Professional engineers have their very own strict certifications, entirely independent of the university, precisely because the university cannot in general be trusted to weed people out.
You in particular may be incorruptible, but if you were untenured and the student had a lawyer I'd bet on him "passing" your class.
The counterargument: If the student can pay cash and wants to take an engineering class why not indulge him? Shall we deny all those without math skill the opportunity to even see, say, robotics, just because we're sure they'll never be qualified to practice it at a pro level? Why is the purpose of calculus class to sort people into silos rather than simply... Teach calculus? And why can't a student of means be allowed to fail the classes of his choice?
One answer is that engineering education is so expensive to deliver, and demand so high, that we can't afford to lavish it on hobbyists. (If you've had the pain of trying to teach a class containing students who are over their heads, you can feel this argument in your bones, because the resource being wasted is your time, for which you are not well compensated.) But... Maybe we can fix that? Productivity-boosting technology has many uses.
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Professional engineers have their very own strict certifications, entirely independent of the university, precisely because the university cannot in general be trusted to weed people out.
You in particular may be incorruptible, but if you were untenured and the student had a lawyer I'd bet on him "passing" your class.
The counterargument: If the student can pay cash and wants to take an engineering class why not indulge him? Shall we deny all those without math skill the opportunity to even see, say, robotics, just because we're sure they'll never be qualified to practice it at a pro level? Why is the purpose of calculus class to sort people into silos rather than simply... Teach calculus? And why can't a student of means be allowed to fail the classes of his choice?
One answer is that engineering education is so expensive to deliver, and demand so high, that we can't afford to lavish it on hobbyists. (If you've had the pain of trying to teach a class containing students who are over their heads, you can feel this argument in your bones, because the resource being wasted is your time, for which you are not well compensated.) But... Maybe we can fix that? Productivity-boosting technology has many uses.