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
When I was in Business School (The Open University actually) a historic case study was – why did VHS triumph over Betamax. Received wisdom was that Betamax was technically superior, but that VHS was better marketed and supported. There is an interesting article here. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment
We have three products, which taken purely on their product features , seem to be a reasonable attempt to serve a market divided into three segments. Inevitably, simplifying a myriad of possibilities into three generic categories, leaves quite large grey areas for interpretation and some false dichotomies, but there isn’t anything seriously wrong with the design in principle.
Unfortunately, in the marketplace only one of the products could be considered moderately successful. It may be that there just isn’t actually a large amenable market for the other two products. However, because the overall mission of Engineering Council is one of public service, it has to offer something to all of those within its defined scope, even if they aren’t particularly interested.
The basic concept of publicly expressing professionalism and subjecting yourself to peer review, is clearly most appealing to senior practitioners with some form of leadership profile. It is probably most useful as an early career milestone and valuable if providing expert consultant services. Since registration is presented as being about status, which is a basic human need, this creates relative status in which some are held in higher esteem than others, this can drive a range of basic emotions like resentment, which can lead to conflict.
Engineers, even the most educated and distinguished seem “needy” and resent what they see as the higher status of some other professions, or the perceived higher status of engineers in other countries. The response is to often to emphasise their superiority over those with “oily rags”, which sometimes seems to mean anyone without a higher degree and social capital, but as this trickles down, the repair person can be confident of another verbal bashing for passing themselves off as an engineer.
Moshe highlights a useful angle. If we look at what we have; CEng was built to serve the most educated engineers, when this came to mean only the small minority who had attended certain university courses (with a few exceptions), this created a space for the Tech Eng/IEng category, aimed at the apprenticeship/HNC/HND path with its own institutions. Although this gained tens of thousands of adherents over time, it was only a modest penetration of the potential market. Eng Tech was an alternative/addition to Trades Union participation. The Electricians Union for example had grading agreements and excellent vocational training facilities.
The IET has evolved to serve all these elements. Engineering Council exists in the public interest to regulate our efforts and that of other professional bodies, but expressly not Trades Union activity. It seems that the Uff report supports our direction of travel and if the big three institutions agree, then that is an overwhelming majority within the current structure. There are some large bodies within the Engineering Council family who clearly don’t share the same inclusive aims and also a long tail of small specialist interest groups with limited resources.
My suggestions are about redefining status within the profession to emphasise professional growth, performance and service to society. This includes categorising and nurturing such growth, as well as where necessary sanctioning those who fall short of our standards. To symbolise this change, the weak and now poisoned IEng brand should be sacrificed, to be replaced by a mainstream professional engineer category, at “graduate level” in which every engineer registrant must prove themselves over a reasonable period of time to gain any further recognition. If that seems reasonable then we need an implementation plan. I don’t propose taking anything away from anyone, although some are bound to allege “dumbing down” of standards or “watering down” of status. Such arguments can be fairly countered.
Finally if we are all going to be in this together, then we need to bear down on snobbery or “classism”. I don’t find this prevalent in the IET, although others may have a different perception? Nevertheless the Cleese, Barker and Corbett sketch of 1966 seems somehow to still have resonance in the engineering profession as a whole.
When I was in Business School (The Open University actually) a historic case study was – why did VHS triumph over Betamax. Received wisdom was that Betamax was technically superior, but that VHS was better marketed and supported. There is an interesting article here. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2003/jan/25/comment.comment
We have three products, which taken purely on their product features , seem to be a reasonable attempt to serve a market divided into three segments. Inevitably, simplifying a myriad of possibilities into three generic categories, leaves quite large grey areas for interpretation and some false dichotomies, but there isn’t anything seriously wrong with the design in principle.
Unfortunately, in the marketplace only one of the products could be considered moderately successful. It may be that there just isn’t actually a large amenable market for the other two products. However, because the overall mission of Engineering Council is one of public service, it has to offer something to all of those within its defined scope, even if they aren’t particularly interested.
The basic concept of publicly expressing professionalism and subjecting yourself to peer review, is clearly most appealing to senior practitioners with some form of leadership profile. It is probably most useful as an early career milestone and valuable if providing expert consultant services. Since registration is presented as being about status, which is a basic human need, this creates relative status in which some are held in higher esteem than others, this can drive a range of basic emotions like resentment, which can lead to conflict.
Engineers, even the most educated and distinguished seem “needy” and resent what they see as the higher status of some other professions, or the perceived higher status of engineers in other countries. The response is to often to emphasise their superiority over those with “oily rags”, which sometimes seems to mean anyone without a higher degree and social capital, but as this trickles down, the repair person can be confident of another verbal bashing for passing themselves off as an engineer.
Moshe highlights a useful angle. If we look at what we have; CEng was built to serve the most educated engineers, when this came to mean only the small minority who had attended certain university courses (with a few exceptions), this created a space for the Tech Eng/IEng category, aimed at the apprenticeship/HNC/HND path with its own institutions. Although this gained tens of thousands of adherents over time, it was only a modest penetration of the potential market. Eng Tech was an alternative/addition to Trades Union participation. The Electricians Union for example had grading agreements and excellent vocational training facilities.
The IET has evolved to serve all these elements. Engineering Council exists in the public interest to regulate our efforts and that of other professional bodies, but expressly not Trades Union activity. It seems that the Uff report supports our direction of travel and if the big three institutions agree, then that is an overwhelming majority within the current structure. There are some large bodies within the Engineering Council family who clearly don’t share the same inclusive aims and also a long tail of small specialist interest groups with limited resources.
My suggestions are about redefining status within the profession to emphasise professional growth, performance and service to society. This includes categorising and nurturing such growth, as well as where necessary sanctioning those who fall short of our standards. To symbolise this change, the weak and now poisoned IEng brand should be sacrificed, to be replaced by a mainstream professional engineer category, at “graduate level” in which every engineer registrant must prove themselves over a reasonable period of time to gain any further recognition. If that seems reasonable then we need an implementation plan. I don’t propose taking anything away from anyone, although some are bound to allege “dumbing down” of standards or “watering down” of status. Such arguments can be fairly countered.
Finally if we are all going to be in this together, then we need to bear down on snobbery or “classism”. I don’t find this prevalent in the IET, although others may have a different perception? Nevertheless the Cleese, Barker and Corbett sketch of 1966 seems somehow to still have resonance in the engineering profession as a whole.
