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Do engineering degrees die if they are not used?

I was recently contacted by a 32 year old with a degree in electrical and electronic engineering. He graduated in 2009 with a 2.1 from a reasonably good university, but he has never managed to succeed in an interview for a 'proper' engineering job. He previously had two fairly basic ICT jobs but nothing more technical than that and he currently works for a small company as a carpenter specialising in wooden floors.

After graduating he returned home to his family and joined UKIP, mostly for the social side rather than hardcore politics. It was through personal connections in UKIP that he found the job as a carpenter. He also found his wife through UKIP but both people have since left the party and are no longer active in politics.

He has attended a reasonable number of interviews for engineering positions in the first 5 years since graduation but companies seemed to show less interest in him after that. He is concerned that his engineering degree has effectively died through a lack of an opportunity to use it. He also asked me if 'refresher' courses are available, and I told him that he could do an MSc but I'm not sure if it will benefit him because employers really want work experience in engineering rather than higher academic qualifications.

Things he doesn't want to do are:

1. An electrician. Building electricians really are a different breed from electrical engineers. Most of the work that electricians do (new builds and some commercial buildings being an exception) is building work rather than electrical work and it's harder labour cutting holes in diamond-hard bricks; working in cramped and dusty attics; and pulling cables through tight conduits than it is working on wooden flooring. If he really wanted to become an electrician then he wouldn't have bothered with A Levels and a degree.

2. Financial services. Some people argue that he has a mathematical degree so he can go and work in some investment bank in the City. It's a totally different mindset from engineering - and the ICT and carpentry work that he has done - and even the maths required is of a different type. He also doesn't want to work in central London. He said that he wouldn't mind being an economist but as he hasn't formally studied economics he would have to study another degree. He looked at becoming an actuary but the learning curve is steep; jobs aren't easy to come by; and insurance companies might not want to employ a 'failed' electrical engineer in his 30s over one of countless mathematics graduates with a 1st class degree in their 20s. Accountancy is oversubscribed and it's possible that software will replace many accountants in the future.

3. Teaching. He looked into becoming a computer science teacher but teaching in schools is stressful and demoralising. Despite shortages of 'good' computer science teachers it isn't always easy to get a job teaching this subject due to budget constraints in schools and teaching unions protecting the jobs of, now obsolescent, former ICT teachers who know less about computer science than the kids they teach.

Does anybody have anything to say about this?

Parents

0 Roy Bowdler over 4 years ago

We probably have separate the simple facts here from the mythology and hype. Someone met a standard at a point in time and as a result has a certificate and may use post-nominals without any limit of time. Should someone wish to, they can understand what was studied, when and how relevant that is to whatever they are trying to evaluate. For the overwhelming majority of engineering bachelors degree holders, they have done well in mathematics and science subjects by the age of 18 and continue in full-time education to the age of 21-22 , being sufficiently capable and diligent to graduate. There is a much smaller group who came later to a similar syllabus as part of their career development.

The design of undergraduate engineering degrees, intends to prepare someone who is already well-rehearsed in mathematical and scientific theory for training as an engineer. Some types of engineer’s career pathways are relatively restricted in scope and predictable, but there is an enormous variety of possibilities , including deploying some of the attributes that have been learned in a different type of career. I would expect an experienced practitioner with at least a good grasp of maths and science basics , to be better served by a Masters programme. This allows them to develop post-graduate attributes based around their existing expertise, rather than “jumping exam hoops” which is what teenagers do.

Much of the “noise” around degrees is about people’s perceptions and expectations, which are often sociologically determined. So we are impressed by the “brand” which someone is associated with , such as Oxbridge or even our favourite technical university. “Badge snobbery” is an overriding factor in this respect , which might have some basis in real performance, but not an entirely reliable one. So in another effort to differentiate we have grading, which also can’t be relied upon and in the case of Engineering Degrees, accreditation by a professional institution. The idea of a form of peer review of academic programmes organised by a professional body (accreditation) has merits, over and above the normal quality assurance processes for universities, such as external examiners and QAA. However, I also feel that it has rather lost its way and needs reforming.

I won’t go into detail, although I have done so previously in these forums, but it seems that some blue chip employers are quite happy to simply “cherry pick” the highest achieving fraction of graduates on the basis of potential, being able to offer various training and career pathways to graduate trainees. Some employers are less academically selective and perhaps see their graduate intakes as just the “normal” pathway to becoming an engineer, which in the past might have been an HNC type apprenticeship. Many employers without an established tradition of graduate training, expect a graduate engineer to arrive “ready trained” and capable of doing a serious job after a short familiarisation period. Quite a few of them are sorely disappointed to find only textbook knowledge. Sadly, many graduates simply cannot find employment that meets their situation. To lose impetus at such an early stage of a career can be demoralising and difficult to recover from. Young people (not just prospective engineers) are sold a return on investment or graduate premium, that doesn’t always materialise.

The reform, that I referred to is to focus on what employed engineers do, not on what is most academically prestigious or appropriate for research and academic careers, which are relatively small in number and not always particularly lucrative. Proficiency in mathematics such as calculus based science, is used to attempt to discriminate between the “best and the rest”, with the often more useful practical applications of engineering, treated as second class activities suitable only for the “lower ranks” of this hierarchy. This isn’t just a UK problem, since the (academic) Washington Accord is influential. Simply put, any university wanting to emphasise “applications” in their degree course risks what has become the stigma of “inferior” IEng accreditation. What university under the current fees regime would want to sell an “inferior” degree, even if QAA says that it is equally valuable, unless they have strong employer support? We should stretch the brightest minds, but in our desire to enhance the status of the most academic prospective engineers, we have set about equipping quite a few of them with knowledge that they probably won’t use, rather than skills which they probably can.
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0 Roy Bowdler over 4 years ago

We probably have separate the simple facts here from the mythology and hype. Someone met a standard at a point in time and as a result has a certificate and may use post-nominals without any limit of time. Should someone wish to, they can understand what was studied, when and how relevant that is to whatever they are trying to evaluate. For the overwhelming majority of engineering bachelors degree holders, they have done well in mathematics and science subjects by the age of 18 and continue in full-time education to the age of 21-22 , being sufficiently capable and diligent to graduate. There is a much smaller group who came later to a similar syllabus as part of their career development.

The design of undergraduate engineering degrees, intends to prepare someone who is already well-rehearsed in mathematical and scientific theory for training as an engineer. Some types of engineer’s career pathways are relatively restricted in scope and predictable, but there is an enormous variety of possibilities , including deploying some of the attributes that have been learned in a different type of career. I would expect an experienced practitioner with at least a good grasp of maths and science basics , to be better served by a Masters programme. This allows them to develop post-graduate attributes based around their existing expertise, rather than “jumping exam hoops” which is what teenagers do.

Much of the “noise” around degrees is about people’s perceptions and expectations, which are often sociologically determined. So we are impressed by the “brand” which someone is associated with , such as Oxbridge or even our favourite technical university. “Badge snobbery” is an overriding factor in this respect , which might have some basis in real performance, but not an entirely reliable one. So in another effort to differentiate we have grading, which also can’t be relied upon and in the case of Engineering Degrees, accreditation by a professional institution. The idea of a form of peer review of academic programmes organised by a professional body (accreditation) has merits, over and above the normal quality assurance processes for universities, such as external examiners and QAA. However, I also feel that it has rather lost its way and needs reforming.

I won’t go into detail, although I have done so previously in these forums, but it seems that some blue chip employers are quite happy to simply “cherry pick” the highest achieving fraction of graduates on the basis of potential, being able to offer various training and career pathways to graduate trainees. Some employers are less academically selective and perhaps see their graduate intakes as just the “normal” pathway to becoming an engineer, which in the past might have been an HNC type apprenticeship. Many employers without an established tradition of graduate training, expect a graduate engineer to arrive “ready trained” and capable of doing a serious job after a short familiarisation period. Quite a few of them are sorely disappointed to find only textbook knowledge. Sadly, many graduates simply cannot find employment that meets their situation. To lose impetus at such an early stage of a career can be demoralising and difficult to recover from. Young people (not just prospective engineers) are sold a return on investment or graduate premium, that doesn’t always materialise.

The reform, that I referred to is to focus on what employed engineers do, not on what is most academically prestigious or appropriate for research and academic careers, which are relatively small in number and not always particularly lucrative. Proficiency in mathematics such as calculus based science, is used to attempt to discriminate between the “best and the rest”, with the often more useful practical applications of engineering, treated as second class activities suitable only for the “lower ranks” of this hierarchy. This isn’t just a UK problem, since the (academic) Washington Accord is influential. Simply put, any university wanting to emphasise “applications” in their degree course risks what has become the stigma of “inferior” IEng accreditation. What university under the current fees regime would want to sell an “inferior” degree, even if QAA says that it is equally valuable, unless they have strong employer support? We should stretch the brightest minds, but in our desire to enhance the status of the most academic prospective engineers, we have set about equipping quite a few of them with knowledge that they probably won’t use, rather than skills which they probably can.
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Do engineering degrees die if they are not used?

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