Lifelong learning for innovation and leadership in engineering

In many ways graduate engineering education has served the U.S. well. But there is now broad recognition that it must change substantially to meet new challenges of the 21 ^st Century. A noticeable decline in the number of domestic graduate students pursuing engineering has occurred and just under half of those who are pursuing the doctorate are foreign nationals. But the drop in Americans engaging in graduate studies in engineering is also being perceived by industry and by a growing proportion of graduate schools as a reflection of a lack of opportunity for lifelong learning and of an insufficiency of U.S. graduate education to serve the full professional spectrum of engineering. This deficiency is affecting U.S. competitiveness and the nation's long-term capacity for innovation. The ASEE-Graduate Studies Division has established a National Collaborative to address the compelling issues for needed reform to improve more relevant engineering graduate education for the engineering workforce in industry as a complement to research-based graduate education. This paper describes the conceptual basis and impact of this reform and a call-for-action is submitted to promote this activity to improve U.S. competitiveness.