Biomedical engineering education and industry: matching the product to the customerI want to thank the organisers of this Conference for inviting me to speak about a topic that has been of concern to me for some time, and I'm glad to discuss my thoughts on the subject with you. These thoughts are very much in the context of what is happening in the US, but perhaps you will find similarities with the situation in your own countries. University and industry: a symbiotic relationship This talk really addresses the status of the symbiotic relationship between the university and industry, each of which has needs that the other can meet. Financial pressures have increasingly driven the university to divest its 'ivory tower' image and interact more extensively with industry. With grant money becoming more competitive and state budgets being stretched by other demands and Federal mandates, universities are understandably exhibiting a greater interest in industry as a source of financial support. At the same time, industry is being driven to a closer relationship with academia by its need to become 'leaner' and more efficient. One response to this need is 'outsourcing', in which industry contracts out R&D; tasks in preference to maintaining a costly in-house staff for this purpose. Universities are often beneficiaries of outsourcing. A second, and equally important, consequence of industry's drive to increased efficiency is that companies want their new graduate employees to become productive sooner. It is not clear that universities provide graduates who can 'hit the ground running'. I visited Ford Motor Company' Automotive Operations Center last autumn and was given a tour of their Fairlane Training and Development Center in Michigan. The facility cost Ford $14 million to build, it has 70 classrooms, and supports a portion of the annual training expenditure of the Company, which is $280 million, more than three times the annual budget of the Ohio State University College of Engineering. Most of that money is used to train professional employees in management or technical areas. The considerable effort (and time) needed to turn fresh graduates into productive employees suggests a lack of symmetry between what universities want from industry and what industry expects from universities. The private sector places money in academia to obtain high-quality R&D results more efficiently, and that symbiotic interaction works well, through well established consulting and contract mechanisms. But industry also sees the university as the source of manpower to run their corporate enterprise. The question is how well does the academic community meet the latter need, particularly in the area of interest to us , that of biomedical engineering (BME). Put another way, are our graduates what industry wants? Do they have the appropriate level of training? Are they taught the right skills? How well does BME education match the needs of the industry it serves? Degree level is a reasonable surrogate for level of training. Table 1 shows the distribution of degrees granted in the US in biomedical engineering and three of the 'founder' engineering disciplines over one year. There is a clear bias toward granting advanced degrees in BME, compared to the other disciplines. This bias reflects to some extent the limited number of undergraduate BME-degree granting programmes, with at present only 23 accredited BME undergraduate programs in the US, and, depending on the chosen definition, as many as 80-100 graduate programmes. The percentages in Table 1 do not take into account the fact that many of those obtaining bachelors or masters degrees may continue on in graduate school. What we really want to estimate is the mix of engineers who have concluded their education and are available to industry. We can get some estimate of this for the founder disciplines by assuming a steady state and that graduates in these fields do not change disciplines between degrees. These assumptions do not apply to BME because of two factors unique to this discipline: a sizeable percentage of bachelors graduates in BME enrol in medical school and are unavailable to industry or graduate school, and many students who earn advanced degrees in BME obtained their undergraduate degree in another engineering discipline. Reasonable estimates can be made of these differences in career path. Estimates of the mix of graduates available to industry, for BME and the founder disciplines, are shown in Table 2. Clearly, the mix of biomedical engineers is much more heavily weighted to graduate degrees than are those for the other engineering disciplines. A draft report on Bioengineering National Needs, sponsored by the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), supports this estimate; indeed, the weighting towards the PhD in an alumni survey of biomedical engineers in that report is even stronger: How well does this match industry's needs? When I talked to our people at the College of Engineering Placement Office, the match did not look that good. At Ohio State University last year, 70% of the jobs that industry was trying to fill with engineering graduates were at the bachelors graduate level, twice the percentage of bachelors graduates among the available BMEs. Only nine of the over 200 companies requesting résumés from the Placement Office were seeking PhD graduates. Admittedly, last year was a bad one for PhDs, but 4% of the recruiting companies is a very low percentage when viewed against the output of a BME educational system whose product mix consists of 15-20% PhDs, or more. There are, it should be pointed out, two mitigating circumstances. First of all, the industry in which biomedical engineers work is more R & D intensive than industry as a whole. Medical technology companies spend a considerably higher percentage of sales on their R & D effort, and the percentage is increasing faster for this segment than for all manufacturing companies. As a consequence, the relative demand for graduates with advanced degrees in the medical technology industry (a primary employer of biomedical engineers) is greater than that in industry overall. Secondly, many companies in the medical device industry staff their baccalaureate needs from branches of engineering other than BME. I return to this point several times in this article. Our success in matching the subject matter in which BME students are trained (and the rigour of that training) to the needs of the industry that we serve is more difficult to assess, since there are no useful surrogates. It is my belief that, in general, the engineering training given to undergraduate biomedical engineers in strong engineering schools is comparable to that given to other engineering students. This is evident from a detailed study of the BME curricula in such programmes. On the other hand, it does not appear that the medical technology industry recognises this parity. One continues to hear of companies in the medical area hiring people with bachelors degrees in the traditional fields of engineering with the intention of teaching them the life science they need to know, in preference to hiring students with baccalaureates in BME. There is also the more general issue of whether the courses taught to engineers, particularly as undergraduates, are the practical ones that industry would like to see them taught. This issue applies to all of the engineering disciplines and could be the basis of a symposium in its own right, but suffice to say here that it is an issue that is as appropriate to biomedical engineering as to any other field of engineering. Academic initiatives to improve the match With this as background, let us consider what might be done to improve the situation. Let me start with those activities where the initiative resides within academia. Curriculum changes BME programmes should solicit industry input regarding the required skills that are not currently being taught at the bachelors and masters levels. We know that industry as a whole finds its new engineering graduate employees to be lacking in general skills like economics, management and TQ methodologies. There are also areas more specific to BME, like the conduct and interpretation of clinical trials, regulatory affairs or ethical considerations unique to the healthcare industry, in which courses might be offered. Curriculum opportunities should be provided for engineers seeking their PhD and planning to go into industry. PhD training in the US is based on the academic model, i.e. the anticipation of post-doctoral employment in a university. That model does not describe the career of most new PhD engineers in the US today and will be appropriate to an even smaller percentage in the future. The engineering PhD production of American universities has doubled in the past ten years, while non-industrial demand for basic researchers is diminishing, owing to reductions in faculty slots as university budgets and engineering enrolments contract, and as a consequence of reduced R&D; activity in the federal sector. The situation for BME is somewhat different; academic bioengineering is still in a growth phase in the US. Still, the Bioengineeering National Needs report will show that the number of BME PhD graduates entering industry in 1994 was comparable to the number entering academia. Furthermore, private industry uses PhD graduates differently from academia: emphasis is generally on shorter-term projects rather than long-range research; cross-disciplinary teams are increasingly the norm rather than individual research; and work in industry requires a greater awareness of the economic environment. This situation has been the subject of a recent report by the US National Academy of Science entitled 'Reshaping the Graduate Education of Scientists and Engineers', which has prompted considerable debate in the US. This report notes that, as remarked earlier, increasing numbers of science and engineering PhD graduates are entering industry. The authors maintain that these fresh PhD graduates are often too specialised to deal with the greater variety of tasks they will face. The way to deal with this situation, as the National Academy sees it, is not to abandon the research component of PhD training, but rather to discourage overspecialisation, and to introduce curriculum options that offer a broader scientific background and prepare graduates for the collaborative, communication-intensive way that science is performed in the industrial environment. Encourage students to obtain experience in industry before they graduate In conversations with corporate recruiters and industry managers, the value that industry puts on candidates who have been exposed to the industrial world comes through 'loud and clear'. Co-operative programmes, in which students spend up to an entire academic year in industry as part of their undergraduate training, have been very successful in this respect. General Electric finds about 50% of their new engineering graduate employees in their co-operative programme. Co-operative programmes may be somewhat more difficult to implement in the medical technology industry, where 98% of the businesses have fewer than 500 employees and may not have the overhead to support a co-operative programme. Large biomedical companies, however, are no different from other large companies in their desire to find engineers with experience, and in their ability to provide it. Even summer work in industry is valuable. Several undergraduate BME departments in the US have set up formal programmes to get their students into the biomedical engineering workplace over the summer vacation. The importance of providing students with experience in industry before graduation has been recognised by the Whitaker Foundation, which is a major supporter of biomedical engineering education and research in the US. The Foundation has just announced an industrial internship programme which will support undergraduate (and graduate) BME students in summer jobs starting in 1996. Develop and strengthen undergraduate programmes in BME This is a step which, in my view, is absolutely necessary for the maturation of the BME profession. Indeed, it is already taking place: three programmes are currently under review for first-time ABET accreditation; even more institutions are considering developing undergraduate programs in BME; and undergraduate BME enrolment in the US is increasing at an annual rate of 10% while overall undergraduate engineering enrolment is declining. An expansion of undergraduate programmes in BME must be accompanied by a 'sales pitch' to the healthcare industry, to convince prospective employers that baccalaureate biomedical engineers can do the work that they need done better than other bachelors-level engineers who have had no exposure to the life sciences. Recognition that this is a continuing process The actions universities need to take are long-term. Assessment procedures should be put in place to measure on a continuing basis how well academia is meeting employers' needs and expectations. Industry initiatives to improve the match There is also an active role for the medical technology industry to play in enhancing the ability of its new graduate employees to become productive sooner. A needs survey The university community has very little reliable information regarding the skill sets that the medical technology industry needs, or what the trends are. There are several industry and professional groups in the US, and undoubtedly like organisations in other countries, are well positioned to get useful needs data from their membership. Such guidance could be invaluable in helping BME departments to design more relevant courses, curricula and programmes. Further involvement with the academic enterprise This can be done on both an individual basis and at the corporate level. Companies should encourage their staff to help guide graduate student research; to teach in courses where they have unique expertise; and to participate in seminar series, as appropriate, and consistent with the policies of the host institution. The primary purpose of these interactions would be to introduce a greater level of industrial perspective into the classroom and laboratory. Indeed, industry should consider granting selected staff engineers sabbaticals to receive and deliver training at a host university. Such a 'industry adjunct' faculty would act as a model and information sources for students considering or intending to pursue industrial careers. An alternative, more indirect way to broaden the classroom experience is to provide opportunities for the faculty to spend time in industry, either on sabbatical or during the summer. This practice seems to be relatively rare in the medical technology industry. Ultimately, industry must provide the training opportunities that I earlier urged the universities to seek for their students. These opportunities should be provided for students at all degree levels and should include co-operative positions, internships, and summer jobs. There is a certain irony in the fact that many companies that look for relevant work experience on a candidate's résumé do not offer such opportunities themselves. Contribute funds to help academia implement the educational changes that will improve its ability to meet industry's need for relevant engineers. An investment by industry in an endowed chair, educational tools, fellowships or scholarships, or course development support yields the long-term benefit of a more useful and effective technical workforce. Finally, industry too must recognise that this is a continuing process. Conclusion To close, I want to stress that, although these suggestions are aimed at making biomedical engineering education more responsive to the biomedical engineering industry, there is a larger context. The mutual support of the educational supplier and the industry user is essential to the continued growth of the BME discipline itself. For BME to continue to grow as a distinct branch of engineering, there must be an industry that it serves and that relies on it not only for technical advances, but also to provide its workforce. With an academic enterprise that meets these needs, BME will be well on its way to full membership in the family of engineering disciplines Table 1 Distribution of degrees granted by engineering discipline 1993-1994 N Bachelors Masters Doctorate biomedical 1334 56% 34% 10% electrical 25699 62% 32% 6% chemical 7127 74% 16% 10% mechanical 21062 74% 21% 5% source: Engineering Workforce Commission of the AAES, 'Engineering Technology Degrees, 1993-1994' Table 2 Distribution of terminal degrees (estimated) by engineering discipline 1993-1994 Bachelors Masters Doctorate biomedical 35% 46% 19% electrical 48% 42% 10% chemical 78% 8% 14% mechanical 72% 22% 7% based on Engineering Workforce Commission of the AAES, 'Engineering Technology Degrees, 1993-1994' This article is based on a Plenary Lecture at the VII Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering, Jerusalem, 18 September 1995 Morton H. Friedman is Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and Pathology at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. He is a Founding Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a former President of the Biomedical Engineering Society. | ||