Knowledge – Skill Dichotomy in Engineering

Yesterday I spoke at an engineering college festival. The creativity and enthusiasm of students was heartening. In the afternoon they had planned a workshop on use of a popular software tool for heat exchanger design. My task was to prime them for this workshop. During the Q&A session at the end of my talk, I sensed a significant lack of grasp of fundamentals among students. Later while having lunch with some of the faculty, I learned that the popular software tool has now been appropriated into the syllabus; the intention being to enhance the employability of students. This revelation was quite disconcerting. 

Universities are where students seek knowledge. They gather knowledge and hone it by interaction with teachers and other students. Universities also build character, but that is not the subject of this blogpost. When teachers and students are already struggling to complete the traditional chemical engineering curriculum, any new initiative to impart skills on software application has to be at the expense of time allotted for fundamental studies. 

In engineering, unlike trades, skill cannot be a substitute for knowledge. Teachers also probably find it easier to impart skills rather than knowledge. This is an adverse fall-out of the burgeoning coaching class industry. It is also a collateral damage of the IT explosion, which is more skill than knowledge based. An obsession with tool numbs the mind and makes it less open to new ideas. Chemical engineering, which is more science based than other engineering disciplines, can ill afford such a mindset in its practitioners. 

Do skills, like mastery of a specific software tool, increase the employability of engineers? The answer is an unequivocal no. Skills are best learned on the job and industry is more than willing to invest time and effort towards this. Skills are also job specific and there is no one shoe that fits all. Once engineers enter industry, they will have very little time and inclination to revisit the underlying principles of their practice. Universities are the best place for engineers to acquire knowledge and this is a tradition worth preserving.