After I read "dissing" in the article, the author loss credibility with me.
The new schools sounds great, but are they an accredited school?
As for other engineering programs, they do offer electives. Those electives were meant to provide an opportunity for developing a well rounded student. Do advisors think about this? My advisors in engineering school were all engineering professors, as they should be, but they ARE after all academic engineers. So the process isn't perfect.
In college I sought my own well rounded development with electives in art history, ancient civilizations, economics, earth sciences, foreign languages and other liberal art courses that fit the schedule. No one told me to do it, certainly not my engineering advisors, but I had an interest in learning those things.
Engineering advisors (+ students and parents) need to be trained to think about the outside world, and all it's layers.
I was recently in a meeting with my niece's high school advisor. When I suggested classes that I felt my niece needed as an elective, the advisor pretty much shot them down. My niece was living in and is living in a bi-lingual household. With parents that spoke broken English at home, I felt my niece needed English or literature classes to better prepare her for college. I came from the same environment and felt I was at a disadvantage on this front when starting college.
The advisor admitted that she had not considered challenges for children from bi-lingual households, yet she was quick to brush off my suggestions. I had the uneasy impression that the advisor was limiting my nieces potential by suggesting traditional electives that she felt high school girls should take. I wasn't impressed. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised since I noticed a 12 inch+ tramp stamp on the advisor's lower back as I was entering her office!
