I think both are important, but, in fact, there is limited practical courses in the school, and I do not know why? We learn engineering and in this area, I think, problems always come from practice or not papers. Sometimes it is theoretically reasonable, but when people put it into practice, it is not goes well, and they can not figure out the reason.

Overall I believe there should be a split in practical vs informational courses. The informational courses should have the majority percentage (either 60/40 or 70/30), however. The informational courses form a baseline knowledge of the field. If you only have the knowledge of practice, you can come to roadblocks that are more severe because of the lack of common informational knowledge of the field. For example, practical knowledge would be knowing how to build a burger. The informational knowledge would be knowing how to cook the patty.

Generally looking this ratio is not good for preparing the students for industry. Though academics helps students to gain knowledge, learn concepts, and theories. But it is evenly important to know and understand how to apply those concepts practically. So if ratio is not good when students go for job they would feel as if they don't know anything. But yes I would also say Biomedical Engineering is a versatile branch and has many courses so this ratio should also depend on the course that a student is taking, may be some need more practical and some may not need practical at all. At NJIT having Project Management and Medical Device Development teaches us how to deal with real life problems, share ideas, teamwork. Practical thing would help us to stand out from others.

I think there should be options, and thus an equal amount of courses offered in both the academic and practical realm. Depending on if a student is interested in research or academia they can choose the relevant coursework. One student might choose 7/3 ratio and another might be 50/50, depending on their preference and career goals. Additionally, even practical courses are not equivalent to real world experience and thus an internship or co-op is crucial to gain experience and truly practical knowledge.

I believe that there should be a ratio of 6 academic classes to 4 practical classes. At the graduate level a large majority of the courses you have taken already have been focused on academia. Academia is very important to set a base of knowledge that you need to know in order to apply it to practical situations. However, once you get into the job field you will only apply about half of the academia information you have learned meaning you need knowledge about the industry, how it is run, the different roles you can assume and the processes that you will run into on a weekly basis. Practical classes I think better prepare you for what you really want to do after school. Academia classes may help gauge your interest in a certain topic but the practical classes will help outline what you will do with that knowledge and if it is right for you. In addition, through practical classes you are exposed to simulations and real life scenarios that will make you learn more about the academia behind the problem, therefore you are still learning vital knowledge about the subject.

I definitely this MS program lacks in the amount of practical courses offered. As other people stated previously, working in the industry is a lot more involved and requires a lot of "hands-on" experience, paid or not. In my opinion, I think the ratio should be about 50:50. Academic classes are there to give you information and allow you to develop your own interests and to figure out what you want to do with your degree. Practical classes are there to train you for how the industry really works.

However, I think the student should have the ability to pick and choose how many academic and practical courses they take because it ultimately depends on where they want to focus their skills once their degree is complete. If they're more interested in industry, I would say they should take more practical courses. If they are interested in academia, they should have more academic classes with a handful of practical courses.

Is a student 100% equipped to know what he or she should focus on during the course of study?

Not necessarily! If we're talking about an undergraduate student, they may or may not know what they want to focus on. However for a Master's student, I would think that at point in their academic career, they have a better idea what they want to focus on. I think that if there are more options available for both academic or practical classes, students will be more inclined to choose what they're interested in.

I believe that the ratio should be 50:50 instead of 30:70 because as my classmates mention above academic courses gives a good basis, but not enough experience that students are really seeking to get. It turns out that outside college it requires students to learn completely something that is completely different than what they study. In order for us to understand more about our field and our major; we need both types of courses with equal ratio. Some of my classmates has mentioned a good point that Biomedical engineering is a diverse field and the experience that we might get from the practical courses might be different from the job type that we really seek to get after graduation; however, I believe that even if the practical courses are different but it will help because it will give us an idea about what we will do after and it will also still count as an experience for us.

While the idea of a ratio of professional to theoretical classes is a possible solution for making sure all students have industry read skills, I disagree with the ratio idea completely. When deciding what the content of education should be, it should not be something as topical as an availability ratio. The ideal ratio of industry knowledge to theoretical knowledge one must gain is completely unknown. Any system that strives for a ratio will have underfilled classes or overfilled classes. A better solution might be to base it off of year in education. A senior is going to need industry knowledge a lot more than a freshman would. Coming in as a freshman, college should be 100% theoretical. By senior year, maybe the classes turn out to be 50% industry related, but it should be because that's how many industry topics there are that can have a class surrounding them. In terms of higher degrees, I feel that NJIT's offered courses provide a nice mix. A majority of the graduate courses I have taken here were industry focused skills. Or if they were theoretically focused, industry skills could be learned from understanding the theory.

I am biased to learning more theory in classes than industry skills. This is because, while it is possible to learn industry skills on the job with an entry level position, it is exceptionally difficult to learn theory knowledge on the job. And some jobs (ex: R&D) require a good understanding of the theory to prosper.

I believe that for every 10 courses, 6 of them should be practical and 4 should be academic. The reason is because jobs require to apply your knowledge in an actual setting, which involves working under regulations and guidelines as well as working with different equipment, depending on the field. Exposing students to more practical courses where they are forced to apply concepts is the best way to mirror what is expected of them in the jobs that they are pursuing. Also, it’s the best way to learn because students will retain information better if they actually do something with it. I think that NJIT should offer more practical courses rather than academic because BME is an applied science. Learning how to work with different instruments is essential to research and experiments and having this during school would help students adapt to the work environment much more easily. Reading about concepts and theory is essential; however, it will not matter if people understand the concepts really well because, without hands-on experience, it’s very difficult to design new products or even understand the problem that you are trying to solve. This is why the university should offer more practical courses as it’s important to gain experience early on so that they can be more competitive in the job market after graduation. Employers wish to see how well you do when you are in the field doing hands-on work, not just how well you know concepts and how much information you have.

I think there are both pros and cons of practical and information courses. Practical knowledge teaches some practical tools which are helpful in industries. Industrial courses get over in short period but practical courses take time to become expertise and needs continuous practice and need to update yourself with the latest technology. Informational knowledge gives a deeper understanding of the concept through context whereas informational courses gives deeper understanding in terms if actual practice and experience. Nowadays there is more emphasis on the practical knowledge so I think It important to learn practical courses to have better opportunities in future.

Thank you!

It is hard to say that is a good ratio for me, because I graduated from my undergrad BME with no practical course credit, in which I was lost after graduation. Our goal was only to maintain a high GPA with all that stress and homework & exams load. Having a practical part in each course would be an ideal option for graduate students, especially those who are not thinking about working on a Ph.D. degree later. Industry and real life in the near future would require us as BME graduate students to have more actual practical skills rather than only knowing pieces of information.

I agree that student should be taught 50/50 in practical and informational course because as Dr.Simon and other stated, people who are fresh out of school go to jobs and are dumbfounded by what they are being ask to do. They have no experience because majority of school just give background information, which is good, but in order to work in any real world jobs you need the hands on experience to be prepared for them. Students need a balance between practical and informational because you cannot just be doing what other ask you, you need to know the science behind it. People should understand why they are doing the things they are doing because everything has a reason. By having a balance between practical and informational course student would be better prepared for their future jobs.

I'm not 100% sure the necessary coursework for the BME degree but for the ME degree, each of our courses include practical applications. This is less from the syllabus from the experience of the professor. For example, in my heat transfer class, the professor assigned an optional project where we develop a heat transfer model, using the knowledge we built in the class, of any product we want. As I enjoy working with computers, my model was done on the heat transfer through a computer's heat sink. Based on the responses in this forum and my partial experience as a grad student, I'm assuming that it's not the same for BME's.

I don't think there should be a ratio of only practical courses to only theoretical courses. I think that each course should introduce both sides of the coin. In a theory based class, introduce practical application and in practical courses, introduce some theory. At least the student will be able to understand why they are learning what they are learning.

JZ365, I agree with you that I don't think there's a golden ratio but I don't necessarily think it should be based on the standing year of the student. Everyone has their own pace of working. Let's say the university developed a ratio of practical courses to theoretical based on a four year undergraduate degree for each grade year, so one for freshman, one for sophomore, etc. Now there are students who come in with X amount of credits and those that wish to accelerate their degree. This would break the university's plan and certain courses won't be available for those students. If it's a normal distribution and 4 yr is the majority, it still may exclude a good chunk of people. This would also hold true for those repeating courses, and those taking additional coursework outside of the university.