Peter Brooks:

Most of the people doing apprenticeships (or whatever alternate name it was given) lacked an adequate level of math's and science from their previous state schooling, to make it all the way through.

I'm not quite sure why you thought the word "state" was relevant there, but putting that to one side...from the mid '90s to early '00s I was pleased to work at a company which had a very active apprenticeship programme, and which would then sponsor those interested and capable through a degree programme. Our local university (ex Polytechnic) thoroughly supported this, and - recognising that HNCs do not cover A level maths (they don't need to) - provided the extra maths tuition to take these students up to the level of A level. Several of them ended up as very senior staff. My experience now is that most UK universities have woken up to the fact that it is worth providing "baselining" maths tuition since a lack of A level maths does not mean ultimate incompetence in degree level engineering, it just means that person may have decided to do something else between the ages of 15-18 and then changed their mind.


So I would agree your statement applied up to, say, 25-30 years ago in the UK. I am delighted to say it now doesn't.


Now, personally, and based on no evidence whatsoever, my opinion is that one of the reasons why the UK doesn't have a Huauei is because of two engineering attitudes that permeated the industry from the '50s to the '90s (and are still sometimes hanging around today, sadly particularly in the PEIs) - one being "professional engineers only come from grammar schools, with straight A levels, and then straight into an engineering degree which teaches them the facts (grrr...) of engineering", the other being "engineering is all about learning a trade and doing it exactly the same as your dad and grandad did". * Both of these attitudes (again as a personal opinion) are anathema to high-tech innovation. The truly innovative, ground breaking, yet professional teams I've worked in have thrived by throwing a wide mixture of people from all sorts of backgrounds and education together - and by supporting any of them to pursue further education if they wanted it.


Hence why I really support the mixed apprenticeship and degree approach, and just apprenticeships, and just degrees (including degrees in other subjects) - get a group of people with all these backgrounds together and make sure they respect each other and you too can have a mini Huauei. Of course for a real Huauei you probably need the population of China...


Cheers,


Andy


* These attitudes were also based on the idea that the 11 plus exam was an exercise in perfection. It wasn't. 

Peter Brooks:

Regarding universities -they are big money making organizations...

Yep, in the western world we live in a free market economy where that's seen as a Good Thing, personally I'd disagree with it but millions wouldn't!

....that are selling prestige and the (usually unfulfilled) promise of setting up the student to earn lots of money for the rest of their life.

I'd say marketing rather than selling. And the problem from the Unis point of view is that this seems to be what the "customers" want - by "customers" I mean the (hugely influential) parents of prospective students. It's very interesting going to Univ open days (I did a lot of this with my offspring a few years ago), questions from parents tend to be either "how likely are your graduates to find work" or "are your applicants guaranteed en-suite accommodation if they request it". (Being a Bad Parent I didn't ask either of these questions! I did ask rather a lot of others though...) So, in a competitive market, Unis have to market what their customers are looking for, otherwise no-one applies and they go bankrupt. You're likely to find that individual lecturers have a different attitude.


None of which is relevant to this thread, but it is important (I'm not just being provocative!), we (Western society) are demanding certain behaviours from our Unis, which is fine, we just shouldn't criticise them - as the media often does - for delivering exactly what they've been asked to deliver, particularly when it's not necessarily what they really want to do in the first place. And coming back to our profession in particular, I am very concerned that we could drive our universities towards training "employment ready" engineers, who will be obsolete a few years later, and away from providing an education that will allow those graduates to ultimately change the face of engineering. Which is supposed to be the whole point of Uni education. And you don't get Huaueis without that.


Cheers,


Andy