Originally Posted by
BoilerUP
That's something myself and a few other alums have been fighting for with Purdue alumni - to have more real-world topics discussed in the new curriculum with students vs. 4 semesters worth of 727 systems classes that an airline would teach in 2 40-hour weeks.
I think a contributing factor to this is at many universities, faculty don't have much industry experience...especially in the last 10-15 years. One reason for this is many universities want aviation faculty to have M.S. degrees if not Ph.Ds...and there simply aren't that many folks out there that have a strong professional/operational background with those academic credentials that want to teach.
Excellent post! As a fellow Purdue AT grad, I'll second this thought. From what I've gathered talking to TQC (a while back now), the university as a whole is being a bit schizophrenic in that it has determined it's goal is to be a major research institution. All well and good, but that ignores what its charter was (and what it's done very well for a long time). There is a place for research, but there also needs to be a dedication to educating the "unwashed masses" (which I am a member of), and that is not always best accomplished with people whose names have M.S. or Ph.D in the title (no offense intended against TQC, who is one of my favorite people in the world and one of the finest teachers I've ever encountered).
From what I understand, I'm quite disappointed in the direction the university as a whole has chosen to take. As a microcosm of this, I'm not thrilled with the direction the AT department has elected to move recently.
All that said, I'm not intimate with the details, and may well be talking out of my ventral elimination port.