With engineering students returning to their studies, we asked our readers how best to address the the practical skills deficit many believe is lacking in those entering the workplace.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority (65%) believed that work placement to coincide with academic study was the preferred option. The joint second most popular responses (14% each) were changes to university syllabuses and on-the-job training once employed.
Just 3% of respondents felt the best solution was for students to develop their own practical skills, despite many of our readers commenting in the past that this was how they had gained hands-on experience before entering third-level education. As ever, please give us your thoughts below. This is undoubtedly a debate that will rearing its head again in the future.
When I was at Sheffield University from 1968 to 1972, we were required to complete a minimum period in vacation training before we could graduate and we returned after Easter in the second year to go out into local industry in groups of 10 to look at specific problems. It worked very well.
The Engineering Society was active in organising visits to companies and inviting visiting lecturers to talk to us. The problem is that the amount of time it takes to babysit students is very high and can seriously detract from taking them on.
The top two answers in the list and results are clearly the winners. College/university syallabuses will nto be flexible or wide ranging enough. However work placements are not necessarily a panacea as inevitably they will be focussed around that employer’s specific needs and facilities, and can often be of too short a duration and often meaningless. I speak from experience! Companies should make more effort to train people properly to suit their own often unique or particular needs but also giving people an actual job as part of the process – an apprenticeship really! School/college/univeristy is only ever going to give people a broad brush experience of (hopefully) a wide range of the various engineering sub–disciplines and work placements only focus on one or two of them if a student is lucky. Work placements are rarely really hands-on and often people will end up doing trivial tasks or just watching. If they are being employed then there is a greater emphasis on getting them to do something useful.
In a word: projects ! A student that has built something, either on their own or in a team, something you can stub your toe, something real, has also built a capability in their mind that will last a lifetime.
Yes, projects! The results of banging through a year or two of team competitions or such projects is perhaps the best way to ready a student for at least some of the realities to lie ahead. We won’t even interview engineers who do not have some form of practical exposure to teamwork, deadlines, hands-on problem solving, etc. It’s not that we exclude others, it is just that we find a suitable candidate before we even get to the “other” stack of resumes. The best results for us have come from the various SAE competitions, but there are others as well.
A graduate of the 1980’s 90’s I was fortunate to go through the “Thin Sandwich” course system at a university that at the time was considered in the top 3 by industrial employers for the employability of the graduates. This position was constantly under threat by the newspaper that compiled the rankings who constantly changed the reporting criteria, presumably in the hope that Oxford or Cambridge would earn the top spot, but each year the youngest (then) university in the country would take one of those places. In the end that University itself caused its own fall from grace by switching from a universal 6 months on 6 months off with a final 9 month 4th year to a semesterised (sic) system which ended the run.
It caused a lot of problems for the University departments and for the Students themselves in that houses were vacant 6 months of the year, Students and departments had to spend a fair amount of time seeking 6 month placements, and it obviously interfered with research rankings which were also depressed due to the bitty nature of the academic year but in terms of the experience and capabilities of the students it was unparalleled. More and longer student placements with practical projects and training. What is the point of a structural engineer who doesn’t know how to weld? not because welding is a requirement of a structural engineer but unless they know how to then they can’t know the problems and limitations and a bound to make mistakes, before that experience can be instilled by failure (this is an example only, every industry and field will have a similar bugbear ). It is better that this happens on a trainees time and project than a life or death project with millions riding on it.
I am one of the tiny minority who voted for “Students acquiring the knowledge themselves”. I’ll try not to be another old fart bemoaning the complexity of modern cars so we can’t maintain them or the disappearance of Meccano, but real engineers make things and enjoy making things. The head of software in my company has one question when he’s interviewing potential recruits “What project are you working on at home?” They all have a CV stuffed with professional training but he only wants the ones who’ve connected a Raspberry Pi to the washing machine. Maybe we employers should up the demands on recruits to show that they love engineering, not just study it. You wouldn’t get into a vet school without a garage full of sick bunnies, or a language school without having hitchhiked round most of Europe.
+1 for this. I am also in favour of the top two answers, but to be a great engineer, you can’t rely solely on the educational establishments or workplace to spoon feed you everything. A mentor of mine once said that “Engineers are born, not trained”, whilst not entirely true this alludes to the fact that you have to be a lifetime enthusiast to succed as a practical engineer. I have usually got a personal ‘shed project’ going on and often use solutions in my working life that I first tried at home.
I really like the “What project are you working on at home?” question and will use this when conducting interviews in the future.
No one should take up a position as engineer until/unless they have completed a ‘shop floor’ apprenticeship with their employer. But currently, the responsibility is with the employer. If companies want to take up graduates with very few practical/hands-on skills or experience, that’s their choice.
I am an engineer with 50 years of experience in the engineering field.My suggestion is to introduce a program in the engineering college syllabus, where the students will be exposed to practical work in a an industry first, before they study theory in a class room. The program can be arranged in such a way that the students will have one or two months or more of work in a an industry followed by one or two months or more of theoretical coaching in a classroom.The advantage of this method of training is that, the student already knows what is being taught in a classroom because he has worked on it in the industry during his practical training. For example, suppose a student has to study about a welding machine in his classroom.If he has had a practical training in an industry using welding machines, he already knows what a welding machine is, because he has already worked on it. His grasping of the subject will be thorough as he already knows how a welding machine operates and used. Now in the classroom he knows why a welding machine works the way it does, because he is learning the theory.This method will be a complete theory- practical combination of instruction for engineering in any institution. I wish all engineering institutions in the world over, will have such a curriculum of instruction.Such institutes, in my opinion, will produce the best engineers. We can learn a lot from the Germans in this regard.
Thank you
Best wishes
I did an apprenticeship when I left school at 16. That was 1 week school, 1 week workshop. For the first year. In the second year we started working for two weeks “out there” in the factory with real teams. Then one week school. Two months for a team, then rotate to the next one. The last half year working in the team were we’d work after the factory took us in after the apprenticeship.
The knowledge I gained from that apprenticeship is still useful today. Not just the technical knowledge, but especially health and safety. A grinder is as dangerous today as it was 30 years ago.
I think that the example of bring a welding machine to the class-room is non-profitable; because
You will need PPE for everybody, plus the risks associated with a machinery handling high voltage, use something more down to earth, Dr. TC Chandran
My practical experience started aged 9. re-building my parents law mower engine.
OK so I had too, because I had taken it appart on my own to find out how it works. It was the best way for me to learn. I allways struggled with the theory part of engineering.
Yep, I’m with Iain on this. You need to start early and learn by doing, and asking questions. I think I started by taking my toys apart to ‘see how they worked’, bounced questions off my Dad as to ‘Why? and How?’ a thing was as it was. Eventually, I not only put my toys back together, but had them working as well. It’s that practical experience that has kept me asking the same questions ever since. Schools, Colleges and Universities can help, but if you don’t have a desire to keep asking the questions, they can’t do it for you. It’s the tenacity to keep badgering away at the questions until you get to the answers – that’s what make a good engineer, of whatever discipline.
I doubt there is any real panacea for this problem. Ideally a student engineer will have a combination of the practical and the technical. It takes time to enquire both. University/College for 3 to 4 days and one day working in a good engineering company is probably as good as it can get.
I did one day and two evenings at college and the other four days in the works, the apprentice school initially learning to file, turn, shape etc.. Then a drawing office, factory floor, administrative office, test department, research laboratory and so on for five years. All controlled by my employer; not the college. Passing my final exams gave me Graduate status in my Institution. I have never understood why this system was dismantled. I still regard it as the best.
We always have work experience young people but the conditions are somewhat restrictive, like only two weeks allowed to them and general paranoia about factory conditions by the schools.
We always have success with these YP’s and usually get a nice letter back showing a genuine interest and enjoyment on their exposure to the world of jobbing electrical type work. This age 15+ is a good time to catch young people who are not sure quite what they want to do in life.
Extend the work experience for school age kids to at least 4 weeks , is my view.
University apprenticeship did me proud. 5 year apprenticeship; year 1 at the company, 3 years at university with company work in long vacs and final year with the company. The initial break from academia is a relief and gives purpose to the following 3 years. Gives the best of both worlds.
Bring back the EITB 1st year practical grounding in all disciplines. + what Rimimgton said above.
While I was studying in East Germany, one important part was 6 months mandatory research internship with essay. Plus 6 months final research work with final essay. In summer holidays we worked in factories or construction sites to earn some money. And at the start of each year we had to work 2 weeks in the harvest. In addition there might have been some additional work in Winter when the open pit lignite mines were frozen.
Admission to university required at least 1 year experience in practical work. You couldn’t go from high school straight to university.
Bring back the 5 year apprenticeship to get real life experience and maturity and then go to university. I had to attend night school 3 nights a week for 5 + years getting City + Guids/ONC/HNC and I had pay for myself, (not many employers sent apprentices on day release then), as this will sort the men from the boys by seeing if they stick to it.
(PS – I also had to pay for my university education and take unpaid leave)
Having been a Royal Air Force Apprentice I can only vouch for the superiority of that type of training, I dare say the Army and Navy apprentice schools all come into this category. We studied in the morning and did practical in the afternoon. Constantly being appraised and tested to rigorous standards (+/- 5 thou) my boy, nothing else would do. If projects didn’t meet the instructors criteria it was chucked in the scrap bin and you started again, no short cuts. Yes I know it was the ‘forces’ but it still turns out first rate technicians.
Totally agree with reply above from Allan Rhodes, We need proper apprenticeship’s again and not the type they come up with to fiddle employment figures. I was lucky enough to have an employer who paid for the day release then the evening courses. Prior to this, when I left schooI I spent a year on full time, ONC, production based engineering course covering both theory and practical work, although unsuccessful in getting an apprenticeship at this point I then proceeded to do a full time EITB engineering course with ONC on day release and night school.
Lock a group of say eight students in a room, where, to escape, the team need to perform a number (8?) of practical tasks. Each student leading on one task. Tasks for example …Wiring a 13A plug, welding, soldering, fault finding and repairing a ball cock, cutting a thread on a rod, drilling and tapping a hole, disassembling something, assembling something else, producing a flowchart or similar for a simple task e.g using a cash dispenser – including fault conditions, siphoning
some fluid / water, changing a fan belt … Or similar practical tasks. Opportunities to change the tests and could be the basis of a competition?
I thought this problem had been cracked back in the 60’s.
At that time I was taken on as an Undergraduate Apprentice by a large aerospace company. In collaboration with this company, the local university offered a four year sandwich engineering degree – 6 months industry/6 months uni.
Four years hard work, but the result was an immediately employable engineer…
I`m with Allan Rhodes on this one.
Back in the sixty`s, I was lucky enough to serve an engineering apprenticeship with Brisltol Siddeley Engines (now Rolls Royce), We did basic training plus spells in all the workshop departments, all the technical offices and all while attending college according to the course you were on. Degrees could be managed within a similar system with perhaps an additional year. Frankly, it was heaven and we even had a small paypacket!!
We came out of our apprenticeship, turning up on time, working as a team and with sufficient knowledge and skill to start doing productive work from day one.
It`s still heaven 50 years later.
Whilst I was doing my training at the now defunct Raleigh Industries in Nottingham, a new young individual arrived in the Standards room whilst I was in there. The chief engineer asked him where he had come from and he said university. The engineer said “Does that mean you have a degree then?” the individual said he had, and the engineer said “Ok, forget all that, NOW you’ll start to learn about engineering!”
All highly laudable views and comments: and most are very positive contributions to ‘the debate’.
Student apprenticeship before Uni was my route: being ‘balled-out’ by, Alf, the apprentice master, by a series of operatives (I got in the way and asked many questions when their pay depended on ‘numbers-produced’) being taught what a tolerance is [ a friend did introduce a new designation: as well as push fit, and slide-fit he suggested ‘rattle-fit’ for one of my test pieces] Working with folk of all types, sizes, colours, creeds, abilities and skills was as important as developing an early ‘safety’ culture…bless you Woods of Colchester!
I would add that just as my ‘remedial’ mathematics course -used at two universities- relied heavily on ‘mathematics’ in areas that students already know -sport, transport, the gym, the kitchen, even the bedroom- I do believe the modern home (and garage) has many excellent examples of practical Engineering- if students look for them. If cooking is applied chemistry (it is) surely much of what goes on in a house is applied ‘science’. Central heating, flow of water to multiple outlets, flow of ‘current’ to/from the power supply -flow of air, all the car, phone, boat, kite, drone!! bicycle technologies -gluing, there are so many. I am setting my grand-children down this path by challenging them to come-up with their ideas about various processes: so that they own such!
Employers want colleges to produce students who are educated and experienced.
Collages are there to educate experience comes from the employer.
I am still gaining experience after 40 years.
Remove their electronic gear and make them read technical books and literature. Get out into industry and get amongst the machinery and get dirty. Then write some comprehensive reports that can be submitted to their peers for review. A significant challenge should be to write a technical article and achieve publication, or deliver a technical article at a forum.
Charles Eden ….lucky enough to serve an engineering apprenticeship with Brisltol Siddeley Engines (now Rolls Royce),
I spent two summers there: and agree totally with Charles: the combination of practical and theoretical skills was excellent. That and getting the work ethic, safety culture, ability to ‘get-on’ (or NOT!) with persons of all ‘levels’ in the firm was a bonus.
“I took the opportunity for vacation work at Bristol Siddeley Engines. The iconic aircraft, 001
Concorde was being assembled there and the earliest 301 Olympus engines built and tested. I was allowed to brush on the ‘temperature sensitive paint’ behind the mountings on the Handley Page Victor aircraft fuselage that was used as the test-bed for the Olympus. I also designed a fixture to improve ‘lost-wax’ mould preparations, a process that had its roots in the jewellery trade. My nephew now works for Rolls Royce in the same building at Patchway, near Bristol. It’s a small world.
I was lucky enough to have a proper apprenticship, with time in work between college and uni (sandwitch course) this had a fully laid out program of which departments I was to work in and length of time, so I recieved a full overview of the business before graduating. This was for the NCB, and like lots of nationised industries (GEGB, gas board, British Rail, etc) they had the time and resources to do this and turned out lots of very competent engineers, who are now almost all near retirement.
Since setting up on my own I have worked in many industries as a consultant and unfortunately not often found the same level of practical and theoretical knowledge. Some of the best Engineers have come up from the shop floor, with a very pragmatic approach. Some of the worst have been Oxbridge types who rarely venture outside of the their offices.
How to improve the training, I would look to other countries such as Germany, Japan, USA etc, where the Engineer has a higher status and look at their solutions and cherry pick the ideas that suit the UK best. The problem will be the costs involved, so firms will find it cheaper to import Engineers in the future, someone else having paid for the training.
When I studied Mech Eng at IC in the 1960s, they refused to take me straight from school, although I had a family background in engineering. So, I took a “thick sandwich” Student Apprenticeship with a company which in the first, pre-college year, started by putting me in the purpose-made “Apprentice Bay”, where I learned to use hand and machine tools, then gave me spells in each of the factory’s production departments.
The first college long vacation was spent at the factory, including maintenance operations during the works holiday fortnight, while the second was spent on work placement at an unrelated factory in Adelaide, courtesy of a program supported by the UK and AUS governments.
The apprenticeship concluded with 2 years in the design department.
Looking back, it has served me well.
As far as Mechanical Engineering is concerned, the IMECHE used to only accredit courses that included an amount of workshop practice. This was removed by the Engineering Council in developing UK Spec, but the IMECHE should never had stood for it. Second, when I was at Uni, thirty years ago, two thirds of the students were sponsored, so Companies took the responsibility for providing that practical element. 1-3-1 sandwich; a great thing. So, undo both retrograde steps. Sounds simple.
I agree with most of the comments above. The sad reality is that practical engineering is not valued at University level any more because it is not generating research papers fast enough, it is expensive and it takes time. The pathetic efforts made by some “education leaders” bringing in Lego and toy machines are also very aggravating. They do not represent reality – it is just a dodge to try and show some sort of progress.
We need students that have had a real experience – they simply cannot be expected to go to industry and be useful if they have not experienced the interaction with industrial sized machines and processes while learning the theory behind it. However – that does not necessarily mean a wander back to “good old days” of apprenticeships – we need a new model fit for the young men and women that want to follow a career in engineering now.
It is a sad state of affairs that when talking with many of my younger colleagues (I am only 45) some of the early words out of their mouths in more social moments are ‘Where did you do your degree?’. Happily I respond with ‘The University of Life’.
For I was trained in the RAF (not a formal apprentice) as a mechanic and later Technician then technical manager (all hands on) and have carried on learning and adapting my skillset as time and need has required. They can not believe I have progressed to where I am without having done a degree. This i feel is the start of the slippery slope, as once these people progress through their career they will instantly discount everyone without a degree, but more importantly hold no or little respect for experience and are unable to comprehend how valuable this is. I see many around me now who have the following expectation of life Degree by 21 and Chartered engineer by 25. For me (personal view) Chartership should not be available unless you have at least a decade of experience, as only then can you expect to scratch the surface of understanding real problems and predicting the route forward. I am hopefully imminently to be Chartered but in honesty this is only a CV filling excersize as despite the experience and track record I can’t compete against many of my inexperienced but degree holding younger counterparts.
As for the basic discusssion, every degree course should absolutely include a period of vocational training AND require the under-grads to be able to perform engineering skills relevant to their discipline, even at a basic level, so they understand some of the constrains. Alas I know too many electronic engineers who can’t solder. Mechanical engineers that don’t know which way round to use a spanner or why, and a list of other basic skills a ‘time served’ individual carries out without thinking.
In my opinion, each study year at university should be divided into three terms. The first two for paper work and the third for implementing what they have been taught using different resources either working in allocated companies or universities professors’ guide.
I believe I have posted this concept before. Stolen? from Clemson S Carolina School of Textiles. Third year students have to design, ‘construct/engineer/specify a fabric’ for a project defined by a US textile commercial firm. They are the ‘management. Second year students have to be recruited and trained to be charge-hands, foremen, etc: first year students have to be motivated as the operatives: using the machinery in the labs. All are intimately involved in the presentation to ‘customer’. Outstanding committment and skills are developed and used. I am sure that there are ‘engineering’ equivalents to this. Go to it!
One other very important issue would be to stop the unfounded wingeing about pay and status and stop promulgating the fiction about how Engineers are worshipped in every other country. They are not. We can, if we collectively lose our inferiority complex, earn respect-as I believe many of us have. It is not going to be given automatically, and the pathetic unjustified whining just damages our status.
A late comment –
If we are to require engineering students to engage in the wold of work through placements, then lots of businesses need to step up and offer places for those students to fill.
If engineering is to be taken seriously, we must stop the term engineer being applied to mechanics and technicians, and require all engineers to be registered a such. You cannot call yourself a doctor if you are not suitably qualified, why should that be different for engineering.
It’s interesting how many comments relate to gaining experience from summer or placement jobs. How many companies still do this?
It’s also interesting how many comment to say that we should be respected as “engineers” and the term protected so car mechanics can’t use it. Then in the next poll lament the (in)ability of the current students to fix a car……
Totally agree with so many of the above comments. I was lucky enough to do a 1-3-1 sandwich course as part of my training for a career in electronics & telecomms, with EITB approved EP1 & EP2 training. These covered training in many departments mandatory to become MIEE (MIET now). In the 2 industrial year much practical work was required, from machine shop work to on-site support. Back in the day (early 80’s) most technical apprenticeships at all levels, required O level in Maths & Physics, and the EITB payroll levy encouraged employers, especially larger companies, to run formal approved industrial training, with training schools etc.
I agree the 1 year apprenticeships are in stark contrast to the 5 yr ones of old (were we that dumb in the 80’s?).
I recall thick booklets listing all thick (1-3-1) and thin (2-1-1 / 6month/6month) apprenticeships on offer. I have searched in vain for an equivalent collated list on the web. When analysing modern day apprenticeships I was shocked to see how few were level 5-7, which would be the equivalent to the university/poly based sandwich courses of old.