ABSTRACT
As a mitigation for the engineering professors, the teaching of design is a demanding and particularly challenging task. Improved design education must start with improved high-school preparation for two reasons: high schools determine whether or not a student is motivated to accept the dictum that good education is a process of life-long learning; and good high school education can free universities from fulfilling ‘general education’ requirements and providing remedial learning programs thus being able to concentrate on their real mission of higher learning and of training students for professional duties, as is the case in Europe and Japan. The subject of higher education in the engineering programs having rock engineering components has received world-wide attention. At Harvard University, good education starts with a prescribed core curriculum. This curriculum program differs considerably from programs of ‘general education’ practiced by other universities.
