There are many developments which make one think that our engineering education system is either broken or headed towards that. Many students no longer like to attend classes and most of what we teach is perceived to be irrelevant to the job market. Even at several leading educational institutes around the world, only about 25% of the students end up in a job relevant to their core engineering discipline. Several problem areas have been identified and several measures have been proposed to remedy the situation, but frankly speaking nothing so far seems to be making much difference. Several institutes even brought about an overhaul of their entire curriculum over the last few years, but again with little impact. One of the reasons is that very few of these steps taken were bold enough but most were merely minor tweaks here and there. But of course, taking bold steps merely for the sake of displaying bravery is not a good idea and can lead to large instabilities. Also, bold steps need not be taken with a stamp of lived-happily-ever-after. We need to be open to the fact that some of our best decisions may also fail due to a myriad of reasons. Bold steps need to also have a carefully planned exit option in case they don't help in improving the situation. We need more of a start-up culture in decision making.
