The Second Paradigm Shift-Emerging Graduate Engineering Education

Today's modern University education system can be construed to have begun in the 1600s.With relatively minor perturbations, that system has survived, mostly intact, into the 20 th century.In the latter part of the last century, however, a major "paradigm shift" began to take hold.As a central focus, the Internet took its place as a new framework within which to design and deliver instructional materials to large numbers of students.Instructors could use e-mails to establish dialogues, with whatever level of personalized attention seemed to be appropriate, short of giving lectures in the classroom with the students in front of them.We remain under the influence of that educational shift, and are likely to be so involved for the indefinite future.However, a second and more subtle paradigm shift has also shown itself in graduate engineering education.For want of a better term, this will be called the shift toward "cohort-based" education, and may be characterized by at least the following five features:1. Students as parts of cohorts that take courses in lock-step 2. A focus upon graduate-level courses and degrees 3. Delivery of the sets of courses to the doorstep of participating entities 4. Formal agreements made between Universities and participating entities 5. Influences, hopefully for the better, of the participating entities, into the educational system This paper explores each of the above features.This is followed by an overview of a significant experiment to date, with a form of cohort-based education, in a University environment.The central focus of this education has been at the Master's level.With the benefit of a real-world example, the paper goes on to set forth some possible future scenarios for cohort-based education.These include major modifications in the mix of public vs. private education as well as possible changes in the ownership of educational institutions.