Engineering Education between Science and Practice: Rethinking the Historiography

The literature on 19th and early 20th century engineering education reveals two quite general phenomena: in several countries (a) curricula have varied widely among engineering colleges with some of them strongly ‘science‐oriented’ while others were more ‘practice‐oriented’; and (b) at certain times and places the curriculum has tended to shift away from ‘practice’ and toward ‘science’ (a process sometimes known as ‘academic drift’). In this paper I show that relatively little attempt has yet been made to account for either phenomenon. After reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the literatures on the USA, Germany, Britain and to a lesser extent France, I argue that comparative analysis is essential in order to develop a general understanding of the dynamics of the system of higher engineering education. An example of how this might be done is taken from my recent study of German agricultural colleges.