Scott Adams, aka the creator of Dilbert, has written a post promoting the value of engineers in politics. Have a read.

 ”China’s leadership isn’t big on religion. And apparently they don’t see any upside in war. They handle their money wisely. They put a lot of energy into building infrastructure. And they care more about stability than human rights. In other words, they value efficiency over feelings. It’s exactly the way you’d expect a bunch of engineers to run a country. Obviously this approach has served China well.”

Food for thought.

A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the shopkeeper, “I’ll have a CAD monkey please.” 

The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fitted a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, “That’ll be $5000.”   

The customer paid and walked out with his monkey. 

Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, “That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost so much?”   

The Shopkeeper answered, “Ah, that monkey can draw in AutoCAD - very fast, clear layouts, no mistakes, well worth the money.” 

The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage. “That one’s even more expensive! $10,000! What does it do?”

“Oh, that one’s a Design monkey; it can design systems, layout projects, mark-up drawings, write specifications, some even calculate. All the really useful stuff,” said the shopkeeper. 

The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in a cage of its own. The price tag around its neck read $50,000. He gasped to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?” 

The shopkeeper replied, “Well, I haven’t actually seen it do anything, but it says it’s an Engineer.”

EngVibe is all about the positive – cool engineering jobs, fun projects and Pong. Today though I thought I’d present a humorous, but somewhat accurate, piece about the less fun side of studying engineering – this article is from Aaron Rowe (Wired Blog Network):

For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. Here are our biggest complaints about the educational rite of passage. Of course, they are sweeping generalizations. Feel free to disagree. 

5. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. Often, the text is poorly written and interrupted by lengthy equations with symbols that are different from those used by the professor during lectures.

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will waltz up to a blackboard or overhead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.  

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take. They should make some projections about the future job market, learn about the interests of each young scholar, and offer them tailored advice for how to best prepare themselves.

2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades
Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films.

Some professors view undergraduate education as a type of natural selection, but their analogy is flawed. Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores because they have a larger group of supportive friends to or more time to dedicate to studying.  

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands-on experience.