By Jane Ng

THE engineering degree programme at the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be revamped from August to attract the best and the brightest.

It plans to do this by fast-tracking the students to a bachelor's degree in three years instead of four, leaving the fourth year for a master's programme in a top-flight overseas university like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Another major change to the programme lies in its taking on a more practical bent for one-third of the student cohort.

Instead of the current lecture-tutorial system, they will be exposed to problem-based learning, aimed at building practical skills that will be useful when they enter the industry.

The dean of engineering, Professor Chan Eng Soon, explaining the fast-track programme, said the strongest applicants seeking a place in engineering will sit for placement exams to determine which modules they can skip.

They can also do self-study for some modules and sit for the exams without having to go for lectures and tutorials that other students have to attend.

The freed-up time will then be spent on higher-level research projects with overseas universities, which will prepare them for the master's degree programme in Year 4. Ten to 20 students will be offered this accelerated programme at the beginning. It will have 50 students in a steady state.

NUS also is seeking tie-ups with Cambridge and Oxford universities, apart from the MIT collaboration.

Prof Chan, noting that engineering has become a less attractive course of study in other developed countries, said: 'We want to address this and have put in place initiatives to differentiate how and what we provide in order to attract the top brains.'

In the overhaul of the engineering curriculum to give it a more practical tack, students could be asked to read up on their own and then form teams to solve real-world problems, be it climate change, ageing or infectious diseases.

Prof Chan said getting them to think through a problem that crosses disciplines will change the way they learn.

'We want them to ask questions, work as a team and have a platform to be creative. This is what the real world is all about,' he said.

The changes were made based on feedback from the industry, he said.

Employers now want their engineers to be team players and to have a broader perspective on issues, 'so we looked at our current programme and came up with ways to nudge students in that direction'.

Three-quarters of the current engineering modules will be taught using the new approach.

For a start, in August, 20 to 30 students will get on the revamped curriculum, working up to about 500 students out of each batch of 1,500 students eventually.

The focus will be on industry-oriented projects in future transportation systems, engineering in medicine and smart cities.

Students who have had a taste of real-world projects have found it useful.

Third-year mechanical engineering student Shunmugam Vigneshwaran, 24, who helped to design and build a race car last year as part of a project, said: 'It's very useful as we apply textbook knowledge to come up with a real-world product. We saw it through from the design stage, manufacturing to the testing.

'It'll be useful when I apply for a job as not many people are involved in such projects.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.