The American Scene; Trends in Science & Engineering Education

Good morning. My name is Joel Zanger for the American Scene. This morning we are going to do the third in our series on science and technology. It's the last and our subject this morning shall be the trends in science and technology education, particularly as it affects the university, the graduate school, the institute. We have two guests this morning. I'd like to introduce them to you. Our first guest is Dr. Martin Kilpatrick, who is the chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Our second is Dr. Peter Scherule, chairman of the Department of Mechanics at IIT. I wonder, gentlemen, this morning if we might start by, since we're talking about trends, I suppose the most important trend that you have to contend with as the given, so to speak, is the students you get in your schools, are the high school products you're getting? Are they different today than they were, let's say, five years ago? I think so. The trend has been to teach more science, and certainly in the last few years there's been considerable

improvement in the quality of the teaching. This results in a problem for a school like IIT. Students coming from many different high schools, both in Chicago, greater Chicago and from the outside, have had different descriptive courses in chemistry. The result has been that it takes a bit of time to bring them all to the same level, and the danger is that for the schools where they've had a better course, the student is somewhat bored for the first five, six weeks, and the result often is he doesn't realize that we're penetrating a little deeper than the high schools, and suddenly he finds himself behind the others. This is a, the rest of you say that in general the training is not only more advanced, but it varies from school to school. What about the attitude of the student? Is that different at all? Mr. Trillian. I think we can find that

nowadays the students, at least the science and engineering students, take their studies more seriously. I think all this noise that we've heard in the press about the elementary schools and high schools, not giving enough work to the students, not working them hard enough. I think this is affecting the students, the teachers, the parents, and we're beginning to see this effect. Not only in the sciences, but also I think even more important in the mathematics students coming to engineering schools nowadays have more mathematics than they have. The engineering schools themselves are demanding more mathematics. For example, trigonometry is automatically required nowadays, and we're approaching the point where we will be requiring also college algebra. College algebra is rapidly becoming high school algebra. College algebra shall be defined as high school. But do you find that this high school training is adequate? Can you count on it? They have the credit on their record, but how does it work out? It varies so much you can't. Now, across the country the trend has been this. For example, schools with very high quality selection like Caltech and

Brown have given up the traditional general chemistry costs. For example, at Caltech, they start with quantitative experiments, and for proposing a general chemistry background. They figure that for their quality selection, they have a sufficient general chemistry background, and they put, then, have time for inorganic chemistry in a senior year. At Brown University, the problems solve, though differently, they start with organic, follow that by quantitative, and then physical, and then inorganic. Because inorganic chemistry is a field that needs some physical chemistry to start it, to do it properly, that has been traditionally taught in the freshman year with some possible other courses and some schools afterwards. But this can only be done in a school which is going to be so selected that can only choose those students which are adequately prepared before they're correct together. Is there any possibility, for example, of placement examinations, to place to have people place out? Do you do this, Mr. Chair? We do this at IIT, for example. There are placement examinations in mathematics, and some students don't

even have to take the college out, but some of our better high schools are even giving calculus. There are not too many students that do get calculus, but some of the students place beyond the calculus, and the hints can start at a higher mathematical level, and more important for us in the engineering training, they can start at a higher level, rather than at a higher level, they can start sooner with their engineering training, and this makes a big difference. Of course, we only have four years to train an engineer or a scientist, and that isn't very much time as an undergraduate student. Otherwise, if we generalize you, let's say that the high school students you're getting are better prepared and more eager to learn, more serious about that. I would like to add that at IIT, 99 % of the students that come to us from the high school that had chemistry. When you take it down to their banner, it's near a 50 % because they have a different problem because they draw from the southern part of the state, whether it is not so much high school or chemistry taught. I think the solution of this problem is to get a better leo -sum between the people who teach the freshman chemistry or physics, sophomore physics,

and the high schools, so that we get a heterogeneous group that not to make it uniform, but to get some level that we can have at a starting place. Otherwise, we have to go to this trend, which will come, I think, of starting with quantitative experiments or organic chemistry, and putting the other inorganic in the senior year. Now, another thing about students, in general, there are more students from the colleges today, aren't they? And one of the great problems is this division at present between the private school and the state school. I'm interested because you mentioned a chemistry at our banner. The problem of the private school and the state school, of course, is a matter of tuition fee, the difference between the tuition and student pays, the private school, and can go up as high as a thousand dollars. On the other hand, the state school teaches a great many more students, we're getting

mass education on a larger scale, and the function of the private school is to keep the standards up and keep the quality of the teaching up and set a standard. Of course, the private school is faced with the problem that unless it is known as a quality school, not only must it be a quality school, but it must be known as a quality school, and this is survival, this is the way of survival for the private school. And you'd say that in terms of trends in scientific and engineering education, the distinction is the one between mass education and quality education as it is reflected in the private The why not be as big a cut as that, but this is the way I would look at it. Isn't there a problem though that, certainly, these state schools in general tend to pay higher salaries to faculty, to staff, and they tend to lure away your better people? Not necessarily. Conditions in private schools are more amenable to research activities, and when you get a type of staff member who is very interested in education and in research activities, the salary is not

that important, salary, of course, always is important, but not specifically conditions under which he will work, the type of students with which he will work, the type of faculty, teaching loads that he will have, all those are very important factors. I might add that I've been in academic work for 45 years, you never get much money, but you have an awful lot of fun. And so, you'd say it would be kind of hasty to generalize about a private and state university education as being different, in spite of the fact there is a trend. That's toward the large university today. Well, we're talking now at the undergraduate level. On the undergraduate level. Is there a difference on the graduate level? I think there's very little difference at the graduate level, because at the graduate level, it's not to facilitate some building so much as a man, and it depends on the quality of the professors. If they're good scholars, today the thing is that the fellow who took 10 years ago, the subdued can learn

this, and he goes into teaching, and he continues to teach this. He learned a 10 years ago. This fellow was on his way out. He takes a man who was interested in teaching, who was also a good scholar, possibly a good research man, to keep up with the trends today. Things move so rapidly. How many of these men actually got in the classroom? For example, I aren't many of the classes taught by graduate assistants today. This truly is not one of the situations. It's not a significant number. The number of graduate assistants who teach undergraduate classes is larger than we would like, but it's not too serious a problem, because these boys are well -trained before they get there. We certainly, for example, in our own department, we wouldn't let any graduate assistant teach an undergraduate course until he's had at least a master's degree, so that he's had a year's work further, a full year's work, further than his bachelor's degree. Again, this is true essentially in the better schools. There are some of the lesser schools with less money, where a man can

get his bachelor's and immediately start teaching. This certainly is not a desirable trend. I think we're slowly getting even away from that, because we're getting more and more of our graduate students interested in education. May I disagree a little bit with Dr. Churelli? Let me first cite the chemistry department at IIT, which I know very well, at IIT, no students, until he has a PhD ever teaches in a classroom in our department. I'd like to go on to... You have a slightly different situation though, because you have chemistry labs in our department. I'd like to now go on to the laboratory teaching. In the large universities beginning with 1946, the undergraduate students seldom sees a full -time professor in the laboratory. The laboratory teaching has been for five, four or five academic generations now, has been left to the graduate assistants, who learned it from another graduate assistant and another graduate assistant. Are you generalizing... This is chemistry or the whole scientific field? I'm taking the scientific field in general and specifically

chemisties, specifically where they have laboratories, of course, experimental systems, teaching of course, teaching of experimental techniques and so forth. The result is now very obvious that from the larger universities, and this includes the Big Ten, the quality of these students from an experimental standpoint is much lower than those from the small colleges, because in the small colleges they have small classes, there are no graduate assistants and they do work with the professor in the laboratory and although he may not be as famous a man as the professor at one of the Big Ten universities, he is qualified and he works with the students and he teaches this technique and that teaching is far superior to that from a graduate assistant. Well, you have this generation, you say, a fifth generation graduate student. You would say this is not the case in your field, because this is not an experimental field in the same sense. Where you don't have an experimental field, shall we say, you have

an analytical type of course, that you use graduate students and people with masters. Many of there are many institutions where full -time staff members have only masters. Of course, at the better institutions, you're certainly need a, shall we say, the equivalent of a doctor's degree. But at IIT in chemistry, even our no laboratory has run in our institution in chemistry since 1947 without a professor with a PhD teaching in the laboratory. He may have helped from graduate students, some of the professor teaches in the laboratory. In fact, we think this is so important that we give him the same teaching low credit. But one hour of the laboratory is one hour in the classroom. On the graduate level, this problem doesn't exist because they are only the full -time active research staff member. This is kind of a situation, no, that is ideal, but how long can it be perpetuated? We're told about this great population boom that's to come when we'll need so many teachers, which we do not have, which are not going to training. Ultimately, aren't we going to have, in effect, students have teaching students, because there are no eligible

professors, PhDs or masters, even. That's interesting. That's the excuse that's given by administrators, but my own personal opinion is, you can't afford to have fully trained people teaching the students. You won't have people in science, well trained if you do not have people who really know during the teaching. You can hold classes, you know, but this is not teaching, and the less the man teaches. Now, the question of numbers is a very important one. We're going to have at least a comparable increase in the ratio of teachers to students, as we have this increase in students when it comes. And the answer to that question is very strongly based on the fact that teacher salaries are going up in colleges. There are nowhere near where they should be, of course, but the rate of climb is a little bit better than it is, shall we say, that it was in the past. In that sense, we will be able to attract more people into teaching. Relatively, it's this way. Well, of course, I was really happy. A green PhD in chemistry

today gets more than our associate professors, and if I would stay on another year and not retire this year, I think there would be some of our green PhDs would get for 12 months, what I get from the Illinois Institute of Technology for nine months. I mean, the green PhD going into industry. Going into industry. Now, if he goes to teaching, he will get about $6 ,000 to start for nine months, and he probably can get an additional two nights in the summer. He'll be $2 ,000 behind the man that goes into industry, and this difference will have to be corrected, or they will lose a very great number of teachers, potentially good teachers. There's quite a bit of interest in doing something about this problem, as you can imagine, both on a government level, on private levels. The Ford Foundation, for example, is very interested in this problem. Just recently, they've come out with a program where they will permit a man who's going to school to go to school almost full -time and earn up to $6 ,000 in nine months. Now, he doesn't keep all of this money, but by staying in college education, again, this is the idea to keep them as educators,

by staying in college education, yes, then he does get to keep the full amount of the $6 ,000. I would hate to become a subsidized professor. It's not a matter of subsidization, it's a matter of a very serious problem, which we have to meet. There's no question that students will be there, and we must have these staff there to be able to teach them. Aren't you in effect a subsidized professor, if the money comes from a board of trustees, which is dominated by a half a dozen industries? Aren't you being subsidized as well? Well, I don't like that kind of a board of trustees. That's where the money lives, though, unfortunately. Oh, it shouldn't be that way. No, shouldn't. How are we going to be successful in this country on education programs? And that becomes one of the critical questions. There's no question that there's an awful lot of money, which must be put into education. I'll pick a figure out of I had $10 billion a year, must be put within the next 10 years, if we're going to do even a reasonably proper job in our education. And in particular, in science and engineering education, there's no question about the importance of that. I wonder if we might go from the problem of the school and its

funds to trends in the curriculum itself, the courses that you teach. I know one of the customary ways of thinking perhaps of the difference between engineering and, let's say, science or chemistry is that one is fundamental and the other is applied. Is this still a meaningful distinction? Certainly, this still applies, but the differential between the two of them is certainly shrunk. Shrunk considerably in the past five years, even. The period is small as that. I think you can just see it in everyday newspaper. Is this a result of the acceleration in research itself, which keeps you pushing you back toward more fundamental? I think it's rather more closely aligned with the acceleration in our, shall we say, our must send missiles up. We must send satellites up. We must have space stations ready within the next five to the next 10 years. Now, when you say the differential is reduced, do you mean that the sciences have become more applied as well as the engineering courses have become

less applied? I think to Dr. Chile and I in partial agreement on this, I think both of us agree that there's no place for teaching applied stuff in the, even in engineering schools today, you know, vocational stuff of any kind. We must teach only fundamentals where Dr. Chile and I would disagree, probably, is should the engineers teach the fundamentals on the scientists and I personally feel it in maybe five or 10 years that engineers can begin to teach fundamentals properly until then. I think it has to be left to scientists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, and so forth. Well, I think we have a definite disagreement here at this point. I don't think you should distinguish at the teaching level between an engineer, quote, and a scientist quote. When you get a man who is a research person and we've agreed that the only type of persons that get into engineering education nowadays are the research oriented persons. When you get such a man, if he has had a proper training, he can equally well teach a course, shall we say, an engineering, in an engineering science. I'm not

saying this man should go ahead and teach the course in a nuclear physics law, again, now depending on the individual. He even, such a, you can't find such people. Let me ask you a direct question, Dr. Chiroli. I agree that when the man over such minded, but let's take some specific college as an example, as of today, what fraction of the teaching staff of a technical institute is actually trained in research and practicing research? Oh, but that I'll agree that we're talking in the present or in the future. We're talking about now. I'm talking about now. What I said was in the present, I think, that it will take about five or ten years for the engineering, present engineering staffs of the colleges and universities to get up to the level where they can teach the fundamentals properly. I think I was just a terrible for definition here. You used a phrase, an engineering science. And I'm surprised, Mr. Kilpatrick, would it go by? What's an engineering science? Well, this was defined for me by a professor

once. It's a method so that engineers can tap some of the money that's available for science. This is, this is facetious, of course, and drawn to an extreme. I think it's the very word, engineering science or engineering science is usually used in the plural sense, is indicative of what is happening to engineering and and scientific education. The engineers, the engineering education is definitely approaching at a level where, shall we say, scientific education was in the past ten, twenty years. Again, why a necessity? The problems at the engineer, the developer faces the man who builds the missile, shall we say, have become so serious. He has to push his materials properties to such an extreme. Reliability is so serious that he can no longer afford to take a fairly general broad factor of safety and hope that it works. These problems become so serious, he must be exact, he must be precise. Well, by definition, as soon as you are exact, as soon as you're precise, you're

being scientific. You might put it another way, science comes first and engineering second. And that when you use the word engineering science, as you give the impression there are new sciences that have to do with engineering. There are no new sciences, there may be new branches of the fundamental, as I mean, with the coming of space age and so on, but the science comes first, the fundamentals we also agree, the fundamental has come first, the application and development must come later. Could our student at school should be taught only to fund the mantles, whether you call it engineering science or physics, chemistry or some other name, the energy barrier, so the dividing lines between them is starting to disappear quickly. We agree. One question that does occur to me, both of you, have had cause to refer to rocketry, the space age, missiles. This, of course, has been like great headline makers in the last 10 years. Has this affected the curriculum in terms of courses? Do you feel yourself pressured to specialize, in

fact, to become schools of rocketry rather than? It depends on what level, on the undergraduate level, we're specialized to become more fundamental, more rounded. On the graduate level, yes, then the pressure is to give more special courses. See what we've done is, in 1946, it was still available the war money for the year 1946, which we didn't have to fight. And actually, the engineers had too much money in those days. And what did they do when the army and the Navy and so forth? They built bigger and better installations, less and less thinking. And from 1946 to 1956, we tried to approach this rocket problem, engineering first. And we kicked away 10 years. The Russians didn't do this. They did the fundamentals first, and the result is they seemed to be ahead of us today. There's no question that the undergraduate must be

rounded and must obtain a rounded and fundamental education. If there's time for the practical, the vocational type of courses, yes, but there is no such time. And if you must choose between the two of them, definitely give them a firm foundation, and then let him go out and have the potential for learning the applied material. The year at the what time? They shouldn't be taught the colleges. Of course, this encourages the kind of teaching you should get rid of to stay in the school. I can't argue too strongly with that position. I see. What about the graduate? Some cells? Are they? I'm thinking right now of the first, that first graduate, the Bachelor of Science degree. There will be a Bachelor of Science degree in your case, too. What are they trained for today? In general, are they primarily oriented toward a continuation of the graduate school? Or do they go toward industry, government work? What? And is this, is there a change in the pattern recently? There's certainly a definite change. We try at IIT to turn out a

Bachelor of Chemistry, who can go either through government laboratories to industry, or go on to graduate school, and we pride ourselves that we should turn out the BS that can go on to graduate school and compete elsewhere with anybody from any other undergraduate school. In fact, our own record shows that we've turned out a third of our students have gone on, and we have adopted long ago, 48, a policy, that we do not take our own undergraduates at IIT, but we send them out. Now, the competition for BS and chemistry by graduate schools, assistantships are available, both research and teaching, and you can get a good man one without any trouble. He never has to support himself from the time he gets a BS if he wants to go to graduate school. The money will flow to send him through. Could we go to a point, I like to stop now, because you made a point that most listeners might not pick up. You don't keep your graduate, but you send him

out. Could you explain this? Well, my own attitude on that is that my man is born in the Midwest and goes to school in the Midwest, at least 20. I always advise him to choose a graduate school on the east coast of the west coast, and it used to be. I never got a much further than Purdue or Wisconsin, but having gotten a few boys to Caltech and California, I have no trouble getting them to the west coast now, and we've had very recently some graduating with PhDs at Harvard and Yale, Cornell, and we've gotten to both coasts, but I feel very strongly that a boy shouldn't do his undergraduate work in the same, his graduate work in the same place he does his undergraduate work. Would you agree with that? I agree with him. I wouldn't call us a new trend. I think this has been essentially true in education for many years. As a matter of fact, if there is any trend to discuss, there is even a slight trend. The other way. That's why I was wondering. The reason for this, of course, is the competition for graduate

students. There's staffs are increasing in these schools. There's more space for graduate students, more need for graduate students, but there are not that many more graduate students. And hence, you have competition and natural. And the phrase you use is in breeding with all the problems that in breeding creates, or it's the same idea as being percolatorial. Same idea is going round and round and losing something at each round. The other trend that seems to be coming, it was traditional in my youth that you, by some method or other, you got a chance to either postdoctoral level or even a pre -doctoral level. You got a chance to spend a year in Europe. This was the old tradition. This tradition is coming back now, both at the undergraduate level and graduate and postdoctoral level through programs, well, through the full -bright age, and various exchange programs. And there are many opportunities without cost to the student to get this education without any contribution by his family at all. This is true only on the presumption that the student, shall we say, is unmarried and has no children.

Well, this is a very serious problem in graduate work because a great large number of students now have family responsibilities and we don't have the money to support the student and his family. Again, now something is beginning to be done about something like this. You've never had a situation where money has gone wanting for a candidate. We've had no money than candidates. Yes, well, if they come a lot of good graduate students have been put through school by their wives, but of course if they proceed to go and have a family, this means the breadwinner is no longer available. I see. I wonder very briefly, could you generalize what each of you, we have only about a minute in fact, in each of your fields, what are the remain the weaknesses, though, in education, for example, in your field mechanics? Weakness is an education is the fact that we have to get more mathematics to the student, not for the sake of the mathematics, but to enable him to use his physics in a better, in an easier way. Listen to me on the high school level. No, no, I'm talking about as an undergraduate. As an undergraduate. I think

this is what is the general weakness. There are not enough people with brains who are willing to go and stay into teaching. They don't realize it's fun. My youth I climb. I still climb mountains. This is fun. Teaching is fun. The research is fun. The attitude is it's a job. Do I get more money somewhere else than I go somewhere else? I like to thank you. I'm afraid our time is up. Good morning for the American scene. Jules Anger. He didn't flex the tact

and the initiative and the ability of a good student. He didn't flex diplomat and one of the most important parts of all of these wonderful qualities is timing. So there was a good time when he could have done it probably. He waited until the moment when the United States had to act and brought him. So he waited and he waited too long. And the whole thing, this whole Suez Canal business as it was staged by the British and the French, gave the impression to us and I supposed to the rest of the world of being so hard baked that it was almost inevitable that the reaction should be unfavorable. It is just poor timing. He could have done it if he had done more statesman -like abilities. All you said is really answers itself. You are perfectly right. It

wasn't good. There must have been some diplomatic reasons why they were not presented. I suppose we cannot be on such charming terms on Egypt as yet because of consideration for the British and the French. After the six points, well, Shukri al -Kawatli's answer to that was very nice. Very nice. And later on he says that some of them are dangerous. So I assume if we put the two of them together they are dangerously nice. And the dangerous part I suppose is what you are referring to as the Israel Arab question. Well sir, if I may be so bold as to say something which runs contrary to what I believe everybody believes, I think that peace could be brought about as a result of long hard work and good diplomacy and a lot of money with the Arab countries. Now I hope that nobody will tell this outside of this cause or at least

everybody tells only to 10 people and you exact the promise each of the 10, each of those 10 will tell only to 10 people and no more. In that case we can limit this to not more than a million people to what I'm going to say now and that is you see, unfortunately you have to speak the language of the people. And in the Arab countries they don't speak the King's English, nor they speak English, but not the Queen's English. They don't act on principles with which perhaps we are more used. King Abdullah, it is true of course, he was assassinated, he was very much amenable to Western influence. It's possible to expand the Western influence, but without going into the details I have to be cryptic, but you will understand, it will cost money.

As I understand it, your question is, and due to the fact that this is a global problem, is it possible that we are attempting to trade our interest in the Middle East for the Russian interest in the Eastern part of Europe? I'm very searching question of course. I don't know, again I cannot even speculate on this because that would not be real in line with many things we have been doing. However, it is not, it isn't impossible. I don't think that this is going to happen where

Mr. Dulles is still in the sector of state. It is more likely to happen when Christian further becomes a second area of state. Are there other questions? If not, then I want to repeat my thanks, Dr. Lingerl, for a most informative session.