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Is an Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway to Chartered Engineer - a historical anachronism or the future?

This is National Apprenticeship Week.

An unintended and unfortunate consequence of UK government policies and wider economic changes in the 1980s and 1990s was a very substantial decline in apprenticeships which had served previous generations so well. They didn’t die completely because employers (like the company that I was Training Manager of) understood their value, not just for skilled craft trades, but also as an alternative option to “Graduate Training Schemes” for Engineers and Managers, traditionally leading to HNC type qualifications, but from the mid-2000s increasingly degrees. Initiative was eventually picked up by Government, turning it into a “flagship” policy. This has had an effect, but policy is not implementation and typically the brewery visit has not been well organised (with apologies to those unfamiliar with British vulgar slang). However, changes like this can take years if not decades to “bed in”, so I hope that we will keep trying.

Engineering Council has always been dominated by the academic perspective and relatively poorly connected with employers, therefore it has associated Apprenticeships with Technicians and not with Chartered Engineers, although it accepted that it was possible "exceptionally via bridges and ladders” for a Technician to develop into a Chartered Engineer. Incorporated (formerly Technician) Engineer was also drawn from the Apprenticeship tradition. However, once the qualification benchmark was adjusted to bachelors level, it was also intended to become the “mainstream” category for graduates, with CEng being “premium” or “elite”. Unfortunately the Incorporated category has not been successful and its international equivalent “Technologist” defined as it is by degree content (i.e. less calculus than an “engineer”) also seems equally poorly regarded or even legally restricted in other countries.

Now we have Degree Apprentices coming through, the profession has responded by offering Incorporated Engineer recognition at an early career stage. This should in principal be a good thing and I have advocated it in the past. However, I am seriously concerned that this may also stigmatise them as a “second class” form of professional, as has been the tradition to date.

Over the last few years Engineering Council has adopted a policy encouraging younger engineers to consider the Incorporated Engineer category as a “stepping stone” to Chartered Engineer. Some professional institutions have promoted this often with a particular focus on those “without the right degree for CEng” with some success. However the approach “kicks the can down the road” to the question of how they should subsequently transfer to CEng. There are potentially likely to be some frustrated, disillusioned and even angry engineers, if they find that “progression” is blocked and that they are stuck on a “stepping stone”. We don’t need more unnecessary “enemies” amongst them, we have created enough already.

A further problem is that those with accredited degrees do not expect to require a “stepping stone” and consider IEng to have no value for them or even perhaps at worst insulting. Many employers of Chartered Engineers and the professional institutions are steeped in the tradition of recruiting those with accredited degrees and developing them to Chartered Engineer in around 3-5 years. Other graduate recruiters may be less academically selective, but share similar traditions and expectations.

Is therefore a Degree Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway compared to a CEng accredited (BEng or MEng) full-time undergraduate degree course? Is performance and current capability (aka “competence”) the appropriate frame of reference for comparison, or should those from each pathway be separated academically and considered to be different “types”, or on “fast” and slow tracks”?

As Degree Apprenticeships develop further, there will be those who gain CEng accredited degrees and have work experience via an “even faster track”. My concern is that those graduates from Degree Apprenticeships who are more competent and productive than their age group peers from full-time degree programmes, but disadvantaged in academic recognition terms, may find themselves in a seemingly unfair and anomalous situation.

In addition, those employers who primarily “exploit existing technology” may continue to feel that the Engineering Council proposition is contrary to their interests and discourage engagement. Employers who invest in apprenticeships state that they experience greater loyalty from former apprentices, relative to graduate trainees and often a better return on investment. Whereas the professional institution proposition emphasises different priorities, which may align quite well with Research & Development or Consultancy type business models, but not with Operations and Maintenance or Contracting. My experience as an employer trying to encourage professional engagement was that the Professional Institution concerned advised employees informally to “move on if you want to become Chartered”, because they valued Project Engineering less than Design Engineering. As for management, this was definitely “chartered engineering” if you held the right type of engineering degree and valued if it was “prestigious”. If you didn’t hold the right type of engineering degree and weren’t “highly prestigious” then it wasn't valued much.

If Degree Apprenticeships become more strongly established, do we want to accept them as an equally valid pathway to a range of excellent careers including Chartered Engineer, or do we wish to continue our long-standing policy of treating them as useful but second or third class pathways? Will weasel words of platitude be offered ,whilst existing attitudes and practice are allowed to prevail?

If the answer is we that want to give apprentices equal value, then in the current climate of retribution, should those who have enthusiastically encouraged the stigma and snobbery against them consider falling on their swords? Enthusiasm for excellence in engineering, especially in stretching academic circumstances is a virtue not a crime and I strongly support it. Unfortunately however many around the Engineering Council family, perhaps motivated by a neediness for “status”, seem to have been mainly concerned with rationing access to the Chartered category by other “graduate level” practitioners, and disparaging those drawn from the apprenticeship tradition.

Further Reading

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/a-new-apprenticeship-programme-kicks-off-national-apprenticeship-week-2018

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-will-end-outdated-snobbery-towards-apprenticeships

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/further-education/12193128/Theres-been-an-apprenticeship-stigma-for-far-too-long.html

http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/theres-still-a-stigma-around-apprenticeships-people-look-down-on-you-3622353-Oct2017/

https://www.fenews.co.uk/featured-article/14816-overcoming-the-apprenticeships-stigma-not-before-time

https://www.bcselectrics.co.uk/news/pushing-back-against-stigma-apprenticeships

‘Stigma against apprenticeships must end,’ says Network Rail boss. Mark Carne, Network’s Rail’s chief executive (Rail Technology News)


https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/national-apprenticeship-week-young-women-stem-apprenticeship-a3781606.html

http://www.aston.ac.uk/news/releases/2017/july/uks-first-degree-apprentices-graduate/

https://www.stem.org.uk/news-and-views/opinions/apprenticeships-better-skills-better-careers

http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/blog/Pages/Why-I-chose-the-degree-apprenticeship-route.aspx

Parents

0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

Apologies to subscribers, I had to delete the previous post, fat fingers I'm afraid? it was a draft version, that I couldn’t correct in time (because it was too long ?)

Jonathan,

Congratulations on your recent successful assessment and Chartered Engineer Registration. You help to illustrate several relevant issues to this discussion. The first and most obvious positive one is that having completed a practical Apprenticeship to level 3, you have through career development and part-time study achieved the CEng milestone at around the current average age for a new CEng registrant.

There are a substantial group who follow a more academic early pathway as a full-time undergraduate, followed by a company operated graduate training programme, gaining the recognition from around 8 years into career. However, graduates without structured employer support can take significantly longer and often lose interest until “mid career” when people seem more drawn towards our current model. Even the many employers who are nominally quite supportive, tend only to see value in "senior sign off” or “market visible” Engineers being CEng. It is our responsibility to convince more employers that registration can add value to more of their Engineers.

One of the main reasons I started this thread was to draw attention to Degree Apprenticeships (“level 6”). These include higher level part-time study from the beginning and typically take around four years. Starting age isn’t fixed, but for direct comparison with a full-time undergraduate student we could assume 18. I contend that these can be at least an equally valid pathway to CEng when compared to a full-time degree and should be treated as such.

Your example also helps to illustrate two of the “problems”, “barriers” or “tripping points” which I have highlighted.

Firstly, despite having an accredited UK BEng (Hons) Degree in Engineering and very considerable work-based learning, you were required to undertake a Technical Interview to demonstrate your underpinning knowledge and understanding. This course of action would be very rare for an engineer also holding a UK BEng (Hons) Degree, but classed as “partly CEng accredited”, rather than “IEng accredited”, so you were presumed to have an “inferior degree” and placed in a disadvantageous position. Your story also doesn’t seem to suggest that already being IEng registered offered you any “advantage”, despite most of the competences being substantially similar, or even identical. I have witnessed negative bias towards IEng from some CEng, which may also create disadvantage, although this is less prevalent in the IET than in some PEIs, where IEng is very much regarded in inferior pejorative terms. If we take any emotive element out of it, then many if not most Chartered Engineers would at least regard themselves as “a different breed to IEng”.

Secondly, you also describe an interpretation of UK-SPEC which assumes “design” to be the main preeminent activity of engineers. There are many Engineers of chartered standard who are not primarily engaged in “designing” and may therefore find themselves at a disadvantage. The UK-SPEC standard is open to considerable variations in interpretation from different people, who also often develop strongly held opinions to go with their interpretation. Design Consultants (aka businesses specialising in design) offer a particular perspective, but this doesn’t mean that engineers/engineering managers in major industries like Manufacturing, Infrastructure, or even Armed Forces are “less able” because they are “less design focussed”? Some in Academic research or R&D would even view most design as “routine” and therefore lacking in the “creativity and innovation” that they expect. At the last revision of UK-SPEC the standard was adjusted to be better balanced towards “technical responsibility”, but minor changes to standards, don’t get noticed and many people have fairly fixed ideas anyway.

Your delight must also be tinged with some relief. Others have undertaken a similar journey, but ending with a different verdict and have been left feeling “hard done by”. A Chartered Engineer Assessment should be rigorous and demanding, but had you been unsuccessful then you might have reasonably asked; “what else was I supposed to have done”? A twenty-year career with work-based learning, progressive part-time accredited formal learning to degree level, progressive registration, a change in career direction to gain additional experience? As I see it we have a duty to help all members to maximise their potential, not just those who excelled in maths and science A levels and gained admission to one of our preferred (mostly full-time) degree courses.

In my original proposition for this thread, I expressed serious concern that those following the Degree Apprenticeship pathway could be sold IEng as a “stepping-stone to CEng”, only to find themselves stuck on that stone, while age group peers of similar capability were given a comfortable “by-pass” to follow. Equal performance should gain equal recognition!

Mehmood,

I wrote 99% of this response before seeing Jonathan’s post. It is longer than ideal because this is a complex nuanced argument that has run for decades and someone joining the discussion now needs a reasonably full context without having to dig backwards in the forums.

Thanks for at least setting out what I would characterise as “the traditional academic perspective”. I hope that you don’t feel that that to be an unreasonable or negative characterisation.

As for Medical General Practitioners, I’m not sufficiently familiar with education, training and politics within the medical profession to comment usefully. I have had one or two GP friends, but generally they have wanted to relax away from their work, not “talk shop”. I have never had any reason to regard a GP as a “lower” type of Medical Doctor. It seems obvious to me that in any field of endeavour, someone clever who specialises in something narrow for a long time becomes a deep expert and someone of equal talent but with a different pattern of learning will cover wider ground. I don’t know of any evidence base demonstrating that those who choose narrow specialism over generalism are of higher intelligence or “cleverer”. For example, those with a broader view predominate amongst strategic leaders, who often orchestrate the contribution of a variety of experts. Or in the case of accountants count the cost of them?.

Perhaps those who are most influential at Engineering Council prefer to compare Engineers with specialists in Medicine or Science? If that is their “peer group” such as in a senior academic environment, then this is understandable. Most engineers in workplaces are likely to be colleagues of other “chartered professionals” such as surveyors or accountants, who are among the professions to have developed Apprenticeships explicitly leading to Chartered. Some of them rely on the chartered title to inform customers about their credentials as experts working within a professional code of conduct. Most Chartered Engineers work as part of a team and rely on their employer’s reputation in the marketplace.

Is the professional registration of engineers and technicians a “cleverness competition” for the limited resource of holding “elite status”, or is it intended to recognise those who have achieved proficiency in their field and chosen to affiliate to a professional community? My argument here is based on “standards not status” or “skills and productivity”. The principle is that; the value we add collectively is more important than (often petty) divisions between us.

We have a situation where only a minority of even those potentially eligible for chartered registration have chosen to engage, with the existing cohort having an average age around 60. The alternate forms of “Incorporated” and “Technician” have become widely negatively characterised as, “not chartered” and “nowhere near chartered”, rather than in positive terms for the skills they seek to recognise. One potential driver of these negative characterisations is a societal culture of academic competition and an over-emphasis on academic examinations as a form of currency. A pernicious effect of PEI efforts, has also been the negative characterisation of equally valid bachelors honours degrees (according to the government regulator) as “inferior”, if they dare to emphasise “applications” (i.e. actual engineering), rather than mathematical and scientific theory. Therefore, few universities now offer such degrees unless they have strong employer support. Employers who incorrectly assumed that an engineering degree is a “training programme” have been disappointed. A few may also have been disappointed by their graduates lack of fluency in advanced calculus, but most wouldn’t notice, because this is not an attribute that is very regularly needed.

As I see it; among those who practice Engineering & Technology at graduate level and beyond there is (as suggested by ASME and others) a continuum between “Theory led” and “Practice led”. There is probably some correlation between those who passed the most challenging examinations in mathematics and science (usually around the age of 18-20) and being more “theory led”. However, there are also many other aptitudes and evolving attributes that may correlate with a subsequent successful career as an engineering and technology professional, included related management and leadership roles.

Most Chartered Engineers and their unregistered but similar equivalents would agree that a professional engineer requires some solid foundations of understanding in mathematics, science and communication skills. The unresolved problem here is the phrase “some solid foundations” i.e. what does this mean and to what extent does any interpretation correlate with later performance. So for example, does a 100% examination score in calculus at the age of 19, have any relationship to performance as an Engineer or Engineering Manager some years later? We don’t to my knowledge have much reliable evidence, although we have a lot of “belief” based on “tradition”. Half a century ago craft Toolmakers or Fitters used to produce artefacts using machine and hand tools, now we have CNC machines, 3D printing etc. Office based technicians and engineers, used slide rules or rudimentary computers , although very few were developing “new” mathematical or scientific insight, they applied standard formulas often in a laborious and labour intensive way; we have software tools to do that quickly now.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to study a group (number 35) of high performing mid-career engineers in a technology leading business. I compared “performance” using UK-SPEC judgements, against academic background. Similar levels of performance were illustrated by those with HNC compared to MSc, with some ONC qualified people being nearly as good. This wasn’t perfect research, but the obvious hypothesis was that subsequent work-based learning was more important than teenage academic “ranking”. I should also note that higher education opportunities were historically much less available, so those with the potential to gain a degree often didn’t get the opportunity. The current selection process using A level results and “personal statements” is an imperfect measure of potential as well. I haven’t conducted a detailed study, but I would hypothesise that in many technical environments the correlation between academic and subsequent professional performance is not that strong.

The fundamental problem of using academic measures, is that for most engineers the measuring stops by the age of around 21-23. At that age is likely that some from the higher/degree apprenticeship pathway will be employed in as an engineer with the potential to develop towards Chartered. A graduate without the same opportunity to have gained work based-learning will usually be a little behind, but with appropriate training likely to catch up within a year or two. Some of a “more academic” nature may be optimised to achieve stronger performance in certain types of environment, but on the whole they will be similar. Trying to create a distinction based on academic examination results several years earlier doesn’t seem valid to me? An exam could be taken at the time of registration, but what would it measure and how? Grasp of theory isn’t a measure of professional competence, although there may be a correlation. Obviously those with a track record of success in such examinations hold them in high regard, but does science confirm this? Is anyone aware of any double blind trials?

We (The Engineering Council Family) has a choice about whether or not we wish “Engineers” to become members of our community. If we want to narrowly define who should be a “fully developed professional engineer”, in a way that has the effect of excluding very many who seem to clearly meet that definition, then that decision has consequences. When nearly half a century ago, the entry gate barrier to CEng became a degree, some alternative mechanisms were put in place such as “Technician Engineer”, open theory examinations, or the possibility of “mature entry” after a 10 year penalty. As we moved into this century IEng (formerly Tech Eng) joined the more academically orientated engineering world, partly in the hope of becoming “Chartered Engineering Technologist”, but that “opportunity” was lost, as was the IIE and concept of a “different but equally valuable, more practical engineer”.

Therefore my proposal for the future is; that CEng must reflect as it always has to some extent, a compromise between “practice led” and “theory led” engineers. I have advocated that each should become recognised as an “engineer” who should be demonstrating graduate attributes. Those who wish to become a Chartered Engineer, benchmarked at post-graduate or “masters level”, must then embark upon a significant period of monitored professional development before being recognised. My proposal intentionally positions those from the apprenticeship pathway of “graduate standard” alongside former full-time undergraduates with some work experience as “equals”. It seems reasonable that those who have an MEng or front-end MSc courses may gain some modest advantages in progressing towards CEng, but the former Apprentice could also gain the same advantage via a work-based MSc, these are already offered by a number of universities and former apprentices have an excellent success record. The IET has the proven capability to offer Bachelors and Masters equivalence to work-based learning, when needed, but ideally I would like to see stronger university and employer partnerships taking “most of the strain”.

If employers need some more academically orientated graduate engineers, then they should be able to support that approach, through sponsorship, work-placements, or forms of degree apprenticeships. If other employers need more practically skilled graduate engineers then they can do likewise; we need all types! Government actions to revitalise apprenticeships at higher levels have already “nudged” us in the direction that I am proposing. If we don’t want to accept that signal, or if the political goodwill towards the higher levels of apprenticeships is lost, then the usual “few tweaks” by Engineering Council this year will probably feel enough to those in control. Since they tend to only change anything every five years, another opportunity for us to gain wider relevance and engagement will be lost.

Many among us like to characterise others who practise engineering and technology as “inferior”. Wouldn’t it be better if the majority who are competent and of good character but not currently engaged, contributed to recognising “superior” or “advanced” performance? For me this simply means “built from the bottom up not the top down”.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 6 years ago

Apologies to subscribers, I had to delete the previous post, fat fingers I'm afraid? it was a draft version, that I couldn’t correct in time (because it was too long ?)

Jonathan,

Congratulations on your recent successful assessment and Chartered Engineer Registration. You help to illustrate several relevant issues to this discussion. The first and most obvious positive one is that having completed a practical Apprenticeship to level 3, you have through career development and part-time study achieved the CEng milestone at around the current average age for a new CEng registrant.

There are a substantial group who follow a more academic early pathway as a full-time undergraduate, followed by a company operated graduate training programme, gaining the recognition from around 8 years into career. However, graduates without structured employer support can take significantly longer and often lose interest until “mid career” when people seem more drawn towards our current model. Even the many employers who are nominally quite supportive, tend only to see value in "senior sign off” or “market visible” Engineers being CEng. It is our responsibility to convince more employers that registration can add value to more of their Engineers.

One of the main reasons I started this thread was to draw attention to Degree Apprenticeships (“level 6”). These include higher level part-time study from the beginning and typically take around four years. Starting age isn’t fixed, but for direct comparison with a full-time undergraduate student we could assume 18. I contend that these can be at least an equally valid pathway to CEng when compared to a full-time degree and should be treated as such.

Your example also helps to illustrate two of the “problems”, “barriers” or “tripping points” which I have highlighted.

Firstly, despite having an accredited UK BEng (Hons) Degree in Engineering and very considerable work-based learning, you were required to undertake a Technical Interview to demonstrate your underpinning knowledge and understanding. This course of action would be very rare for an engineer also holding a UK BEng (Hons) Degree, but classed as “partly CEng accredited”, rather than “IEng accredited”, so you were presumed to have an “inferior degree” and placed in a disadvantageous position. Your story also doesn’t seem to suggest that already being IEng registered offered you any “advantage”, despite most of the competences being substantially similar, or even identical. I have witnessed negative bias towards IEng from some CEng, which may also create disadvantage, although this is less prevalent in the IET than in some PEIs, where IEng is very much regarded in inferior pejorative terms. If we take any emotive element out of it, then many if not most Chartered Engineers would at least regard themselves as “a different breed to IEng”.

Secondly, you also describe an interpretation of UK-SPEC which assumes “design” to be the main preeminent activity of engineers. There are many Engineers of chartered standard who are not primarily engaged in “designing” and may therefore find themselves at a disadvantage. The UK-SPEC standard is open to considerable variations in interpretation from different people, who also often develop strongly held opinions to go with their interpretation. Design Consultants (aka businesses specialising in design) offer a particular perspective, but this doesn’t mean that engineers/engineering managers in major industries like Manufacturing, Infrastructure, or even Armed Forces are “less able” because they are “less design focussed”? Some in Academic research or R&D would even view most design as “routine” and therefore lacking in the “creativity and innovation” that they expect. At the last revision of UK-SPEC the standard was adjusted to be better balanced towards “technical responsibility”, but minor changes to standards, don’t get noticed and many people have fairly fixed ideas anyway.

Your delight must also be tinged with some relief. Others have undertaken a similar journey, but ending with a different verdict and have been left feeling “hard done by”. A Chartered Engineer Assessment should be rigorous and demanding, but had you been unsuccessful then you might have reasonably asked; “what else was I supposed to have done”? A twenty-year career with work-based learning, progressive part-time accredited formal learning to degree level, progressive registration, a change in career direction to gain additional experience? As I see it we have a duty to help all members to maximise their potential, not just those who excelled in maths and science A levels and gained admission to one of our preferred (mostly full-time) degree courses.

In my original proposition for this thread, I expressed serious concern that those following the Degree Apprenticeship pathway could be sold IEng as a “stepping-stone to CEng”, only to find themselves stuck on that stone, while age group peers of similar capability were given a comfortable “by-pass” to follow. Equal performance should gain equal recognition!

Mehmood,

I wrote 99% of this response before seeing Jonathan’s post. It is longer than ideal because this is a complex nuanced argument that has run for decades and someone joining the discussion now needs a reasonably full context without having to dig backwards in the forums.

Thanks for at least setting out what I would characterise as “the traditional academic perspective”. I hope that you don’t feel that that to be an unreasonable or negative characterisation.

As for Medical General Practitioners, I’m not sufficiently familiar with education, training and politics within the medical profession to comment usefully. I have had one or two GP friends, but generally they have wanted to relax away from their work, not “talk shop”. I have never had any reason to regard a GP as a “lower” type of Medical Doctor. It seems obvious to me that in any field of endeavour, someone clever who specialises in something narrow for a long time becomes a deep expert and someone of equal talent but with a different pattern of learning will cover wider ground. I don’t know of any evidence base demonstrating that those who choose narrow specialism over generalism are of higher intelligence or “cleverer”. For example, those with a broader view predominate amongst strategic leaders, who often orchestrate the contribution of a variety of experts. Or in the case of accountants count the cost of them?.

Perhaps those who are most influential at Engineering Council prefer to compare Engineers with specialists in Medicine or Science? If that is their “peer group” such as in a senior academic environment, then this is understandable. Most engineers in workplaces are likely to be colleagues of other “chartered professionals” such as surveyors or accountants, who are among the professions to have developed Apprenticeships explicitly leading to Chartered. Some of them rely on the chartered title to inform customers about their credentials as experts working within a professional code of conduct. Most Chartered Engineers work as part of a team and rely on their employer’s reputation in the marketplace.

Is the professional registration of engineers and technicians a “cleverness competition” for the limited resource of holding “elite status”, or is it intended to recognise those who have achieved proficiency in their field and chosen to affiliate to a professional community? My argument here is based on “standards not status” or “skills and productivity”. The principle is that; the value we add collectively is more important than (often petty) divisions between us.

We have a situation where only a minority of even those potentially eligible for chartered registration have chosen to engage, with the existing cohort having an average age around 60. The alternate forms of “Incorporated” and “Technician” have become widely negatively characterised as, “not chartered” and “nowhere near chartered”, rather than in positive terms for the skills they seek to recognise. One potential driver of these negative characterisations is a societal culture of academic competition and an over-emphasis on academic examinations as a form of currency. A pernicious effect of PEI efforts, has also been the negative characterisation of equally valid bachelors honours degrees (according to the government regulator) as “inferior”, if they dare to emphasise “applications” (i.e. actual engineering), rather than mathematical and scientific theory. Therefore, few universities now offer such degrees unless they have strong employer support. Employers who incorrectly assumed that an engineering degree is a “training programme” have been disappointed. A few may also have been disappointed by their graduates lack of fluency in advanced calculus, but most wouldn’t notice, because this is not an attribute that is very regularly needed.

As I see it; among those who practice Engineering & Technology at graduate level and beyond there is (as suggested by ASME and others) a continuum between “Theory led” and “Practice led”. There is probably some correlation between those who passed the most challenging examinations in mathematics and science (usually around the age of 18-20) and being more “theory led”. However, there are also many other aptitudes and evolving attributes that may correlate with a subsequent successful career as an engineering and technology professional, included related management and leadership roles.

Most Chartered Engineers and their unregistered but similar equivalents would agree that a professional engineer requires some solid foundations of understanding in mathematics, science and communication skills. The unresolved problem here is the phrase “some solid foundations” i.e. what does this mean and to what extent does any interpretation correlate with later performance. So for example, does a 100% examination score in calculus at the age of 19, have any relationship to performance as an Engineer or Engineering Manager some years later? We don’t to my knowledge have much reliable evidence, although we have a lot of “belief” based on “tradition”. Half a century ago craft Toolmakers or Fitters used to produce artefacts using machine and hand tools, now we have CNC machines, 3D printing etc. Office based technicians and engineers, used slide rules or rudimentary computers , although very few were developing “new” mathematical or scientific insight, they applied standard formulas often in a laborious and labour intensive way; we have software tools to do that quickly now.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to study a group (number 35) of high performing mid-career engineers in a technology leading business. I compared “performance” using UK-SPEC judgements, against academic background. Similar levels of performance were illustrated by those with HNC compared to MSc, with some ONC qualified people being nearly as good. This wasn’t perfect research, but the obvious hypothesis was that subsequent work-based learning was more important than teenage academic “ranking”. I should also note that higher education opportunities were historically much less available, so those with the potential to gain a degree often didn’t get the opportunity. The current selection process using A level results and “personal statements” is an imperfect measure of potential as well. I haven’t conducted a detailed study, but I would hypothesise that in many technical environments the correlation between academic and subsequent professional performance is not that strong.

The fundamental problem of using academic measures, is that for most engineers the measuring stops by the age of around 21-23. At that age is likely that some from the higher/degree apprenticeship pathway will be employed in as an engineer with the potential to develop towards Chartered. A graduate without the same opportunity to have gained work based-learning will usually be a little behind, but with appropriate training likely to catch up within a year or two. Some of a “more academic” nature may be optimised to achieve stronger performance in certain types of environment, but on the whole they will be similar. Trying to create a distinction based on academic examination results several years earlier doesn’t seem valid to me? An exam could be taken at the time of registration, but what would it measure and how? Grasp of theory isn’t a measure of professional competence, although there may be a correlation. Obviously those with a track record of success in such examinations hold them in high regard, but does science confirm this? Is anyone aware of any double blind trials?

We (The Engineering Council Family) has a choice about whether or not we wish “Engineers” to become members of our community. If we want to narrowly define who should be a “fully developed professional engineer”, in a way that has the effect of excluding very many who seem to clearly meet that definition, then that decision has consequences. When nearly half a century ago, the entry gate barrier to CEng became a degree, some alternative mechanisms were put in place such as “Technician Engineer”, open theory examinations, or the possibility of “mature entry” after a 10 year penalty. As we moved into this century IEng (formerly Tech Eng) joined the more academically orientated engineering world, partly in the hope of becoming “Chartered Engineering Technologist”, but that “opportunity” was lost, as was the IIE and concept of a “different but equally valuable, more practical engineer”.

Therefore my proposal for the future is; that CEng must reflect as it always has to some extent, a compromise between “practice led” and “theory led” engineers. I have advocated that each should become recognised as an “engineer” who should be demonstrating graduate attributes. Those who wish to become a Chartered Engineer, benchmarked at post-graduate or “masters level”, must then embark upon a significant period of monitored professional development before being recognised. My proposal intentionally positions those from the apprenticeship pathway of “graduate standard” alongside former full-time undergraduates with some work experience as “equals”. It seems reasonable that those who have an MEng or front-end MSc courses may gain some modest advantages in progressing towards CEng, but the former Apprentice could also gain the same advantage via a work-based MSc, these are already offered by a number of universities and former apprentices have an excellent success record. The IET has the proven capability to offer Bachelors and Masters equivalence to work-based learning, when needed, but ideally I would like to see stronger university and employer partnerships taking “most of the strain”.

If employers need some more academically orientated graduate engineers, then they should be able to support that approach, through sponsorship, work-placements, or forms of degree apprenticeships. If other employers need more practically skilled graduate engineers then they can do likewise; we need all types! Government actions to revitalise apprenticeships at higher levels have already “nudged” us in the direction that I am proposing. If we don’t want to accept that signal, or if the political goodwill towards the higher levels of apprenticeships is lost, then the usual “few tweaks” by Engineering Council this year will probably feel enough to those in control. Since they tend to only change anything every five years, another opportunity for us to gain wider relevance and engagement will be lost.

Many among us like to characterise others who practise engineering and technology as “inferior”. Wouldn’t it be better if the majority who are competent and of good character but not currently engaged, contributed to recognising “superior” or “advanced” performance? For me this simply means “built from the bottom up not the top down”.
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Is an Apprenticeship an equally valid pathway to Chartered Engineer - a historical anachronism or the future?

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