The UK's engineering problem

Citation

Galbraith, P.F.A.M. (2000), "The UK's engineering problem", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 72 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2000.12772fab.021

The UK's engineering problem

The UK's engineering problem

Keywords: Engineering, Education

The word "University" is defined in the Oxford dictionary as:

The whole body of teachers and scholars engaged, at a particular place, in giving and receiving instruction in the higher branches of learning; such persons associated together as a society or corporate body, with a definite organisation and acknowledged powers and privileges (esp. that of conferring degrees) and forming an institution for the promotion of education in the higher or more important branches of learning; also, the colleges, buildings, etc. belonging to such a body.

Universities, therefore, are primarily places of education and seekers of knowledge. The older universities subscribed to this viewpoint but, in recent years, the popular semantic range of the word has been widened to become less specific and so it may well be, that if the political and economic climate is acceptable, British Aerospace could, indeed, form its own university; should it do so, we would wish it well.

An important part of a formal university education is a training in the practices and techniques of the chosen subject. It is not targeted at one particular company, or career path within it, but at graduates who have the potential to become highly successful in their chosen career within their chosen industry. Having been associated with this process for many years, I well understand implicit frustration in the recent comments made by British Aerospace regarding this country's output of engineering graduates. It is all we can do but sympathise with them.

I believe that the problem lies neither in industry nor with the universities, but in the basic culture of the UK and its attitude towards its engineering community. It seems to me that engineering is, more often than not, considered to be a second-rate profession and, although our good undergraduates are simply stunning in their ability and attitude, the average academic quality of our student intake is at a fairly humble level.

The most popular faculties for undergraduates at university are law, medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry and accountancy. All of these professions have a legal standing whereby particular functions are enshrined in their responsibilities by law. They more often than not have a salary commensurate with that which puts them in the top quartile of income earners and gives them a lifestyle and standing in society worthy of their contribution to it. It is, however, not the engineer driving the Jaguar; he is the man fixing the "old banger" in his spare time. It is not the engineer who employs tradesmen to repair his dwelling house or fix the garden; he has to do that himself.

This is all very sad, for it is the engineer who designs and builds highly complex and technically advanced equipment which pervades our everyday life. It is the engineer who extracts the oil from the North Sea, it is the engineer who designs, builds and runs the chemical plants to provide the fuel for the car, designed by engineers, using metal and material manufactured by engineers. Think of your television, your washing machine, the dish washer, the cooker and the electric cable which brings the electricity to power all of these appliances. Your consumption of that power is measured in watts; a unit named after the engineering inventor of the external condenser that made steam engines economically viable and thrust us headlong into a technological epoch.

The engineer has shrunk the world by the production of Jumbo jets, space rockets and satellites for communication and given us materials and instrumentation which have helped increase each of our life expectancies; it is the genetic engineer who gives us cloning.

So, Sir Richard and British Aerospace have my heartfelt sympathy, for their problem is cultural. Our engineers are overworked, underpaid and under-appreciated and there is little prospect of that changing. Other countries do not have such attitudes and the engineering profession is highly respected, well paid and the universities attract the very highest calibre of engineering students.

The formation of the British Aerospace University may, and I certainly hope that it does, alleviate their particular staffing dilemma but it will, I fear, not alleviate our country's problem.

Professor F.A.M. GalbraithDepartment of Aerospace Engineering, University of Glasgow