Re: Education in Piping Engineering

From: <Christopher>
Date: Sat Nov 15 2003 - 13:01:00 EST

>I would like to pursue my Higher studies abroad (preferably the US)
>and would like to know if any universities offer courses in Piping and
>related engineering feilds.

Piping is a big topic. Think for a minute about the industries and disciplines you're interested in and do well at. You can go all the way from chemistry or chemical processing to fluid flow, process design, plant design and stress analysis. And all of these fields are required in all process industries from biomedicine to petrochemical to cryogenics. Lots of latitude. Think some more too, about whether you want to get onto a management track or a technical track. No point becoming one of the world's leading experts on non-newtonian fluids if you want to run your own design office.

Don't make the mistake of over-specializing--concentrate on basics. If your coursework has too short a half-life it isn't going to have any serious impact over most of your career. Typically CAD instruction or anything else involving narrow computer skills will be obsolete in a few years. Project management expertise, applied mechanics and thermodynamics never get obsolete.

I don't know how old you are, but if you have a lot of experience in the field, college may not be for you. My last graduate level course was in 1978, when I was just about 40. I'd worked in a number of industries and had a good handle on structural mechanics and the associated engineering practice, and when a twit of a graduate assistant commented about how something would work in engineering practice, I wanted to strangle him. Bad attitude, despite the fact that the little weenie really needed strangling. Since that time I've concentrated on seminars and short courses, taught by people with engineering skills. Academia does well at first principles, but fails miserably at professional instruction, since there aren't all that many real engineering professionals who teach any more, certainly in the US. Moreover, you'll find that postgraduate training becomes very narrowly focussed, the apparent object being to produce PhD's who know everything about nothing.

I've probably offended some of the academics on the list with that last crack, but I think it's true. I'm not being critical of a theoretical understanding of a topic. An understanding of first principles is an absolute must, but professional practice requires a great deal broader education than most colleges can, or should, provide.

Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an elephant at <a href="/group/PipingDesign/post?postID=88HYoeZEeWvX4UmnT41oY9R2iLhKHNumjXDrkaI41ruhKOZJoKYyzagkpmoRqTZWJoy5ZzLtxb9rcdg">chrisw@skypoint.com</a> | this distance" (last words of Gen.

___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)

<a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw</a> Received on Sat Nov 15 13:01:00 2003