Earlier this month, a friend of mine who’s on the Board of Berkeley Engineering’s Dean’s Society invited me to accompany him to their event on “The Future of Technology” at the Googleplex.

The talk focused on the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley and their involvement with technology. First year engineering courses in the college now include nano technology, bio technology, and info technology and an option to stay for a fifth year to earn a Master’s degree for breadth is now available. Also, through the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology students can now learn about business concepts as well as technical topics and for the last three years about 860 students each year have taken the courses.

I thought the direction in expanding the engineering curriculum to include business topics was smart like what Stanford is doing with the new Facebook course; a more well-rounded education prepares students with useful practical skills. However, during the Q&A period, I was surprised to hear a comment that the College of Engineering should not teach students business; if the students are interested, they should go and learn it whether it be through signing up for other classes or pursuing a second degree.

The comment came from Art Fong (Class of 1943) who has a very impressive resume: worked on developing the radar in World War II, developed the first AM/FM radio receiver, HP founding engineer, Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley, Master’s in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

My friend believes that Fong was trying to infer that the engineering program should be more flexible to allow for students to explore other areas like business. When I was at Cal, I remember that the engineering track was quite packed and the department tried to rush out their students within four years; there wasn’t much room in the schedule to take outside classes. The Dean of Engineering mentioned a new option to stay for a 5th year to obtain a Master’s Degree, but I don’t think it addresses that issue.

Even with the flexibility however, I think that basic business courses would help future engineers in understanding the “real world” more and perhaps pique their interest in pursuing some additional business courses. College itself is already so packed with requirements that if the department doesn’t decide that learning about business is an essential part of an engineering degree, students may not necessarily be able to see the benefits given all the other things they need to accomplish while in college.

Engineers in the real world face a wide range of problems. A bigger picture perspective is extremely beneficial in tackling real world problems.