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You don't need practical skills to be an engineer

Andy Millar
Hi,


Ok, that's a deliberately provocative thread title, but it's one I'm willing to defend. But let's go back a bit first...


There have been various discussions on these forums over very many years where someone says in passing statements such us "CEng now needs a Masters degree, but Master students come out with no practical skills". Of course I'm paraphrasing greatly, but I'm sure people will get the idea. Similarly I've heard the view expressed at many engineering gatherings of "our graduates come in not knowing how to solder / use a spanner / wire a plug". Now I'm sure often these statements are perfectly true for many of those entering the engineering profession, the question is whether it matters. And I'd argue that much of the time it does not, and that it's important that we debate this. (Hence this thread!)


To give my own perspective on this, my background is as an analogue audio frequency design engineer, with my postgraduate entry level jobs to this role being as a maintenance and then test engineer. Back in the 1980s I did need to dismantle, solder, and mantle again. My first development roles were based around soldering irons and test equipment. By the early '90s my analogue development team was based around modelling tools, our prototypes were surface mount, and although we used manual test equipment the amount of building  / modifying we did was tiny - and ideas and the ability to play around with them were FAR more important than practical skills. Then our world went digital. Analogue modelling had improved the performance of our systems 10 fold, digital systems improved the possibilities 100 fold. The digital teams needed no practical skills whatsoever, but my goodness they did  - and do - some fabulous engineering.


Of course, there is still a real world to interface this technology to. And this is where the key word in the subject of this post comes in - that word "need". We do need a proportion of engineers to have practical skills to cope with the real world interface, but we don't need every engineer to have those skills to contribute to a team. For me this is summed up beautifully by my one and only patent (sadly not renewed, eu EP2100792 (A1)  if anyone's interested!). There are five of us named on it, these are:

  • A mathematical modeller

  • A DSP on FPGA implementer

  • An analogue electronic systems modeller / application specialist

  • A hardware developer

  • A manager / systems integrator / systems concept engineer / patent author and general herder of cats (me)


Only one of these needed practical skills. And yet this was an extraordinary engineering innovation. I'm allowed to say that as I didn't do the really clever bits, my main role was to bring the skills together and enable them - and that's the point. None of these people could have come up with the overall solution by themselves, that's why all are named on the patent.


So I would - and do - argue very strongly that an excellent engineering innovation team needs three skill sets within it:
  • Practical skills

  • Theoretical skills

  • Human skills


And the best teams have the best people in each of those areas, working together and respecting each other. So a mathematical modeller knows their system is "garbage in, garbage out", and works with those with application knowledge to help them refine their models. And a prototyping engineer knows their prototype is useless with no software to run on it. And they all know they will make mistakes, and will have misunderstandings, and so managing the human side of the development is vital. Working in this atmosphere of mutual respect is tremendous. Been there, done that. Working in an atmosphere of silos, sneering, one-upmanship, and inverted or verted snobbery is destructive and, I submit to the court your honour, produces poor engineering (by any measure). Been there, done that, left the company (a long time ago).


Now there is an argument, I've used it myself, that practical experience helps develop problem solving skills. And for some engineering activities I would support this. However a lot of modern engineering is based around very deep mathematical modelling, that's how we've achieved the fantastic advances in, for example, communications and data management we have over the past 20 years. So we have to accept that those involved will become abstracted from the "real world", it's then a management problem to manage the interfaces. In my present field, safety engineering, it is a reality that software engineers will implement what they are asked to implement. There's a whole other level first to define those implementation requirements correctly and thoroughly, which requires a different skill set. (And validating is a different skill again.)


So can I propose that we stop saying "engineers coming out of university with no practical skills is a Bad Thing" and similar statements - but I am very willing to support the statement "not enough engineers coming into the profession with practical skills is a Bad Thing".


Thoughts?


By the way, bizarrely my practical engineering skills are now way better than they were in my 20s when I actually needed them for work, partly due to experience, mainly unfortunately due to medical issues at the time. In fact (as one or two of my more "old school" supervisors delighted in pointing out) I was pretty cack-handed. (I just checked, cack-handed is not rude!) I'd like to pass on my appreciation to those enlightened managers who realised that my problem solving skills meant that I was valuable - they just needed to make sure that nothing I touched ever made its way to a customer! There is a VERY serious point here, I could easily have been put off engineering for life with that attitude of "you're cack-handed, therefore you're an incompetent engineer". Although I do apologise in retrospect to the The Kinks for any reliability issues in the mixing desk they bought in 1985 which I worked on rather a lot, probably the product that has gone into service which has more of my personal soldering in than any other...I did get one of my more dexterous colleagues to check it over very thoroughly before it went out!


Thanks,


Andy
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  • 0
    If we are defining “practical skills” as "hands-on craft skills" then obviously many engineers don’t. Equally if we define “intellectual ability” by proficiency in calculus based science then many engineers don’t need that much either. Most engineering is conducted somewhere on “theoretical v practical” continuum.  The extent of any individual’s flexibility across the range may be limited by various factors including basic aptitude, subsequent learning (including skills not just knowledge), motivational or situational factors.  Using our categorisation there are “Technician” roles where craft skills remain essential and some others where mechanisation has reduced such opportunities (e.g. CNC Machines v Toolmaking).  Once we move to a level removed from hand or craft skills and assume that the individual has more a more developed understanding,then any binary dichotomy between what is “theory” and what is “application” (aka practical) starts to break down.  We could perhaps argue for different optimisation, but beyond a graduate threshold only perhaps at the edge of the continuum is a distinction reliable.

     

    I think at the heart of Andy’ argument is employer’s feedback that “graduates lack practical skills”. What many employers are really complaining about is the graduate lacking sufficient usable skills to make a productive contribution quickly. Graduate salaries are close to the UK average wage, so months or even years of “getting up to speed” can be painful, often only to find that the graduate moves on. Large employers can usually manage this risk but it can really hurt an SME. However some employers expectations are clearly unrealistic. The tradition of much graduate training is to take a brighter than average individual, now mature enough to be self-starting. What they studied often being of limited relevance. For example, the last Trainee Accountant I worked with had just graduated in Physical Education.

     

    The ideal solution to this problem is a Degree Apprenticeship, but it doesn’t look like there will be enough of them to go round anytime soon. The second best solution is for Universities to ensure that some vocational modules and work experience is included. For example some employers complain that graduates can’t use CAD or common design software packages, others that they have no concept of actual equipment in common use. Some former Polytechnics have long been able to tailor their proposition to particular sectors or niches. The model employed in some other countries of a degree only being awarded after supervised work practice could be used, but it is rather against the UK tradition. Also some of those countries have cheap or free higher education systems.                    

     

Reply
  • 0
    If we are defining “practical skills” as "hands-on craft skills" then obviously many engineers don’t. Equally if we define “intellectual ability” by proficiency in calculus based science then many engineers don’t need that much either. Most engineering is conducted somewhere on “theoretical v practical” continuum.  The extent of any individual’s flexibility across the range may be limited by various factors including basic aptitude, subsequent learning (including skills not just knowledge), motivational or situational factors.  Using our categorisation there are “Technician” roles where craft skills remain essential and some others where mechanisation has reduced such opportunities (e.g. CNC Machines v Toolmaking).  Once we move to a level removed from hand or craft skills and assume that the individual has more a more developed understanding,then any binary dichotomy between what is “theory” and what is “application” (aka practical) starts to break down.  We could perhaps argue for different optimisation, but beyond a graduate threshold only perhaps at the edge of the continuum is a distinction reliable.

     

    I think at the heart of Andy’ argument is employer’s feedback that “graduates lack practical skills”. What many employers are really complaining about is the graduate lacking sufficient usable skills to make a productive contribution quickly. Graduate salaries are close to the UK average wage, so months or even years of “getting up to speed” can be painful, often only to find that the graduate moves on. Large employers can usually manage this risk but it can really hurt an SME. However some employers expectations are clearly unrealistic. The tradition of much graduate training is to take a brighter than average individual, now mature enough to be self-starting. What they studied often being of limited relevance. For example, the last Trainee Accountant I worked with had just graduated in Physical Education.

     

    The ideal solution to this problem is a Degree Apprenticeship, but it doesn’t look like there will be enough of them to go round anytime soon. The second best solution is for Universities to ensure that some vocational modules and work experience is included. For example some employers complain that graduates can’t use CAD or common design software packages, others that they have no concept of actual equipment in common use. Some former Polytechnics have long been able to tailor their proposition to particular sectors or niches. The model employed in some other countries of a degree only being awarded after supervised work practice could be used, but it is rather against the UK tradition. Also some of those countries have cheap or free higher education systems.                    

     

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