Study On Cultivating Objectives Of Engineering Talents Oriented To Social Demands

At present, with the trend of enlargement of admission, mergence of colleges and building comprehensive university, engineering education is facing a dilemma, like many other traditional disciplines. Engineering education cannot adapt to changing social demands successfully; engineering graduates cannot meet requirements of our country's goal as being"an innovative nation", which is demonstrated in incompatibility between cultivating objectives of engineering talents and social demands.Engineering education has a natural affinity with social demands. Engineering education must be oriented to social demands. This thesis discusses how cultivating objectives of engineering talents can be oriented to social demands through literature analyzing, history analyzing and comparison analyzing.From contents and characters of social demands, they are demonstrated as quick development of economy and technology. They can be divided as short-term demands and middle and long-term demands, from an angle of time; besides, they have characteristics of diversity, hierarchy and variety, from an angle of space.This thesis, based on some influential reports on engineering education in recent 50 years since World War Two, studied development history of American engineering education and analyzed social demands and cultivating objectives in different times.From these, it can be concluded that cultivating objectives of American engineering education changed to political, economic, and technological social demands. The U.S takes leading position in international competition through innovation in science and technology. Therefore, cultivating high-level engineering talents is a national strategy of the U.S,and prediction of economic and scientific development guarantee advancement of these objectives.When looking back on development history of engineering education and changes of cultivating objectives of talents in recent 50 years'China, it was found social demands are always changing; however, cultivating objectives of engineering talents are vaguely oriented, as well as simple in categories and levels, which cannot meet social demands in diversified, especially middle and long-term, global economic competition.Therefore, to meet strategic demands of building China into"an innovative nation", distinctive cultivating objectives based on different levels and categories should be established in engineering education: quality objectives stressed on a core of"creativity"and specification objectives distinctive in categories and levels.