We are not learning our lesson!
20 October 2008
Education certainly gets the blood racing! And why not? – it is the key to the future of our industry and society in general.
The response to my comment last week, Education failing by degrees, was considerable, as you might expect on such an important subject, and the majority of it, sadly, seemed to agree with me that the education system is not fulfilling the needs of the electronics industry.
There are particular issues that affect different regions and I obviously highlighted some of those particular to the UK where I have most first hand knowledge. It is therefore not surprising that the majority of the responses came from the UK. Also, like some other Western countries, the ‘value’ of manufacturing to British political leaders over several decades has been questionable – and education lies at the heart of this political commitment.
Messages in my inbox since last Tuesday have brushed on a number of subjects relating to education in schools, higher education, apprenticeships and even the role of the engineers in general. The overall feeling I think is that the education system is not only failing students, it is also failing industry. I really do appreciate all the feedback, please keep them coming. I have selected the three contributions below to best sum up the feelings of the contributors.
Research more important than industry needs?
You may charge the academics with elitism, but consider what is driving them. On the one hand the university's funding is based on the number of students they "educate". The proportion of young people now educated to first degree level is enormously higher than in my day - must this not have affected the quality of the degree? To make things worse the government is pushing for numbers to increase still further! This effect has had further consequences on the courses of study offered. They have become broader to attract more students and hence the depth of study has decreased.
On the other hand the academics pay is determined by their published research and it is mainly on this basis that the "top" universities are selected, not on the education of undergraduates. All the bright students from around the world are harvested by the "top" universities to bolster their research effort and never leave to help industry. That might be a bit of bias on my part as university research does benefit industry in the longer term, but the research direction is driven by the funding available, not the needs of industry.
Finally we have an almost uniquely British problem. Engineering in particular and science in general is held in very low esteem by school leavers. Engineers are seen as those guys who mend your car and the work necessary to get a good degree in science and engineering is an order of magnitude higher than for media studies (sorry), so why bother?
The culmination of all this is that my boss - actually based in Germany where the "engineer" problem does not exist - has been seeking to fill a place in our team, but has been unable to find anyone with the combination of R&D and industrial experience we need in a six month global search.
Dr. Paul Stratton CEng CSci FIMMM.
(These are personal comments and do not necessarily reflect the position of Dr. Stratton’s employer).
British problems difficult to measure
My perception is that the government recognised that education is vital, then made the mistake of adopting a metric, which then biases actions. When management defines a metric for performance, inevitably the organisation works to maximise that metric - rather than to improve the underlying performance. Metrics need to be chosen with care.
So, instead of improving education, the system re-organised to maximise the metric, number of school certificates and number of university degrees issued.
What the country needs is politically difficult, since it rewards elite. But since the UK is in competition with other countries, the UK needs the best possible people at the top, in charge of engineering, finance, and business. To achieve that, the education system needs to recognise the best early, and give them the best education to help them achieve their potential.
Instead, the teachers aspire to bring everyone to the same standard, and work hard to help the worst achieve mediocrity. The best are left to look after themselves, which of course they can, but only to be fairly good, not to achieve excellence.
In parallel with all this is the classic British idea; "he's too clever for his own good." To be excellent is OK on the sports field, to achieve excellent results in business is OK, but to admit you understand science and engineering is somehow suspect, and it is better left to a tradesman or boffin somewhere.
Bitter? Overstated? Perhaps, but I think there is truth in there.
Rod Dalitz.
Snobbery throughout industry
I enjoyed your thought-provoking leader in EMT. You made some interesting points and I agree with pretty much all of them, although I would argue that this idea of academic snobbery extends much further than the halls of academia. It actually infects the whole of industry, if not the whole of UK business. As you correctly identify, every kind of training course open to young people these days seems to end in a degree of some sort. Youngsters are taught that a degree - any degree - confers to the holder an unassailable superiority in the workplace. The working world is thus divided into two camps; those with degrees and those without.
However, this rather myopic view of the world is not a new phenomenon. I did my engineering training in a four-year apprenticeship with the MoD (Ministry of Defence). After leaving the MoD to work in industry, it was a very common experience to see some fresh-faced engineering graduate strutting confidently onto the factory floor clutching a set of circuit diagrams that had no chance of working, only to leave with ego deflated by the realisation that they had no real idea how to translate the theory of electronic design into practice. I saw time-and-time-again, arrogant graduates cut down to size as the depth of their ignorance was revealed to them by those they clearly felt to be their inferiors in terms of intellectual ability. But this was merely part of the learning process. In the vast majority of cases, the engineering graduate would quickly learn to respect and value the advice and experience of the shop floor, and in turn the shop floor would nurture and support the youngster as they matured into what you might call "a proper engineer". This symbiotic relationship worked successfully for many, many years. But I feel that's all changed now.
The problem is that we don't have this two-lane approach to education anymore. We've lost all the apprenticeships and polytechnics, and with it, we've lost a whole generation of experienced mentors to help guide fledgling engineers on their path. The reason is, simply, youngsters have been taught to perceive any kind of training that has a practical side to it as somehow inferior to the purely academic. Hence the proliferation of (to my mind, at least) meaningless degree courses such as "media studies" etc. The actual value of a degree in terms of its usefulness in the real world is secondary to the fact that it is a degree. Young people emerge into the workforce after four years with a vastly inflated belief in their self-worth. The difference is there is no-one left in the workshop to challenge this misconception anymore. Nor, more importantly, to fill the voids in their knowledge.
I spend a lot of time in Japan, and here the situation is quite different. Everybody is expected to do a degree after high school, pretty much like the situation now in the UK. However the relationship with their future employer starts much earlier; degree students actually secure their future employment while still working on their courses. Upon graduation, they then go into a one or two year company training programme that is designed to show them how to translate the theory into practice. There is an implicit recognition of the fact that a degree alone, has limited value. The problem with the UK is that the education system has been designed by politicians and academics who simply do not acknowledge this fact. Consequently, UK business is choked with 24-year-old "experts" with no practical sense whatsoever, but brimming with an unwarranted arrogance that prevents any kind of epiphany with regard to their own abilities in the real world.
Academics and politicians should not be allowed to send young people out into the world so poorly equipped. I feel that if practical engineering skill was given the respect that it deserves, youngsters would not feel they had to do a degree to succeed in life. If we as a country had more of these skilled people in the workforce, we would all be more successful as a result.
Adrian Jones MCIPR, Managing Director of EIDO Public Relations.
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