skills, even how to design a circuit is very time consuming and expensive, and testing it is done correctly even more so. It is much easier to teach (actually that may not be the word for what actually happens) some course which sounds good like electron dynamics for example, when the lecturer did not even answer the question "if electric current is movement of electrons, how can electric current propagate at c, as electrons clearly cannot". You should hear the answers to that one, mainly vague hand waving, even from supposed University lecturers.

When I was at University my course had 40hours a week of contact time, homework, private study etc. and was a full time exercise 7 days a week. Half the time was spent in laboratory exercises which taught practical abilities to those who did not have them already. Now paying £9250 per year results in a few hours contact time, occasional lab sessions and loads of "free" time. That is why we now have difficulty getting "Real" engineers, who usually cannot do maths either BTW.