"The Dismantling of the Engineering Education Pipeline"

Community colleges play a critical role in helping to produce engineers that are urgently needed in order to maintain America's global technological competitiveness.Community colleges serve as an important pipeline for large numbers of ethnically diverse transfer students who pursue engineering degrees in four-year institutions.A few states, such as Maryland and California, have launched broad efforts to make the transfer process easier for these students.Recent developments, however, have threatened the viability of engineering programs in California Community Colleges, endangering this very important pipeline in the engineering educational system.The increasing divergence of the lower-division requirements among different four-year institutions and among the different fields of engineering has led to the erosion of what used to be a standard set of core engineering courses (graphics, statics, properties of materials, circuits, programming) that were required by all engineering programs.Additionally, the recent budget crisis has forced many community colleges to cancel low-enrollment classes and high-cost programs including those in engineering.This paper addresses the factors that have led to the gradual erosion of the lower-division core curriculum and the effects that these curriculum changes have had on community college engineering programs.It also explores the implications on the future of the engineering education system, the cost to taxpayers, and the system's effectiveness at producing the engineers that are needed to ensure that the United States remains the premier place in the world for innovation.