Christelle Didier

Social Responsibility in French Engineering Education: A Historical and Sociological Analysis

In France, some institutions seem to call for the engineer’s sense of social responsibility. However, this call is scarcely heard. Still, engineering students have been given the opportunity to gain a general education through courses in literature, law, economics, since the nineteenth century. But, such courses have long been offered only in the top ranked engineering schools. In this paper, we intend to show that the wish to increase engineering students’ social responsibility is an old concern. We also aim at highlighting some macro social factors which shaped the answer to the call for social responsibility in the French engineering “Grandes Ecoles”. In the first part, we provide an overview of the scarce attention given to the engineering curriculum in the scholarly literature in France. In the second part, we analyse one century of discourses about the definition of the “complete engineer” and the consequent role of non technical education. In the third part, we focus on the characteristics of the corpus which has been institutionalized. Our main finding is that despite the many changes which occurred in engineering education during one century, the “other formation” remains grounded on a non academic “way of knowing”, and aims at increasing the reputation of the schools, more than enhancing engineering students’ social awareness.

Corporate social responsibility in engineering education. A French survey

In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a survey of how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is being discussed and taught in engineering education in France. We shall first describe how those questions have been recently tackled in various programmes of higher education in France. We shall also analyse what faculty members have to say about their motivation or reluctance to enhance these new topics in their teaching. While this survey covered various fields of higher education, in this present, we mostly discuss the issues surrounding CSR teaching in engineering education.

Acknowledging AI's dark side.

The 17 July special section on Artificial Intelligence (AI) (p. [248][1]), although replete with solid information and ethical concern, was biased toward optimism about the technology. The articles concentrated on the roles that the military and government play in “advancing” AI, but did not include the opinions of any political scientists or technology policy scholars trained to think about the unintended (and negative) consequences of governmental steering of technology. The interview with Stuart Russell touches on these concerns (“Fears of an AI pioneer,” J. Bohannon, News, p. [252][2]), but as a computer scientist, his solutions focus on improved training. Yet even the best training will not protect against market or military incentives to stay ahead of competitors. Likewise double-edged was M. I. Jordan and T. M. Mitchells desire “that society begin now to consider how to maximize” the benefits of AI as a transformative technology (“Machine learning: Trends, perspectives, and prospects,” Reviews, p. [255][3]). Given the grievous shortcomings of national governance and the even weaker capacities of the international system, it is dangerous to invest heavily in AI without political processes in place that allow those who support and oppose the technology to engage in a fair debate. The section implied that we are all engaged in a common endeavor, when in fact AI is dominated by a relative handful of mostly male, mostly white and east Asian, mostly young, mostly affluent, highly educated technoscientists and entrepreneurs and their affluent customers. A majority of humanity is on the outside looking in, and it is past time for those working on AI to be frank about it. The rhetoric was also loaded with positive terms. AI presents a risk of real harm, and any serious analysis of its potential future would do well to unflinchingly acknowledge that fact. The question posed in the collections introduction—“How will we ensure that the rise of the machines is entirely under human control?” (“Rise of the machines,” J. Stajic et al. , p. [248][1])—is the wrong question to ask. There are no institutions adequate to “ensure” it. There are no procedures by which all humans can take part in the decision process. The more important question is this: Should we slow the pace of AI research and applications until a majority of people, representing the worlds diversity, can play a meaningful role in the deliberations? Until that question is part of the debate, there is no debate worth having. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.248 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.349.6245.252 [3]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aaa8415

Professional Ethics Without a Profession: A French View on Engineering Ethics

Bioethics and business ethics have their international conferences, their networks, their international scientific journals, as well as their schools of thought and their internal disagreement. To the contrary, engineering ethics is a little known area of study which gives rise sometimes to scepticism. First developed in the US, this academic field it is now present in many countries. In this article, we intend to make known the progress made and the issues at stake in this area of contextualised ethics: philosophical issues, but also cultural one. We will defend the idea that reflecting upon the ethical issues of engineering is not of interest to engineers alone. However, as it also concern engineers, we will try to describe what could (or should) be the focus of an ethical reflection on engineering for engineers in countries (like France) where the concept of profession does not hold an ethical dimension as it seems to be the case in the US.

“I Became an Engineer by Accident!”: Engineering, Vocation, and Professional Values

Contrary to many other countries, in France, engineering education remains attractive. Paradoxically, French students do not seem to be motivated by the engineering profession and many graduates seem to have become engineers “by accident”. The outcome of our research is that engineering students are “pushed” by an invisible parental and social pressure. The most successful ones end up in a very few prestigious schools, which are supposed to open the doors of the higher management positions in big private companies and public administration, the great majority in a school they have hardly heard about before the “concours”, with little motivation for applied science, hardly any vocation for engineering. This work is at the crossroad of two developing approaches within the fields of educational sciences and sociology: the choice to study successful students belonging to the upper or upper middle class which are less investigated than lower classes, and the choice to adopt a qualitative approach, while most researches about orientation are based on wide quantitative surveys. Our aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the construction of the engineers’ culture and ethos, through an analysis of the socialization process from the engineering students’ point of view.

Engineer’s Ecoskepticism as an Ethical Problem

The graduate engineers’ attitude towards environmental issues differs profoundly from that of their fellow citizens. This is what we have found out when comparing the answers given by 27,000 graduates to an original survey we conducted in 2011 with those of a representative sample of French people who participated to the “European value survey”. The engineers’ attitude is also very different from those of business managers and executives. It also differs from those of other master’s degree graduates. Contrary to our expectations, the demographic change observed in the profession (growth, place of women, development of new educational tracks) has little influence on the professionals’ attitude. The engineers’ attitudes toward environmental issues seem to depend more on their professional position than on their individual traits. While the younger generation seems a little bit more pro-environment than their seniors, females do not differ significantly from their male colleagues on that topic. By contrast, we found out that the engineers’ attitude towards environment is strongly related to their attitude and values in general and their political, ethical and religious attitude in particular.

A good answer to (perhaps) not such very good questions

How can we make studying engineering and technology a more attractive option for young people who are undecided about their choice of a major but who have sufficient interest to enroll on an engineering pre-professional degree program? How can we attract women and students of color and therefore improve the balance of male and female engineers and that of white engineers and engineers of color in society? How can we educate engineers to be more socially responsible? How can engineering education be made more contextsensitive? These are the questions Larry Bucciarelli and David Drew’s plans intend to address, or at least the questions they raised to provoke critical reflection and analysis concerning the relevance and importance of the humanities and social sciences in the education of engineers. Although I believe in the relevance of the plan, I do not share all the presuppositions of its authors. The hypothesis of their ‘action research’ is that a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies in Engineering might be a means of solving several different ‘problems’. The program aims to answer the need for change in the demographic of the engineering student population in two ways. It seeks to improve the representation of women and of people of color by offering a ‘smoother’, less stereotyped and therefore more ‘welcoming’ pathway to the profession. The program hopes, through being attractive to a wider spectrum of students, to counteract the shortage of graduate engineers for businesses, with its worrying consequences for the competitiveness of the USA in a high-tech information economy. The program also aims at transforming the graduate engineers’ profile, as well as the content and goals of engineering education. It wishes to train graduate engineers to think and act as mature, fully informed citizens, sensitive to the interest of others and to ensure that the ‘fundamentals’ of undergraduate engineering education are more in tune with authentic engineering practice. To what extent do these problems actually exist? Do they each have the same level of need to be solved? The underrepresentation of women and people of color in engineering education and in the profession is an indisputable fact. Engineering has developed as a white male profession reflecting societal injustice: girls who could have studied engineering – and would have liked to – have long been excluded from scientific education, in the same way as black people have been excluded. Allowing these groups into engineering education has been far from sufficient in achieving a gender and ethnic balance in engineering, because there are many factors that come into play: external pressures to renounce a desired career,

An Ethical and Sociological view on Women Engineers and on the Role Interdisciplinary Courses can Play in Attracting Young People, and Women, to Engineering Education

How can we make studying engineering and technology a more attractive option to young people? How can we attract more women and therefore improve the balance between male and female engineers in society? These are the two questions this conference intends to address. Among the solutions, the organizers of the Helena conference have chosen to focus on engineering education as a means of solving two “problems”: firstly the underrepresentation of women in engineering; and secondly the lack of interest expressed by young people in science and technology – and the shortage of graduate engineers for business companies in the future.