Continuing on from Andy's experience of interviewing graduates for 
programming jobs, exactly the same thing happens with engineering 
graduates - they can't actually do any engineering (or maybe I'm 
expecting too much of them).

Here's an example problem we ask:

You are given a bucket of water (fixed to the ground) and an open-ended 
flexible pipe leading off into a "black box". All you know about the 
black box is that it may allow some flow into it, at a variable, 
unpredictable rate.

Design a system to take the water from the bucket, and supply it into 
the pipe at a constant pressure (not a ridiculous pressure, just 
something like the pressure you would have in your water pipes at home, 
maybe 3 bar?).

Maybe I just hang about too many engineers, but to me even a 
non-engineer would be able to have at least a stab at some ideas for 
solving it.

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