Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
4th World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership (WCLTA), Barcelona, İspanya, 27 - 29 Ekim 2013, cilt.141, ss.35-44
Today, engineering applications require engineers to develop and update their knowledge in professional life in a continuous manner since technology is rapidly changing and becoming more complex. Unfortunately, due to lack of knowledge and training, trial and error method is widely used in most of the applications by newly graduated technical staff. However, this method could be a cause of huge economic losses, and undermines occupational safety and health at work. At present, in most countries, Bachelor of Sciences education in engineering is a four-year program. Although, in light of the Bologna Declaration, there is a trend in recent reforms towards 3-year Bachelors in EU countries, since, today engineering activities require high level education giving theory and the related knowledge and training on application in detail on different, interrelated branches of science and technology, engineering education should be more scientifically oriented. Such an education requires more than 3 years for students graduated from general High Schools. There is today a consensus that the professional engineering degree should take totally five years in a two-tier structure following secondary school. In this paper, it is proposed that the period of engineering education in the first cycle should be 3 years for the graduates of technical high schools and a minimum of 4 for the ones of other schools. Instead of Master of Science programs, master of engineering programs offering courses with a content giving basic knowledge, which is not renewed in a period of few years, on the design of engineering systems and structures and on the operation details of complicated engineering systems should be the prerequisite for professional engineering degree. The mission statement of technology faculties is discussed and interpreted. The mission laid out during the formation of Technology Faculties, established as an alternative to Engineering Faculties, which have now been providing education for a few years ( in Turkey) should be reconsidered. These schools should be restructured as graduate schools in order to take on the role for teaching graduates of Engineering Faculties, who select technical track for being a professional engineer, to provide them with application details in a scientific manner. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCLTA 2013.