[Dusty]

   

[Samseau]

(06-27-2016 11:23 AM)Secrenis Wrote:  

I believe I am fairly qualified to speak on this manner. I am a black male at a top tier engineering school. I am performing well going into my senior year (3.8+ GPA, four internships) and have many friends that are also performing well. Many of these friends are black and hispanic women majoring in chemical, aerospace, mechanical , industrial and biomedical engineering. In addition, i have served as a head course assistant for an upper level engineering course, so I am intimately familiar with the game.

Nice to have you on the forum. But I think you took more out of what I was saying than I was actually trying to say. I know there are many races performing well in all areas of academic fields and would never deny it. But the topic of this thread is on averages, hence the title of the thread.

With averages, it's mostly Whites/Jews/Asians at the top, and Whites have the biggest middle class as well. These are the bulk of college grads, but of course the picture is still very diverse.

Quote:

As far as your race comment, there are plenty of Iranian, Greek, Eastern European, Nigerian, Ethiopian, Ghanian and Jewish women that study engineering. Why are you introducing race into this discussion?

By breaking down who are attending the schools based on racial differences, I wanted to explain the title. My hypothesis: Dartmouth packs their Engineering program with lots of female Asians since Asians have high math ability. Hence the high female count relative to the department's small size.

Quote:

I don't understand what sort of intellectual prowess you are expecting from an undergrad beyond coming to class, learning the material, and doing one's assignments. Most engineering jobs are not that intellectually difficult anyways.

It's involves high levels of math and discipline, an usual combination in the vast majority of most females, slightly occurring more with East Asians.

That's why I was skeptical of the title.

Quote:

In short, I don't understand what is bad about what Dartmouth has done. Sure, there marketing machines are working in full force, but how is this negatively impacting anyone? The cream will still rise

Whether or not this is good or bad is a different subject altogether! Personally I'm undecided on the race subject, but I lean towards caution with anything. I'm naturally conservative. I can see good and bad of importing races from all over the world, but when it comes to the subject of university quotas I can definitely see how sometimes it is good but also I see much more bad.

I've been involved with affirmative action programs, and quite honestly there are a lot of people who are put inside of these schools who don't deserve to be there. A huge number of them drop out. It's money that could have gone to much more qualified students.

On the other hand, it sometimes finds people from very disadvantaged backgrounds who turn out to be extremely talented. So I give credit where it is due, but let's not pretend affirmative action is without its costs. Personally I think AA should be removed or at least changed to focus more on socioeconomic status.

[Foolsgo1d]

Doesn't mean anything.

Male or female, if you're a shit engineering graduate (there are many) you won't get anywhere near something important enough to cause harm and even then there is incredible oversight.

The title of Engineer is such a broad word it needed to be broken down into dozens of sub-titles just to be understood.

Electrical, mechanical, chemical, structural, aeronautical, marine? Each of these have sub-sections of their own too.

If you're a shit engineer you will be found out pretty quick.

[Adonis]

(06-27-2016 02:45 PM)Secrenis Wrote:  

As for your suggestion of social engineering, admission to Dartmouth is independent of major. These girls are choosing to major in the subject, after they have been accepted. So unless you are claiming that general admission to Dartmouth is rigged, there is no evidence that future engineers are being discriminated against.

Thanks for your insight, always interesting to hear news from the front. However the college admits below that it altered curricula to specifically increase throughput of female students. As to whether it is conspiracy or not, rather than keep disciplines separate and distinct, and offer more female mentors (done), or discipline specific internships for example they chose to alter the program(s) to achieve their goal of gender parity. Which is the root of all problems: conflating equal opportunities with equal outcomes.

Quote:

Helble claims the gender shift is due to the college purposefully hiring female role models in engineering, and also changing the way it structures its course, so students aren't broken up into specialities.

[komatiite]

This Dartmouth program is weird. I did some research and I think this is how it works:

Spend first four years doing a Bachelor of Arts (WTF) in Engineering Science
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...raduate/ab

Spend another extra year and get an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredited Bachelor of Engineering
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...aduate/be/

So the Engineering Sciences BA degree is not ABET accredited. That means it is not an actual engineering degree, you need the extra year of classes to cover all the required material to be covered for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and eventually attain professional engineer status.

The article fails to explicitly mention if these women are graduating with BAs or BEng degrees, but the press release from Dartmouth says this:
Engineering sciences is now the third most popular major at Dartmouth, after economics and government.
So these girls are just doing the basic program and won't be accredited to be real engineers.

Would be more meaningful to see how many girls vs guys graduated with BEng degrees!!

[Samseau]

(06-27-2016 05:28 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

This Dartmouth program is weird. I did some research and I think this is how it works:

Spend first four years doing a Bachelor of Arts (WTF) in Engineering Science
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...raduate/ab

Spend another extra year and get an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredited Bachelor of Engineering
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...aduate/be/

So the Engineering Sciences BA degree is not ABET accredited. That means it is not an actual engineering degree, you need the extra year of classes to cover all the required material to be covered for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and eventually attain professional engineer status.

The article fails to explicitly mention if these women are graduating with BAs or BEng degrees, but the press release from Dartmouth says this:
Engineering sciences is now the third most popular major at Dartmouth, after economics and government.
So these girls are just doing the basic program and won't be accredited to be real engineers.

Would be more meaningful to see how many girls vs guys graduated with BEng degrees!!

Excellent find. This is exactly the kind of bullshit I was talking about and knew was going on, I just wasn't sure how exactly standards were being manipulated for the sake of "diversity."

[Engineer]

(06-27-2016 09:03 AM)fugly1000 Wrote:  

^^^. If NASA dumbs down its program for females. Pretty sure any college can also. If they make the courses easier what you expect? Seen in medical schools.

What are you referring to about NASA?

[Ingocnito]

Three times I've been asked by engineers where I "got my degree?" Once from a chemical engineer, another a mechanical engineer, and finally a thermodynamics engineer.

I'm not smart. Probably on the upper half of the scale, but certainly NOT as smart with engineering as a student of the craft (should be). I knew the first time I was asked where I "got my degree" the surge towards "STEM" fields was already liberalized, the degrees becoming increasingly trash-can-worthy.

Ever wonder why basic shit that seemed to work just fine 15-20 years ago has been having problems lately, as if we had already perfected it via quality engineering practices, but is suddenly flawed like we took a few steps backwards in applied knowledge?

In walks today's engineering graduates to claim that trophy. Let's not leave out the political hierarchy seeding this shit. Not only have I not met so many moron engineers in my life as I have in the last 5 years, but graduate degree holders as well. Ahhhh, the great scam of higher ed.

When big/medium sized business cycle retract, its very common for upper engineers to be presented with opportunities to run the "business" side of corporations. Unfortunately engineers suck dick at running business smoothly, so when the economy rebounds, whose in charge? Right. Today's engineering students. Thus, the foibles we all see today. Just like everything else on the planet that's ass backwards, engineers that can't conduct business well.

I have three worthless business degrees, but nothing outperforms intellectual curiosity (and a moral backbone to boot), you just can't teach that.

Yes, the "engineers, doctors, lawyers, and even some scientists" have become incompetent domains.

Just hope you don't hop on one of those CAN-AM Spyder trikes and take it for a spin. My quality control engineer cousin tried to stop their production design engineering clown department from running production on their flawed design on 1000s of gear differentials because the main gear tolerance was less than 25% the distance from the casted case surrounding it required for safe operation. Take corners too tight? Stop too quick? Take off to fast? All could potentially grind the fucking gear against the casting. Brilliant engineers decided that a few thousandths was enough clearance. Yup.

After those metal shavings kill you, you get to go the the hospital with the incompetent doctor who - for a buck - decides you need treatments for something in his "practicing" field, you surly don't need... preying like a predatory mortgage lender on your body to finish you off.

Trust nobody. Once the STEM-intensive fields of business are corrupted, no one is safe, no "professional" should be trusted. Meet your new graduating class of dumb fucks who are scam artists by accidental default.

[Ingocnito]

After reading some of the posts, it reminds me of the invention of the "Organizational Development" Degree title, that many Lib Arts, and some big name schools have used as an ancillary option for an MBA. The few ORG DEV graduate degree holders I know might as well be considered high level scam artists. Isn't "organizational development" a prime component of what an MBA used to be when they actually meant something "professional," before they started giving them away to every jackass with no common sense or spatial awareness?

[Travesty]

(06-27-2016 01:08 PM)redpillage Wrote:  

FYI - I am the first one to recognize talented women in STEM fields. No bias there whatsoever. A great example is Rhonda Patrick which clearly has a brilliant mind and is on the forefront of gerontology and fitness:

Yeah that chick came off like an idiot about human biology when talking to Aubrey de Grey. Sounds smart alone, not with the big boys.

A chick is a chick. White lab coat doesn't change DNA.

[Hannibal]

Yeah, I figured they weren't real engineering degrees.

I have seen exactly two women make it more than a year and a half in my school's engineering program. One is the leader of an engineering club (go figure) and the other I have no idea how well or how shitty she's doing.

[birthday cat]

Quote:

Helble claims the gender shift is due to the college purposefully hiring female role models in engineering, and also changing the way it structures its course, so students aren't broken up into specialities.

So they hired female role models and made their Bachelor of Arts program easier for women. We should find a man who didn't get accepted into the program and get him to sue Dartmouth because you know they engineered the admissions process to accept more women into the school.

Quote:

"Now we’ve hit 50 percent, you’d better believe I’m going to talk about it with colleagues from other institutions," said Helble.

And when he says "colleagues from other institutions" he means his friends who make TV commercials for ITT Technical Institute because the administrators of real engineering programs can only laugh at this Bachelor of Arts program.

[beta_plus]

Yeah, I wonder

1) If they made any changes to their standards
2) How many of the girls are of Asian or Indian descent - if they were male they wouldn't count as "diversity"

[RexImperator]

Quote:

If you're a shit engineer you will be found out pretty quick.

And then get promoted to management.

[birthday cat]

(06-27-2016 02:45 PM)Secrenis Wrote:  

On average, sure. But this is not an average group. Dartmouth has an 11% admission rate. 94% of the incoming freshman were in the top ten percent of their high school. Nearly half the incoming freshman were either valedictorian or salutatorian. Median SAT is 2178 with each section averaging about a 730.

Their undergraduate engineering program does not offer real engineering degrees and their graduate engineering program is ranked 57th in the USA with tuition costing over $48,000 per year.

[Rang off the Pipe]

Dartmouth isn't the first Ivy I think of when it comes to engineering...typically Cornell and Princeton are the first ones that come to mind. I only ever hear about Dartmouth when it comes to "Wall St." or something involving large consumption of alcohol.

[MidJack]

After 15 years doing engineering in the real world, I 100% concur that professional quality is declining. Just recently an associate who is not known for hyperbole described a job applicant from an ABET-accredited school as a "complete retard". Just one data point among many.

The worst trend is engineering graduates, mostly women, who have no interest in touching physical systems. You know, the stuff you're actually working on. These are the ones who chose STEM because "girl power", not genuine interest.

Worse, they are currently being packed into middle management. Consequences will manifest in about 20 years.

[Slim Shady]

I would like to respectfully disagree. Pretty much nobody at Dartmouth gets just the BA with an Engineering Major. In fact, in my knowledge, people always get the extra BE, sometimes even finishing it withing 4 years and getting the BA and BE simultaneously. Even then, the courses one would take even 3/4 of the way to a BE are difficult enough to warrant high merit. At that point it a huge waste to not go through with the degree. The merit of a BA without the BE is severely diminished, and it would be a truly foolish move to not get the extra degree.

It may be that they are accepting more girls, or science oriented girls, or are pushing "Women in Science" seminars hard, but the people actually getting the degree are getting it legitimately for the most part. In terms of classes, the professors would have to grade men and women differently, which would be so blatant as to be almost impossible.

What is unfair is that certain extra research grants and opportunities are given to women during the degree, and in the summers, as per the aforementioned "Women in Science" programs, and they may help less qualified women gain better connections as well as keep them engrossed and gain further knowledge about the engineering fields that similarly qualified men would not have.

If one were to wish to truly compare the quality of men and women graduating with these degrees, perhaps one must evaluate their thesis, and actual projects they have worked on and the products they have created.

I absolutely concede that it is easier to be a woman engineer, what with affirmative action for admissions and grants, but receiving the actual degree is a fairly non-biased accomplishment. Hey, perchance I am naive and have been away from the college far too long. If one wishes to be truly critical, the attentions must be directed towards affirmative action and Title IX type discrimination.

(06-27-2016 06:23 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

(06-27-2016 05:28 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

This Dartmouth program is weird. I did some research and I think this is how it works:

Spend first four years doing a Bachelor of Arts (WTF) in Engineering Science
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...raduate/ab

Spend another extra year and get an ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredited Bachelor of Engineering
http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/academi...aduate/be/

So the Engineering Sciences BA degree is not ABET accredited. That means it is not an actual engineering degree, you need the extra year of classes to cover all the required material to be covered for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and eventually attain professional engineer status.

The article fails to explicitly mention if these women are graduating with BAs or BEng degrees, but the press release from Dartmouth says this:
Engineering sciences is now the third most popular major at Dartmouth, after economics and government.
So these girls are just doing the basic program and won't be accredited to be real engineers.

Would be more meaningful to see how many girls vs guys graduated with BEng degrees!!

Excellent find. This is exactly the kind of bullshit I was talking about and knew was going on, I just wasn't sure how exactly standards were being manipulated for the sake of "diversity."

[Thought Criminal]

(06-27-2016 05:28 PM)komatiite Wrote:  

So the Engineering Sciences BA degree is not ABET accredited. That means it is not an actual engineering degree, you need the extra year of classes to cover all the required material to be covered for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and eventually attain professional engineer status.

It is also important to remember that most major corporations will only accept an ABET accredited engineering degree. Yes, the Engineering Sciences BA degree is useless for engineering work. However, it will probably be fine for investment banking or management consulting.

[polar]

Yes, sounds like it's a play to get into investment banking or consulting.

Someone without engineering experience wouldn't know the difference between ABET and non-ABET. The stereotype on Wall St that an engineering degree is harder than finance would likely prevail...and HR in consulting would eat up the "engineering and management" degrees.

Hopefully none of these grads go on to design bridges or airplanes.

[Suits]

(06-27-2016 09:03 AM)fugly1000 Wrote:  

^^^. If NASA dumbs down its program for females. Pretty sure any college can also. If they make the courses easier what you expect? Seen in medical schools.

Too bad that NTP isn't here to copy and paste some information on what the situation regarding female engineers is like inside NASA.

[philosophical_recovery]

There's a rule about computer programmers that some computer programmers are capable of producing 10x the output or more of the average programmer.

I've found that this is true among the harder engineering disciplines (i.e. building physical shit that doesn't break/fall out of the sky/sink/de-orbit catastrophically/have unscheduled explosive disassembly/turn into a potato).

It doesn't matter how many of these graduates you throw at it. The ones worth their salt will find out how to actually get things done and rise to the top, change jobs, and move onto better things. Or, better yet, start their own businesses.

This goes for male or female engineers. I've met men that were crap, as well as women that were crap engineers.

But, on the whole, the average engineer is just average. If they aren't exposed to challenges, they get locked into a single position, can't think their way out of it, and are stuck pushing paper around for the swarm of PMs buzzing around them.

Things get tested and overseen by well paid (usually consultants that charge several hundred dollars an hour) guys that know what they are doing, or in the lucky instances, actually doing in-house tests. Otherwise, the organizations just spin their wheels and spew money everywhere without making anything useful for anyone. Sometimes, this can go on for years without being noticed. That is, a failed project wasn't allowed to fail when it should have, and people keep throwing on bandaids and paperwork without addressing underlying issues.

Experienced it all, could write the book.

[Quintus Curtius]

(06-27-2016 11:01 PM)Suits Wrote:  

Too bad that NTP isn't here to copy and paste some information on what the situation regarding female engineers is like inside NASA.

[All or Nothing]

(06-27-2016 06:57 PM)Ingocnito Wrote:  

Three times I've been asked by engineers where I "got my degree?" Once from a chemical engineer, another a mechanical engineer, and finally a thermodynamics engineer.

Trust nobody. Once the STEM-intensive fields of business are corrupted, no one is safe, no "professional" should be trusted. Meet your new graduating class of dumb fucks who are scam artists by accidental default.

They are not corrupted yet. What matters the most is whether or not you got your degree through an accredited program. I believe the most popular accreditation is ABET accreditation.

These programs are what set the minimum bar for engineering programs and ultimately determine the worth of a degree. The stakes for engineering is higher sense products created without proper failure analyses could lead to people dying, so I doubt that the bar will be lowered.

A big part of the problem is that mainline engineering is slowly becoming automated and a relic of the past. Once I entered the workforce, I realized this and immediately regretted my decision to get a mechanical engineering degree. Software engineering and computer science is truly the final frontier and those degrees will hold more weight if you succeeded in the program and have far more opportunities in the current job market.

[PauBrasil]

Better have more women studying engineering than gender studies or women studies or some crap like that.