Education: New Look at M.I.T.

Today’s civil engineer can build a bridge, but what else can he do? In an age when technological breakthroughs occur almost overnight, many U.S. educators fear that engineering courses have become so specialized and formula-bound that they contain the seeds of their own obsolescence. Last week Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it is revamping its civil engineering curriculum to roll with the future.

It is not enough, says M.I.T.’s Dean of Engineering Gordon S. Brown, to try to match technological advances by adding a new course here, another there: “This produces a hodgepodge, a Christmas tree that you keep adding lights to, never quite being able to keep pace with the changes that are taking place all the time.”

M.I.T.’s new plan is a systems approach, which is spreading throughout its engineering departments in a $9,275,000 overhaul financed by the Ford Foundation. On the premise that specialized skills can be learned on the job after graduation, M.I.T.’s civil engineering students will take courses in modern physics, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, statistical theory, operations research and computer development. They will also study social and political factors that influence engineering applications. Says M.I.T.’s Dr. John Wilbur: “All the structures, ground facilities and processes that adapt and control environment are the concern of the civil engineer.”

Last week M.I.T.’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics was missing one of its wind tunnels. Materials-testing machines have disappeared from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Explains M.I.T.’s President Julius A. Stratton: “The use of big commercial equipment suitable for stereotyped experiments is yielding to more imaginative approaches in which students are given an opportunity to undertake projects of their choice, and to benefit by a kind of internship under the guidance of a faculty member.”