From the article and other information, it is a fact that manufacturing industry no longer plays a dominant role in pushing global economy. In contrast, whatever the job is for anyone, the society is demanding people with more skills and ability to overcome unforeseeable challenges. For engineering, people need to learn not only the simple techniques like the mechanisms or electronics, but the methodology. To be clearer, it is the ways of thinking and the passion to learn new things independently. It is not the lecturers or tutors’ job to help students build this thinking system. In order to gain the ability to face new challenges coming along with global era, two aspects are needed to take an attention.
The first one is to broaden background knowledge, including contents covered arts and social science, because it is a common case for engineering students who fail to know some simple and general knowledge. Thinking is very important. Reading can improve the depth of thinking and broaden people’s mind which is good for thinking in different ways. Moreover, it is possible for an engineer to step into political stage. If it is so, learning the knowledge about political science is very necessary. This example shows that it is hard to determine anyone’s future, so make a preparation is very important.
The second aspect is about practical ability. It is no longer enough to only know some basic background or some techniques. For an engineer, it is required to deal with practical problems instead of some abstract theory. That means people must gain an ability to convert the knowledge and skills learned from book into practical work. For example, financial crisis has affected manufacture industry as well as financial area. In order to survive from this disaster, it is not only to try to improve the quality of the products, but also the ability to broaden the existed market, to find new opportunity to break the bottle neck. This is called for the training during the time in university. People can do the internship
