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