Andy Millar:

Yes, that is an interesting article, it resonates with things I've been thinking about looking at my children's degrees: my daughter's coming to the end of an integrated Master's in biology, my son's finishing his first year of a joint honours philosophy and music. Sad to say I think they both seem to be getting a much better education for life than I did with my engineering degree. In particular, a point we were discussing over Easter was an oddity of engineering degrees: they "teach" you (and this still seems to be true) that all problems have solutions, and not just that but defined solutions*. Between the three of us we could not think of another class of degrees that does this - and, for example, it does explain why so many engineers struggle with moving into management where you're often just trying to make the least worst decision you can based on not nearly enough information! I also see this in my own field of safety engineering, it's an odd concept to many graduate engineers that the systems they are working on will end up with a probability of killing people, and that often the argument that it is acceptable safe (and what does that mean?) relies on some best guess assumptions - not least as to how likely it is that people will do stupid (or just thoughtless) things. You can't calculate everything, and if you think you can you're probably doing Garbage In Garbage Out.


To my mind a degree should be the polar opposite of a vocational course here, it should support you in learning that the world is an uncertain, unknown, and changeable place, help you discover how to find the best knowledge that is available, and then use that to solve new problems - in some sort of structured responsible way that lets you make best guesses when you need to. Trying to give the students that available knowledge is absolutely a waste of time. Knowing how to manage evidence and arguments is far more important.


(Micro rant here: Every so often, on these forums and elsewhere, an engineer will write "all politicians should be engineers, because engineers are taught how to think logically". Sorry, not true, philosophers and scientists (and some lawyers) are supported to learn methodologies for thinking logically - I think that's what attracted my children to those subjects - engineers are, largely, taught to do things by the book. And in the real world there ain't no book! Micro rant over ) 


So whilst I don't agree with every word Professor Plummer is quoted as saying here, I very strongly agree with the thrust of his argument. The engineers of the future need to understand that there are no easy answers, but there are lots of fascinating opportunities to try to find the difficult answers - and we do know an awful lot about good ways to carry out that search.



All this, I suppose, is why the concept of NMiTE just slightly bothers me - there's no reason why an engineering focused institute shouldn't provide an education which encourages deep thinking about a range of issues beyond the obviously technical, I just have this nasty feeling it won't!


Cheers, Andy



(*This came out of a discussion about end of year exams: we were thinking how odd it is that only engineering degrees have largely "right" and "wrong" answers, every other degree (apparently even maths, although we may be wrong) is looking at how you approach an issue, and accepts there may be several different but perfectly valid approaches.)

Andy,


I like your comments.

As a founder member of ITEME I feel completely out of touch with the IET CEng community. Not because it is mainly electrical or IT, but because there is a lack of wider knowledge and comprehension of anything beyond engineering.

I have stated before that the UK, GCE A level, and university degree is incomplete to be an innovative engineer or technologist.

The OCDE have just stated the the Bolgnia agreement is no longer what is needed for today’s youngsters; the L M D system is not sufficient, OCDE  now say that young professionals need work experience and training ( that’s CEng ). In Europe many university graduates take two or more Master degrees and many years of temporary work before being employed in a competent post.

 

I went to one of the three experimental, UK multilateral schools, where I was taught trades, social history, languages, science and technology. This gave me a good entrance into the Ministry of Aviation apprentice scheme.

A quick mission with MI5 and I knew what world we were living in.

My training and education alone gave me Tech Eng (I Eng a denigrating term which I have shed) and allowed me to work on several UK, Very Big, engineering Projects, leading to Fusion engineering where I was nominated Engineer in Charge. (My Electrical Engineer mentor was Mr Corbyn Senior!). I came across the most brilliant of foreign engineers, technologists and Scientists, I realised that our UK education was lacking. The UK engineers complained that I did not have a PhD, but I was above them.


I took a degree in mathematics and fusion subjects, this did not teach me how to philosophise or how to make structured arguments, it just taught me how to be Cartesian and to make mathematical models that would prove my problem’s solution.

After leaving the UK (because my name was plagiarised), I learnt economics, law, and sales by in house training. I learnt a foreign language to survive.

 

My daughter had the golden opportunity to go to one of the three French-German high schools, coupled with the Cambridge International Baccalaureate. This school was free because we parents created it, in a normal French college. She studied science in French and literature in English and everything else in German.

She went on to do biology, but was hyper sensitive to laboratory chemicals which nearly killed her.

An accomplished musician, she is now studying music as an artist in Switzerland and playing all over Europe.

She has had what I consider to be the most appropriate education. She can go to any university to study any subject. Her Class comrades are in the top universities throughout Europe and the States. She can argue, and lead thanks to her education.

 

Her education could be given in any normal school or college. Her teachers taught in the deprived schools and in her school. It is all a question of will.

 

We have the resources and the means to be the most efficient, but we have to fall back on tradition and communities etc. What a waste.

 

There are colleges in the UK, Bridgwater for one ( see E&T article earlier this year) which have started apprenticeships based in their college. This is in nuclear engineering, but it applies to all disciplines. The students can enter at 16 or 18, and go on to Technician, BSc, Master, or PhD. Where there is a will, there is away.


I have two Master equivalents; just retiring, I was responsible for the redesign of the EPR and led the decommissioning of a nuclear reactor where I had 400 nuclear scientists and engineers at my disposition. I taught a near eastern Head of Nuclear Engineering, how to dismantle his country’s nuclear installations. For a RAE craft apprentice this is not too bad.

I have been refused CEng 5 times; so what I was educated and applied my ingenuity to be an engineer.

I now read university degrees in the subjects I was not allowed to study in the UK, what I now learn now is amazing, I see the manipulations and underhanded dealings that are going on in the UK, Europe and the world and IET.

 

Yes Engineers should learn the basics in social and engineering history, philosophy, law, languages, economics, marketing & sales.


Maths, I hardly used them, it is forbidden to go outside of the engineering codes. I have a circular slide rule, which I replaced with the first pocket calculator.

Writing engineering IT models is dangerous, this was a major fault in nuclear engineering.

 
A new model of high-value engineering education - is needed, you do not have to go far, there are some good models available just get out of the mud and apply them.

They do not cost any more than what we have today, but they will upset a lot of CEng stalwarts.


let's see what happens on friday.

John Gowman, BA MIET

I hadn’t been aware of this event and associated press release, until a colleague mentioned it to me.

 
http://www.theiet.org/policy/media/press-releases/new-approaches-he.cfm

 
When reading Andy’s interesting and stimulating post, for some reason the “family answer” reminded me of one of the reasons why I didn’t aspire to university at the age of 15-16, although luckily got an apprenticeship instead, which had a similar effect.

 
Those of a certain age might remember the TV series “Ask The Family” (there are bits on YouTube for those who don’t).  It seemed to the early teenage me, that these were the type of people who went to university; obedient, conformist, boring, bookworms and classical music lovers with parents who were solicitors or chartered accountants. At my school only a very small percentage of people “stayed-on” post 16 and the percentages who touched higher education and the criminal justice system were probably similar (although not mutually exclusive)? 

 
On my first induction day at work, there were Ten Apprentices and one “Student Engineer” who was to going to attend a University Sandwich Course having had attained Two B grades at A Level. The rest thought that he must be “a right flipping swot”. I’d love to hear from you, if you read this. 

 
Leaving British social history of the 1970s behind, I sympathise with the general thrust of both Andy and John’s arguments in the context of “education”, or perhaps to put it another way “preparation for a career journey”. Careers can be narrow and linear, or broad and multi-faceted.  “Learning” can be something undertaken by children and younger adults and commonly described as “education”, or conducted over a lifetime in parallel with economically productive activity.     

 
I won’t pursue detailed arguments here around the content or length of engineering “education”, but I’m pleased to note from the IET Press Release that attitudes are changing. Perhaps a highly academically selective and mathematically focussed pathway may not be so “essential” after all . I would observe, that in my experience this rigid dogma tends to deter and subsequently disillusion many who might otherwise find an engineering career interesting. Purely personally, I found the world of industry enjoyable with excellent training (including in a well-resourced training centre) and college based learning (to HNC) on the whole reasonably relevant. A diet of maths would have probably bored me into submission, even though I enjoyed it up to a point. I was also able to purchase my first home by the age of 21 and be in a management position at 27.

 
Based on personal experience, when in my 30s I first enrolled on an MSc (not in engineering), I found myself at a disadvantage relative to those with an undergraduate background in two main respects  1 “Scientific method”; i.e. how to research, assemble evidence , evaluate it and conclude; 2 “eloquence of expression” without lapsing into a more “industrial” vernacular. My involvement with others undertaking post-graduate programmes and those seeking CEng registration has reinforced these ideas. I don’t know how this relates to Alasdair’s experience? I was by then migrating away from engineering (I also did an MBA later) into a form of management, as many engineering careers do and as many CEng accredited undergraduate degrees anticipate by having a management element.

 
An effect of the approach adopted under the Engineering Council umbrella, has been to divide the practice of engineering at the earliest possible stage by academic means. However, this isn’t just an “engineering” issue it reflects the culture of most societies worldwide where education is a currency that provides access to opportunity.  A recent example exploring this sociological aspect is here.    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/596945/The_class_pay_gap_and_intergenerational_worklessness.pdf  

 
An academic division that particularly rankles with me, is that a perfectly good Bachelor of Engineering or BSc Degree (even with 1st Class Honours), typically associated with apprenticeships and/or designated as “IEng accredited” is given a lower value than other more academically selective full-time programmes and the graduates of such programmes are placed into the “second class” stream of engineers, irrespective of their work performance.  

 
There has been some modest progress in more fairly evaluating the competence of mid-career engineers, but Engineering Council still seeks to perpetuate division based on teenage academic selection throughout an engineering career. A particular effort has even been made in recent years to renounce its earlier “different but equally valuable” proposition. This has continued to dissuade the great majority of competent and professionally inclined practitioners from engaging in the registered community, as well as insulting and disillusioning many of those who were engaged (e.g. experienced IEng).       

 
It may be convenient to categorise and classify children and young adults by academic attainment. It may be equally convenient to carry this categorisation forward into professional careers. Although many hugely successful people have demonstrated how to defy educational disadvantage and stigma (I didn’t take the 11+ exam but many of my classmates did).  We also have within engineering (as demonstrated by contributors to this forum) many examples of people who achieved  professional excellence, in spite of not following a gilded academic pathway in their early life.

 
We shouldn’t forget that many of those who drove technical innovation in the post-war period had left full-time education at the age of 14 or 15. By 1972/3 when the school leaving age was raised to 16 and the average currently registered professional engineer in the UK, either stayed on for A levels or got an Apprenticeship, a HNC was typically the highest qualification held by many Chartered Engineers. Only in 1999 was the academic benchmark inflated to an MEng or Masters Degree.

 
Were these earlier generations of engineers less “knowledgeable”, “competent”, “innovative” or even “rounded”?  No they weren’t, they built  modern world!


For various political reasons, including international comparisons, the benchmark qualifications for recognition as a professional engineer were inflated. In addition, subtler forms of rationing operated offering academic advantage and promoting elitism.

 
We need to support and encourage a variety of different models of education and training, aimed primarily at preparing people  for technical careers. This includes those that produce genuinely creative thinking and practical inventiveness, rather than  claims of “being characterised by innovation, creativity and change”, based seemingly on proficiency in calculus.

 
Many existing programmes are excellent and optimised to stretch the most academically able teenagers or underpin leading research. However, excellence can also be equally demonstrated by an apprentice in manufacturing who may offer a different balance between practice and theory.  For the avoidance of any misunderstanding, I am not advocating mediocrity but plurality and I support enhanced recognition for enhanced career achievement and personal contribution. We should also to enthusiastically support post-graduate programmes often with flexible access and delivery, aimed at developing practising engineers and those migrating into the profession.

 
A professional engineering community has evolved with “all roof adornment and no foundations”, others have commonly described an “inverted pyramid”. However, the latter implies a traditional hierarchy with many at the bottom and few at the top. The foundations of a building, its walls and its roof, perform different but equally important functions. Pyramids were built because that was the only way people understood how create a large structure 4000 years ago. http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/goodbye-pyramid-hello-networked-organisation

 
As a profession we have focussed far too much on the search for “status” and attempting to perpetuate an “elite”, rather than ensuring that the mainstream of professional engineering practice is being nurtured and valued.    


I hope that new models of undergraduate education and a resurgence of apprenticeships will produce a cohort of widely different, but equally valued Technicians and Engineers over the next ten years. The challenge for The IET and other leaders in the profession is to enable a transition of ownership for engineering “professionalism” to this newer generation, free from the baggage that hampers us now.  

 
I’m delighted by the success of “9% is not enough” campaign addressing gender imbalance, although the figures for registered engineers are half that, being as low as 2% for IEng (supposedly the “mainstream” category!). We also need to focus on the  iniquities that make it so much less likely that someone who achieves more modest grades in mathematics at the age of 16 will gain Chartered Engineer recognition and the associated privileges, like a voice in governing the profession, that such status affords. It seems that many former technical apprentices just become senior managers and directors instead, with those that remain primarily technical perhaps eventually gaining some recognition 25 or more years into career, if they chance across a friendly helper in the institution world.    

       

 

 

The academic conference referred to in my previous post has published its proceedings. This is a long document which would only appeal in full to those with a strong interest in the subject, although a speed read, gives a good feel for the direction of travel.

http://epc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/New-Approaches-Conference-Proceedings-book-final.pdf


I’m pleased that many of the papers presented align quite well with my own thinking, albeit approached from a different direction with slightly different motives.  My perspective could be characterised as primarily an “industrial” one , although I did instigate and subsequently worked closely with academic partners to develop a degree programme some years ago. That programme was characterised by integrating work-practice and was conducted on a part-time “block release” basis.  Slightly earlier with a Higher Diploma outcome it  was successful in the National Training Awards (https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2005.03737aab.001 subscriber only) and subsequently influenced the “Degree Apprenticeship” model.  However this wasn’t a new concept at all, it was “back to the future” and mirrored a highly successful model of Engineer Training that was prevalent in the UK during the post-war period.  My company had in fact sponsored  “National College” facilities before I was born, which became a “Polytechnic” and from 1992 “University”.


I noted in the paper by  Janusz A. Koziński and Eddy F. Evans, Lassonde School of Engineering, Toronto, Canada  a diagram on page 36 of the proceedings, this is a graphical representation of how the balance between theory and practice in “engineer education” had moved over time. The diagram below, not taken from the conference proceedings but also of North American origin illustrates a continuum in which a different emphasis in the balance of undergraduate courses (Engineering V Engineering Technology) prepares prospective professionals to be more or less optimised for different roles  http://www.rit.edu/emcs/admissions/images/stories/assorted/engineering/eng-vs-engtech.gif

 

Although I haven’t seen any specific research studies seeking to correlate performance in the workplace with academic preparation (there may be some?). I think  that most experienced people would find something like this continuum a credible hypothesis. It also seems reasonable that except perhaps at the extreme right of the continuum, the nature of work-experience will correlate at least equally, if not more closely with performance than initial education (aka preparation).  Also towards the right stronger correlations would be found with post-graduate degree attributes.


My opinion is that the practice of professional engineering will be best served by engaging of all those who have met a threshold standard of professional capability and commit to professional standards. It also seems reasonable that within the regulated community the term “Engineer” should be allocated to those at degree level, in line with other professions. The term “Technician” should be allocated to professional practice that is distinctively valuable by its more practical nature and which can be carried out successfully with good technical understanding, but without necessarily deploying graduate level knowledge attributes.


I therefore suggest that it is time for some fresh strategic thinking, with the objectives of greater engagement and overall collective quality, not elitism and personal advantage.  Contributions like those made at this conference can only help and may stimulate progress, but without strategic momentum and in the UK voluntary context at least, real understanding of the market, it is only interesting talk, not (overdue) progress.   

 


   

Moshe;

I assume you are not a practicing engineer, but a teaching academic.

You have to support your profession.

University degrees and universities are drifting away from their original function and engineering & technology is becoming too wide a subject and changing too rapidly that the old academic system is now out of touch with reality. It is necessary for learning basic intellectual skills that is all.

 

This is an extract from an article I am preparing g for IET and interested bodies.

 
“We are a remaining handful of engineers often gaining university learning after achieving our first major projects; we were ahead of taught nuclear engineering and universities.
That is why many of us seem to be simple IEng or not even registered PEs.

 
I mentor Master nuclear engineers; have advised heads of National Nuclear Engineering facilities worldwide and assisted many Nobel Laureates. On my last project, I had over 400 top nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers and mathematicians to count on in just my department. I was part of a much larger national team.”

 

All of our Master A&M post graduates said the same : “Now we have our diplomas, we have to learn a discipline”; most went to work in totally different domains, all had to do 6 months internship.

The OCDE has now made it clear that BAC + 5  (L + M) or 5 years taught university 240 UCTS are not sufficient for graduates to work proficiently on their entry into professional activities  and this applies to all domains. OCDE now recommends practical training after achieving a Master Degree.

Doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc all have to do many years of supervised practical training before being let loose on the public.

In the past, Apprenticed Engineers had practical training during their academic and practical apprenticeship.

We had long BScs (sandwich courses) where students undertook one year’s industrial practice.

The commoditisation of teaching and diplomas has ruined the Technology training and made graduates unemployable.

When I take on a new contract, I have until midday to integrate and after 3 months I am expected to be an expert. It works.


The world we live in is changing so rapidly that new solutions have to be found.

Education, qualification and registration have to be modernised, rationalised and just.

I do not see an engineer leaving university and being operational on day one, unless he is in a single domain. In the technical assistance I have worked in, we looked for Technologists with the latest master taught computing skills. If we changed the computing program, the project would simply change its computer operators. The Germans call these master students – computer operators,  not engineers. Like it or not that is neo liberalist life, as you know well, living in the States where most of these models came from. The EPR projects are typical of modern technology management, the specialist come and go, no one is a permanent staff member, not even the Director.


You are beating about the bush with the ECTS; ECTs are graded at each year level. A simple degree will have a no grade 3 ECTS, you need 60 pts at Grade 3 (+ 120 ECTS)  before you can start a masters course. This is all academic, a practicing engineer needs training, education, and certificates, they can be achieved in or out of university 5 for me university is only a small part of the system).

Perhaps in the States your system works, in the wide world change is happening.

The whole system, university exclusivity to training, L M D; PEIs, ECUK,  OCDE as it is today, needs to change.

Market forces will govern the future – in France the problem is being addressed. France has introduced apprenticeships for all, at any age, Professional Licence (professional university for advanced skills), validation of practical experience as a qualification. It is uniting its Grande Ecoles (Technolgy Master + Schools ). It registers all its trained engineers and has no PEIs or equivalent of EC UK.

Conclusion - change is needed, PEIs need to change and unite, ECUK needs to change.


Vive La Revolution!!!


You have to manage change or be defeated.

John Gowman

Moshe;

I assume you are not a practicing engineer, but a teaching academic.

You have to support your profession.

University degrees and universities are drifting away from their original function and engineering & technology is becoming too wide a subject and changing too rapidly that the old academic system is now out of touch with reality. It is necessary for learning basic intellectual skills that is all.

 

This is an extract from an article I am preparing g for IET and interested bodies.

 
“We are a remaining handful of engineers often gaining university learning after achieving our first major projects; we were ahead of taught nuclear engineering and universities.
That is why many of us seem to be simple IEng or not even registered PEs.

 
I mentor Master nuclear engineers; have advised heads of National Nuclear Engineering facilities worldwide and assisted many Nobel Laureates. On my last project, I had over 400 top nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers and mathematicians to count on in just my department. I was part of a much larger national team.”

 

All of our Master A&M post graduates said the same : “Now we have our diplomas, we have to learn a discipline”; most went to work in totally different domains, all had to do 6 months internship.

The OCDE has now made it clear that BAC + 5  (L + M) or 5 years taught university 240 UCTS are not sufficient for graduates to work proficiently on their entry into professional activities  and this applies to all domains. OCDE now recommends practical training after achieving a Master Degree.

Doctors, lawyers, journalists, etc all have to do many years of supervised practical training before being let loose on the public.

In the past, Apprenticed Engineers had practical training during their academic and practical apprenticeship.

We had long BScs (sandwich courses) where students undertook one year’s industrial practice.

The commoditisation of teaching and diplomas has ruined the Technology training and made graduates unemployable.

When I take on a new contract, I have until midday to integrate and after 3 months I am expected to be an expert. It works.


The world we live in is changing so rapidly that new solutions have to be found.

Education, qualification and registration have to be modernised, rationalised and just.

I do not see an engineer leaving university and being operational on day one, unless he is in a single domain. In the technical assistance I have worked in, we looked for Technologists with the latest master taught computing skills. If we changed the computing program, the project would simply change its computer operators. The Germans call these master students – computer operators,  not engineers. Like it or not that is neo liberalist life, as you know well, living in the States where most of these models came from. The EPR projects are typical of modern technology management, the specialist come and go, no one is a permanent staff member, not even the Director.


You are beating about the bush with the ECTS; ECTs are graded at each year level. A simple degree will have a no grade 3 ECTS, you need 60 pts at Grade 3 (+ 120 ECTS)  before you can start a masters course. This is all academic, a practicing engineer needs training, education, and certificates, they can be achieved in or out of university 5 for me university is only a small part of the system).

Perhaps in the States your system works, in the wide world change is happening.

The whole system, university exclusivity to training, L M D; PEIs, ECUK,  OCDE as it is today, needs to change.

Market forces will govern the future – in France the problem is being addressed. France has introduced apprenticeships for all, at any age, Professional Licence (professional university for advanced skills), validation of practical experience as a qualification. It is uniting its Grande Ecoles (Technolgy Master + Schools ). It registers all its trained engineers and has no PEIs or equivalent of EC UK.

Conclusion - change is needed, PEIs need to change and unite, ECUK needs to change.


Vive La Revolution!!!


You have to manage change or be defeated.

John Gowman