Engineering education at the bachelor's- and master's-degree levels is intended primarily to provide young people with the basic preparation for lifelong careers in the practice of engineering. Thus, in developing such programs, one must anticipate the demands that will be made of engineers over a period of several decades. In ocean engineering, this means that we must try to predict the kinds of ocean systems that will be required by society far in the future and then define the appropriate disciplines in which ocean engineers must be well-grounded. Accordingly, the focus of this paper is on the future of ocean engineering in the next century and on the basic knowledge that present-day students will need to succeed in that environment. Our ultimate objective is to enable mankind to build and operate systems in as well as on the oceans. Since underwater systems in the foreseeable future will depend on support from the surface, we must continue to develop the capability to operate in the hostile environment of the ocean surface. But we must also face the unique difficulties inherent in deepwater operations, including, for example, (i) our inability to communicate through the water, (ii) the lack of operational energy sources, (iii) high pressure, (iv) corrosive medium, (v) short lives of functional installations (especially moored systems), and (vi) problems of designing instruments and systems for monitoring both ocean operations and the environment itself. The hostility of the ocean environment will require that many operations be performed without human beings on site, thus creating the need for remotely controlled and autonomous systems. Such challenges are discussed in the paper, and the relevant fundamental disciplines are defined.
