From: coville@h112.desy.de (Arnaud Coville)
Subject: Re: Engineering studies in USA and France
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany.
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 10:44:12 GMT


In article <2AC9D9BD.7639@news.service.uci.edu> jpd@chaos.eng.uci.edu (JP Delplanque) writes:
  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.


That's the point, the people entering a grande ecole in France have in
majority, no intention of becoming an engineer, they have no interest
for technical things. There is a funny remark about that : in english
engineer comes from engin, so from a technical term, in french
ingenieur comes from genie = genius. This small remark may depict the
whole difference. The people who enter a grande ecole do it because of
the propaganda and the consideration that those people have around the
country, not for the love of mathematics, and the consideration they
have is not, definitively not because they master Maths. Just look at
the consideration a Math student/teacher of the University has,
although his knowledge of mathematics at least as good as the one of a
grande ecole student.


The trouble is that those people, who are considered all over the
country as the most intelligent people in France, become manager and
they have no trainning for this.  Those so intelligent people do not
become researchers - beside Normale Sup - and all this education in
math is for nothing and does not help the french research to develop.
Most of the people are not trainned for the job they want and will do,
they just attend the best school, i.e. with the best reputation, they can.
This pushes to the devellopment of the mafias and the deep ankered feeling
 that those coming from this school are better, cleverer, .... than the guys 
coming from this other school, regardless of the personality of each student.
Every thing is decided after the concours des grandes ecoles.
 

 

   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!...)

I don't understand why so few people of the grandes ecoles do not
become reseachers when they are interested and good in maths.
 
   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. 

I don't even think that this is a good selection way.

	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.

I agree, engineer and resaerch scientist are two different jobs. Not
to speak of manager



   --
   Jean-Pierre Delplanque
   UCI/MAE dept 

Arno
--


mes opinions sont les miennes et seulement les miennes, mais si vous les 
aimez, je les partage volontiers. 

 
PS:
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