They are likely the last generation for whom this will be true.

The engineers entering practice today are trained on software outputs. They learn to interpret results, not derive them. This is not a failure of education — it is a rational response to a profession where the tools have outpaced the pedagogy. You cannot teach finite element theory to every undergraduate who needs to use a FE model. The profession made a pragmatic choice and moved on.

The problem is not that new engineers can’t calculate. It is that the chain of comprehension is shortening with each generation. The senior engineer who can sanity-check the model output against first principles is becoming a scarcer resource. When that generation retires, something will be lost that cannot easily be recovered — not knowledge exactly, but calibration. The instinct that something is wrong before you can prove it.

AI tools will accelerate this. When the model produces an answer, the temptation is to accept it. The resistance to that temptation requires a mental model of structural behaviour that takes years of practice to build and is increasingly untrained for.

The profession needs to decide what it wants the next generation to know — not what software to use, but what physical intuitions to carry. That curriculum does not yet exist.