Engineering Education - Introduction – Petroleum Engineering Educational Problems

At the annual meeting of the Institute in February, 1927, we had a comprehensive discussion of Petroleum Engineering Education. This discussion covered basic training and prerequisites, laboratories and equipment, graduate courses, availability of lecturers, geological engineering, petroleum production engineering, refinery engineering, transportation engineering and economics and management. However, there are several phases of petroleum engineering education, which many members of the Institute felt should be further discussed at this year's meeting. The first was expressed by me in a letter to those participating in the written discussion, from which I quote as follows: "We fell that the question of handling engineering graduates who enter the petroleum industry should be thoroughly discussed. "During the first five years after graduntion from college, how can these young men be best trained to be of the greatest service to the industry and at the same time do work which will be interesting and of a character which will make them feel that they are accomplishing something and making progress leading toward personal advancement?" Both the written and oral discussion would indicate three groups of opinion; first, those who advocate letting the young engineers go into the industry and take care of themselves without any supervision, direction, or guidance; second, those who advocate the taking of young engineers into the industry and letting them go through all the steps that any laborer or any other mian without a technical education would take, but with some supervision, and third, those who advocate that young cngineers should be given special training for several years after entering the industry. Of course all of these different groups are found in rnost of our industries. The Doherty training school of the Empire Gas & Fuel Co., finds its counterpart in the practice of the Gcneral Electric and Westing-house companies in the electrical industry and the Baldwin and Brooks Locomotive works in mechanical engineering.