Learning the Expanding Body of Knowledge

How much knowledge is enough? Once the bite was taken from the apple, it seems like a lot more apples kept on growing on the trees. An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but a required consumption of bushels and bushels of apples leads to indigestion or worse. ASCE has admirably taken up the task of defining the “Body of Knowledge” (BOK). The BOK is a detailed outline of everything a practicing civil engineer should know. But if the Body keeps on growing, the effort to define it, much less learn it, becomes a moving target. It's the old problem of walking halfway to the wall, but never reaching it. Although in this case, the wall moves away as you approach it.

The BOK continues to expand exponentially. At the same time, proposals for revised engineering education suggest that training should include more focus on the “soft” knowledge skills such as communication, management, writing, and leadership. This leads to a paradox. Engineers are expected to be technically proficient, while at the same time be skillful communicators and leaders. All of these ten pounds of material are supposed to fit in the same old five-pound bag, or even a four-pound bag as state budgets redefine university course loads and available education hours decrease.

It should go without saying that the first requirement of engineers is to be skilled in engineering. Someone has to know how to do it. Everyone's quality of life depends on good, functioning infrastructure. Not a day goes by without this implicit understanding being met. So, the bridge is expected not to collapse when you drive on it. The water must make it from the well or reservoir to your spigot. The traffic lights must switch from red to green in some reasonable, rational interval, and not turn blue or fall off the pedestals. Although fruit may grow by itself on trees, infrastructure functions don't happen by themselves—skilled civil engineers enable them. Because the skilled civil engineers are mortal, new skilled engineers are eventually needed to replace them. This is hopefully achieved in some way by education.

The BOK continues to grow, but there is a limit to how much can be learned. We can deduce this by applying the law of learning equilibrium. A student is alive for only so many years. We don't know exactly how many years, but we can use statistical averages to illustrate the concept. During the student's lifespan, time must be subtracted for periods of nonformal education such as sleeping, infanthood, watching movies, and other nonacademic pursuits. After other adjustments, the remaining time is the maximum amount available for learning. There was an episode of the old Star Trek TV show in which Doctor McCoy placed an alien mind device on his head, and instantly learned how to perform complex brain surgery on Mr. Spock. But using the reasonable assumptions that this technology will not soon be available and that there is a limit on rate of learning, we can deduce that there is also a limit on the size of the BOK that conceptually could be absorbed during the available learning period.

There are several practical results of the implied limit. If the BOK continues to grow, and only so much can be learned, then at some point parts of the BOK must be trimmed so that the new stuff can fit in. Some of the knowledge must be determined to be no longer relevant or important. The trimming doesn't seem to occur as part ofan organized process, but it happens by default. Consider, for example, application of slide rules. A few decades ago, slide rules were considered an indispensable tool for civil engineers. But now the knowledge of slide rule theory and application is rightfully considered antiquated, and it no longer is part of the curriculum. An organized, in-depth review of the overall civil engineering curriculum would probably identify many subjects that can be judged to be antiquated. The curriculum could be streamlined or revised to free up time for new knowledge, which is being discovered as you read this. But no one has sat down and tried to explicitly quantify what should stay and what should go.

Trimming the BOK tree is something that happens anyway, but it happens by default, without an organized process. Many would consider this a result (if they considered it at all) of the marketplace of ideas. In the marketplace, those ideas such as slide rules, which are no longer relevant, no longer gain any currency and the ideas are discarded from active consideration. On the other hand, the formal education process is less like capitalism and more like communism. Instead of an idea marketplace, the professor, or textbook writer, or both, decide what ideas are relevant, and this is presented as the syllabus. Young students are taught this way up until graduation that there are things that are supposed to be known, and here they are—no marketplace, just centralized planning. The shock then comes after graduation, when the budding engineers are thrust into the marketplace to intellectually fend for themselves. The education process is then known as “gaining experience,” an informal method where a lucky apprentice engineer will hopefully have guidance from good mentors to show him or her the ropes.

The ASCE BOK committee has taken on the daunting task of trying to reel all of this in—to define the BOK (at least in outline form for now) and to propose how and when it should be learned. The challenges include not just the moving target, but no clear consensus among civil engineers on what device should be used to hit the target. Should an MS degree be required? Is the BOK to be achieved by practical experience? How is practical experience measured? Can the BOK committee goals be achieved in the United States if engineering is increasingly outsourced offshore?

While the questions are tough, and the process is hard to define, to quote the movie Apollo 13, “failure is not an option.” Because we will continue to drive around expecting the bridges to stay up and the traffic lights not to turn blue. We will be in big trouble if those expectations are not met.