Engineering Education for the Graphic Arts: Some Hypotheses.

The changing environment of the printing industry is generating interest in printing engineering as a subject of higher education. At the same time engineering education is becoming substantially more fundamental and is moving away from narrow specialization. The prospects for printing engineering education are strongest as part of a new type of printing management program. Engineering-type study of printing at Carnegie Institute of Technology is emerging within this particular context. Its development constitutes a form of field experiment that can be used to test a number of hypotheses concerning such education. Various hypotheses are therefore offered and considered concerning (1) the prospects for printing engineering as a field of study, (2) the design of a printing engineering curriculum and the provision of laboratory and faculty resources, and (3) the characteristics of the supply of students to printing engineering, including the level of supply, the aptitudes of students, and the new motivations required.