The number of newly registered incorporated engineers continues to decline. The strategy of the Engineering Council is clearly not aligned to supporting the engineering technologist professional. Given the governments commitment to technical education the IET should create their own professional register to provide a relevant standard. It is obvious the current UKSPEC standard lacks credibility in terms of the IEng grade
Moche Waserman (I do hope my predictive text doesn't embarrassingly edit your name incorrectly as had happened with one other!) I agree, incentives would definitely help, but need careful thought. I feel employers would lap up incentives that are easy to realise, preferably (from their perspective) in a nice, one flavour fits all model that risks amplifying the universal C.Eng to the exclusion of I.Eng regardless of which is really needed/warranted by their needs. I think it would take a great deal of thought and attention to find a model for incentivisation that would produce the desired result. Unless carefully designed, it would be seized on by HR and bean counter types eager to grab either simple financial gain or HR brownie points with no reference to the subtle distinctions we've been discussing and have no net benefit to the matter we're discussing. If we're not careful they simply hire the same number of engineers, but increase the tendency to stipulate C.Eng regardless of whether that's the appropriate type of engineer required or not, purely to capture the financial incentive. Also, I think we may find that educating politicians/government to the subtleties would almost certainly be more difficult than tackling employers.
Moche Waserman (I do hope my predictive text doesn't embarrassingly edit your name incorrectly as had happened with one other!) I agree, incentives would definitely help, but need careful thought. I feel employers would lap up incentives that are easy to realise, preferably (from their perspective) in a nice, one flavour fits all model that risks amplifying the universal C.Eng to the exclusion of I.Eng regardless of which is really needed/warranted by their needs. I think it would take a great deal of thought and attention to find a model for incentivisation that would produce the desired result. Unless carefully designed, it would be seized on by HR and bean counter types eager to grab either simple financial gain or HR brownie points with no reference to the subtle distinctions we've been discussing and have no net benefit to the matter we're discussing. If we're not careful they simply hire the same number of engineers, but increase the tendency to stipulate C.Eng regardless of whether that's the appropriate type of engineer required or not, purely to capture the financial incentive. Also, I think we may find that educating politicians/government to the subtleties would almost certainly be more difficult than tackling employers.
