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

Roy Bowdler
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               

 

 

 

  • 0
    I don’t think anyone could deny that there has been a general qualification or grade “inflation” over the years. However, this isn’t the same as showing that overall academic standards were “higher” in decades past.


    Much of the noise about this issue comes from those complaining that qualifications don’t reliably differentiate between high academic performance and a more “average” standard.  Degree holders are ubiquitous instead of rare among "younger" age groups. Less than 5% of my school cohort, continued at school post-16 and fewer still gained a degree.        

    Part of the argument then becomes about whether qualifications should be awarded by comparison with others (norm referenced) or by meeting the standard (criterion referenced). i.e., whether grades should be “rationed”. E.g., only the best 50% in any year are allowed to “pass” and 1% get the top grade; or everyone who meets the specified requirement, gets the grade. Which in theory at least, could mean 100% “top grade”.  Many vocational tests simply have a pass/fail outcome.

    The journal article that I posted, suggests that “standards” on a particular HNC/HND programme, between 1995 & 2005 were “higher”, than had been the case for other HNC/D, programmes at an earlier time.


    The last cohort of Student Engineers (Apprentices) following the pathway, were transferred via accreditation of prior learning from HND to a Foundation Degree, in the final year this led on to a BSc with most gaining honours. A good proportion of the following cohort gained 1st class Honours, at a time before the inflation of degree classifications had really begun.     This arguably demonstrated that the substantially unchanged first three years in college was setting an equal, if not higher academic standard, to other student pathways. The vocational capability of the employed apprentice students was naturally hugely higher.  

    I should note that at the time, the difference between HNC & HND was simply the number of units required. More recently HNC was placed at a lower level in the qualifications framework.

    In the 1970s, remembering formulas and carrying out calculations was emphasised in engineering academic courses. The use of “new” pocket calculators was only accepted in exams towards the end of the decade. Software covers much of that now.  There were usually just a handful of textbooks available, now a huge amount of information is now readily available on-line.


    So, instead of expecting an engineer to remember “page x of the J&P Transformer Book” and quote it in the exam. A better test is; which sources to choose, how to interpret those sources, what potential choices to make and how to justify them. These are the types of attributes, that I might reasonably expect from a graduate/post-graduate and also a senior manager.

    Like evaluating footballers of different eras, comparisons can be difficult ?!

  • 0
    Interesting inputs from many. I am about to apply for CEng after a lengthy and thorough review by my excellent PRA. I was originally applying for IEng, he felt otherwise.

    I am not a graduate. Highest academic qualification is a Full Tech Cert. Forty plus years of experience.


    Colin
  • 0
    Colin,

    I was thinking of a 4 year apprenticeship not 40! ?

    Good luck!
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    I would say it is entirely valid to make a direct comparison with other academic engineering qualifications past and present. The example given contrasts two skills that are actually hierarchical. Without a base of knowledge acquired through repetition, you cannot interpret differing sources to make this type of evaluation.


    The real point is that it's hard to see how a current apprentice could ever achieve the academic criteria for CEng without acquiring further qualifications, leaving aside the difficulty of finding a suitable role without a degree. Simply compare a HNC textbook from previous decades with what is taught now. Or consider that there are no exams whatsoever, not even a small portion of the overall grade!


    To be a bit provocative, why can't our various engineering bodies offer rigorous Pass/Fail exams similar to those offered by the various accountancy bodies. This seems fairer, more transparent and cheaper than leaving this to higher education institutions that have their own quite separate interests.
  • 0
    11kv:


    To be a bit provocative, why can't our various engineering bodies offer rigorous Pass/Fail exams similar to those offered by the various accountancy bodies. This seems fairer, more transparent and cheaper than leaving this to higher education institutions that have their own quite separate interests. 


    Oh no, please no!!!! What on earth would they ask? There was the famous example of (IIRC) the IEE testing prospective Chartered Engineers on their knowledge of Maxwell's equations. I have never used Maxwell's equations in my entire career, despite having worked in analogue design for a fair bit of it! If that had been asked when I got my IEE CEng I suppose I would have swotted up Maxwell's equations for the purposes of achieving registration, and then probably promptly forgot them again. Not much point in that.


    I don't know of course, and may well be completely wrong, but I'm guessing from your nickname that there could be pretty much no technical subject beyond Ohm's Law where you and I could answer the same questions - and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, engineering is a very diverse field. (In fact there will now be many members of the IET, who should be eligible for Chartership if they don't have it yet, who don't need to know Ohm's law either. We're not the IEE any more.) 


    In any case, it's missing, for me, the whole point of CEng (and IEng and EngTech), which is about how you use your technical knowledge, not what your technical knowledge is. Which is exactly what the professional registration process does look at.


    Back to the subject: I really don't care how today's qualifications compare to those of 20, 30, 40 years ago - what I think is important is: are they the right qualifications for what employers are looking for today? Professional registration then needs to work around that. Engineering education and professional registration are both a service to the employment community (and, to be fair, wider society), not the other way around.


    (I also consider that qualifications basically expire after about 10 years - there comes a point where your work is based far more on your experience than on what you learned at college. So actually for the majority of, particularly, CEng applicants any focus on qualifications is a bit silly. So again, how today's qualifications match against old ones shouldn't matter - I just wish the recruiting arms of HR departments would understand that!)


    Apologies that's a bit of a rant, but I think it's an important point: if academia is not supplying what employers want then that needs to be sorted. And I do suspect that the focus over the past 20 year or so on HE rather than FE is causing a problem, which to be fair the education community and government also seem to recognise. The PEIs should be in a good position to help facilitate this discussion - but I don't believe the majority of employers would trust them to police it.


    Cheers,


    Andy


  • 0
    Andy, I agree with your comments which are anything but a “rant”.

    11KV,  Thanks for engaging in this discussion, you clearly have something to bring to it.  

    I would say it is entirely valid to make a direct comparison with other academic engineering qualifications past and present.

    It is certainly a valid subject for research, discussion and debate.  Whether that is anything more than “academic” depends on what we do in future.  I made a small contribution (with many others) to keeping higher level apprenticeships alive in the 90s and developing degree apprenticeships in their modern form, as picked up by UK government in the early noughties. I started an HNC in the 70s and assessed some units twenty years later.

    The example given contrasts two skills that are actually hierarchical. Without a base of knowledge acquired through repetition, you cannot interpret differing sources to make this type of evaluation. 

    I’m not sure that I fully understand this point, are you applying Bloom’s Taxonomy or similar?

    The real point is that it's hard to see how a current apprentice could ever achieve the academic criteria for CEng without acquiring further qualifications, leaving aside the difficulty of finding a suitable role without a degree.  

    I think that you may be assuming, like some distinguished engineers that I spoke to before starting this thread, that an apprenticeship contains little learning beyond skills acquired in the workplace? Even that was very considerable at one time, with most major industries having high quality training establishments of their own. The Armed Forces training schools are probably the most prominent remaining examples.


    I would argue that it is perfectly possible to complete a degree level education in four years, from the age of 18 whilst in employment as a trainee (Apprentice). The workload is more intense, but most full-time students have a fairly relaxed schedule.         

    Simply compare a HNC textbook from previous decades with what is taught now. Or consider that there are no exams whatsoever, not even a small portion of the overall grade!

    You may have a point about historic comparison, but I agree with Andy, current and future relevance is far more important.


    Exams are one mechanism of testing someone’s capability. They have some strengths, but also many weaknesses.  IMHO, at long last the “exam factory” mentality, that has dominated education is now being reappraised. Much of this is about selection and gaining social advantage, as the cost of a private education illustrates.     

    To be a bit provocative, why can't our various engineering bodies offer rigorous Pass/Fail exams similar to those offered by the various accountancy bodies. This seems fairer, more transparent and cheaper than leaving this to higher education institutions that have their own quite separate interests. 

    A few years ago, I found on-line some sample “past papers” for examinations run by American states as part of their system of licensure/registration. At least one UK Engineering Institution also still operates its own examination.

    Courses including exams sponsored by professional institutions, were historically quite commonplace, but government policies squeezed down on them in favour of other organisations, especially universities. The trend accelerated as the former Polytechnics became Universities and a degree became the “normal” expectation of any teenager of “average” academic ability (ie circa 50%).

    There remains a major effort by institutions of academic accreditation, under Engineering Council supervision. However, those qualifications below “degree level” became ignored, as being “beneath” the interest of Chartered Institutions. The trend even led to a loss of interest in, or snobbish prejudice against, Bachelors degrees designated as “IEng accredited”, which were in many cases better preparation for employment and were also often taken part-time by employed students in a form of “apprenticeship”.

    I agree that there has been a qualifications “arms race” leading to inflation. However, I also think that diversity and alternative specialisation is a good thing in higher education.  For me, a university respected by employers in a sector of employment, is more useful than one conferring snob value to  members of "the elite" of society, in this context.  
      

  • 0
    I think one of the problems is that that the practical  engineer sometimes known as 'incorporated engineer' has become discredited as a valid qualification/registration for engineering professional competence at any level. This is due the incompetence of the majority of those working in the Engineering Council and the Professional Engineering Institutions. I'm not saying they are thick, but the reality is that they are typically administrators with very little understanding of engineering at any level.
  • 0
    Peter,

    My proposition here is that a blend of workplace or “skills” training and “academic” learning, is the most effective. The nature of that blend and time required, will vary with the type role of being developed and aptitude of the person at a point in time.

    The main remit of Engineering Council is to enable those who are highly skilled in engineering (in its broadest sense), to gain career support and professional recognition through a network of approved organisations, i.e., Professional Engineering Institutions.

    The threshold for Engineering Council recognition is described by the UK-SPEC Eng Tech (or ICT Tech) standard. It has however always been dominated by the perspective of Chartered Engineers. The great majority of Chartered Engineers, began their careers as full-time undergraduate students and the threshold of recognition has always included a strong academic “benchmark” or “barrier” to admission. The desire for “elite status” has also been a strong driver for academics and other activists influential at Engineering Council. 

    Civil Service type administrators will naturally find the landscape of Quangos, Universities, Royal Academies, PEIs, Engineering Professors Council et al, more amenable than most employers, or even technical trades unions who were still influential in its early days. The international landscape has also been dominated by academics in the form of the International Engineering Alliance. I don’t see this as stupidity or incompetence, just the reality of political influence, or even reasonable pragmatism.

    In the last few years UK Government, has recognised the value of the apprenticeship model, including for advanced professional roles embedding formal learning to post-graduate standard. My challenge in this thread, is therefore to outdated assumptions, vested interests, snobbery and prejudice which still exist in our domain. 

    I don’t agree that IEng is “discredited”, although its value in the marketplace, has been debated in these forums for well over a decade. I have argued strongly for an alternative approach, but Engineering Council didn’t accept my proposal. It is their “brand” and they should be held to account for its success in future. We can’t affect the past.  

    Some Degree Apprenticeships have been linked to IEng, so I don’t know where “the more practical engineer” fits that as a brand slogan? Many graduating “IEng” degree apprentices, have in my experience demonstrated superior engineering understanding, when compared to many graduates from CEng accredited degrees, so where does that leave us?       

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Andy Millar:
    11kv:


    To be a bit provocative, why can't our various engineering bodies offer rigorous Pass/Fail exams similar to those offered by the various accountancy bodies. This seems fairer, more transparent and cheaper than leaving this to higher education institutions that have their own quite separate interests. 


    Oh no, please no!!!! What on earth would they ask? There was the famous example of (IIRC) the IEE testing prospective Chartered Engineers on their knowledge of Maxwell's equations. I have never used Maxwell's equations in my entire career, despite having worked in analogue design for a fair bit of it! If that had been asked when I got my IEE CEng I suppose I would have swotted up Maxwell's equations for the purposes of achieving registration, and then probably promptly forgot them again. Not much point in that.


    I don't know of course, and may well be completely wrong, but I'm guessing from your nickname that there could be pretty much no technical subject beyond Ohm's Law where you and I could answer the same questions - and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, engineering is a very diverse field. (In fact there will now be many members of the IET, who should be eligible for Chartership if they don't have it yet, who don't need to know Ohm's law either. We're not the IEE any more.) 


    In any case, it's missing, for me, the whole point of CEng (and IEng and EngTech), which is about how you use your technical knowledge, not what your technical knowledge is. Which is exactly what the professional registration process does look at.


    Back to the subject: I really don't care how today's qualifications compare to those of 20, 30, 40 years ago - what I think is important is: are they the right qualifications for what employers are looking for today? Professional registration then needs to work around that. Engineering education and professional registration are both a service to the employment community (and, to be fair, wider society), not the other way around.


    (I also consider that qualifications basically expire after about 10 years - there comes a point where your work is based far more on your experience than on what you learned at college. So actually for the majority of, particularly, CEng applicants any focus on qualifications is a bit silly. So again, how today's qualifications match against old ones shouldn't matter - I just wish the recruiting arms of HR departments would understand that!)


    Apologies that's a bit of a rant, but I think it's an important point: if academia is not supplying what employers want then that needs to be sorted. And I do suspect that the focus over the past 20 year or so on HE rather than FE is causing a problem, which to be fair the education community and government also seem to recognise. The PEIs should be in a good position to help facilitate this discussion - but I don't believe the majority of employers would trust them to police it.


    Cheers,


    Andy




    On the first point, the reality is that the academic portion of an engineer's training is simply outsourced/delegated/abandoned to educational institutions. While a valid point that it is difficult to set a curriculum and assessment that will be directly relevant to all practicing engineers, this critique applies equally to the existing system. There is no system of education that doesn't involve some redundancy either; most of compulsory education is redundant in this sense yet regarded as a necessary evil. It therefore becomes an organisational question: which bodies are best placed to decide what budding engineers should study and how this knowledge should be assessed?


     


  • 0
    It therefore becomes an organisational question: which bodies are best placed to decide what budding engineers should study and how this knowledge should be assessed?

    A very reasonable observation!

    Even to list those organisations who would consider themselves either uniquely or partly qualified to exercise such judgements could make this a long post. There have also been the ever shifting sands created by new political initiatives every few years.

    I think it is reasonable to state, that from the late 1980s, the numbers and “status” of apprenticeships declined badly, as the industrial landscape changed. By the 1990s it was widely held, that an apprenticeship was appropriate only for “lower academic achievers” from “lower social classes”.

    By the turn of the century university attendance became the normalised expectation for every teenager of average academic ability, or with any middle class aspirations.  

    This shift, naturally aligned with most Professional Engineering Institutions, Engineering Council, The Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineering Professors Council, etc. The expansion of higher education wasn’t unique to the UK, but there was a decline in the importance of vocational training and subsequent skills shortages.  Forms of “snobbery” or the seeking of social advantage are endemic in the world of education, just like commercial competition is in industry.

    I would be interested in others perspective of where we sit now. Has government action through an organisation like The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, improved matters or not?  https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/

    The IET has taken a good constructive approach in my opinion? Do others agree? If not, then what should happen now?         

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