A few days ago I received an e-mail from one of the few readers of this blog. It says 'enough for the negative publicity about agricultural engineering'. What is important now is to know what to do. Hundreds of high school graduates will then be lured into this trap, fresh BSAE graduates are now spending considerable amount of money for their licensure exam this month, and even more old graduates, licensed on non-licensed, are now struggling for job that could at least gain them independence from parents and relatives. I have been trying to think of some options to address this issue. Here is a list of what I came up with:
1. Abolish Agricultural Engineering from all colleges and universities in the Philippines. This sounds like a summary execution but this is only an option.
2. Name change. I have worked with quite a number of engineers for 5 years and yet I have not met one who could understand thermodynamics and heat transfer better than agricultural engineers do. I have met electrical engineers who are good in engineering economics but, in general, not as good as agricultural engineers. I also suppose only agricultural engineers can explain "humidity" to a layman farmer. If you say you are an agricultural engineer, would anyone believe that you understand all these things?
3. Agricultural engineers should be allowed to take the licensure exams of other engineering degrees. This would be similar to the case of BS Agricultural Chemistry. Ag Chem is a 5-year course but their licensure exam is that of BS Chem, a 4-year course. For ag engs, maybe those who specialize in irrigation and drainage engineering or agricultural structures should be allowed to take the CE licensure exam, probably with the requirements of some additonal courses. For machinery majors, maybe a few more courses to make them eligible for the ME licensure exam, and so on and so forth. The results would be agricultural engineers with CE or ME license or licensed CE specialized in irrigation and drainage engineering or agricultural structures. Perhaps an ME specialized in agricultural machinery or processing. Just my wild thoughts.
4. Curriculum change. Maybe we should bring back the days when agricultural engineering was just one of the majors in BS Agriculture. Maybe the curriculum change could make the lives of agricultural engineering students reasonably easier. They should have better career chances as agriculturists rather than "improvised engineers".
These are only my wild thoughts. I know that there brainy and/or more experienced people out there who have better ideas. I would appreciate it very much if you could post your thoughts as comments or replies to this blog.
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