From: jpd@chaos.eng.uci.edu (JP Delplanque)
Subject: Re: Engineering studies in USA and France
Newsgroups: soc.culture.french
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Date: 30 Sep 92 16:45:49 GMT


In article <92273.215718COMTET@FRECP12.BITNET>, <COMTET@FRECP12.BITNET> writes:
|>
|>I think that the American Engineering studies are far too
|>much oriented on the direct productivity of their engineers without giving them
|>theoretical tools to understand what they do.
|>
	The real question is more pointedly: What is an engineer in France?
	As it was pointed out a few months ago on this newsgroup, most
	people entering a "Grande Ecole" in France have no intention whatsoever
	of becoming an engineer. They want to become manager, banker, get into
	politics may be, but certainly not spend their time designing and/or
	calculating. In actuality, the people doing an engineer's job in France 
	are those with a BTS or a DUT.

	By the way believe it or not, most engineers here understand what they
	do! You cannot hold a creative job if you don't. True that a BS in 
	engineering does not guarantee that you are  completely aware of all
	the details of thermostatistics but that is not the kind of knowledge
	most urgently needed to get a blender to work. Leave research to
	researchers, and engineering to engineers!
|>
|>I was astonished by the faxt that I met a student
|>beginning his Phd in Fluid Mechanics who had never known what a vectorial space
|>is and who had very little done any functional analysis. 
|> [...]
|>He told me the whole teaching before the PhD was oriented rather on pra
|>ctice than on theory. 
|>
 	Actually, French schools could learn a little bit from that. How many
	french mechanical engineering student do you know who can fix a significant
	problem on their own car engine?
|>
|> And there another problem : in the US the selection is too often
|>made by the money and less by the level the people have.
|>
	I am not sure that it is that bad. If you are really good, and really
	poor, you'll get a fellowship of some sort. The people in trouble are 
	those who would be good enough to get in but can't afford it and still
	do not qualify for financial aid ("lower middle class"?).
|>
|>In France a student who studies pure mathematics or theoretical physics is much
|>envied and respected. In the USA a pure mathematician is regarded as a kind
|>of lunatic, that won't help the society immediately, therefore unnecessary.
|>
	Do you wish it was that way in France, or have you been buried so long
	in Taupe that you actually believe what you write?
	If theoretical physicists and mathematicians are so "envied and respected"
	in France, why do most of the few Taupins who have the choice between Normal Sup
	and X choose X?

	Why are the French researchers in these fields making so little money? 
	Why is it that a "Maitre de conference" in France makes barely more than 
	some grad students here? (and believe me grad students don't exactly make 
	millions!...)
|>
|>The whole teaching in US lacks Mathematics and doesn't consider Maths as primer
|>whereas for me it is very important for any scientist to have a good knowledge
|>of that subject.
|>
	Mathematics is only a tool, for engineers and most scientists. There is no need
	to get into it as deep as the French Grandes Ecoles system does. But then
	they do that only for selection purposes. It is defnitely more important
	for engineers and most scientists to have a good understanding of basic
	physical phenomena, backed-up by a sufficient knowledge of the mathematical 
	tool.
|>
|>    Gilles Comtet-Varga
|>    COMTET at FRECP.bitnet
|>

--
Jean-Pierre Delplanque
UCI/MAE dept