Shaping the future of American university education: conceiving engineering a liberal art

Students can no longer be expected to learn how to solve problems in a precisely defined area of engineering but need to be prepared to situate these problems into multiple settings. Conceiving engineering as a liberal art indicates that engineering knowledge is required not only for a specialized career path but also increasingly important for active participation in citizenship. This idea challenges universities to rethink fundamental notions of both the liberal arts and engineering. Experimentation with new curricula in these educational areas should be a priority of universities, especially engineering institutions. We explore evidence from Georgia Tech and other universities that differences between engineering and the liberal arts are drawn too sharply, that design with a large number of variables and incommensurable objectives requires new critical vocabularies for production, and that the idea of engineering as a liberal art offers an opportunity to develop needed curricular flexibility.