ARTHUR'S WAYProfessor Fen Arthur (below), Dean of Faculty -

Engineering and Computer Technology at BirminghamPolytechnic, believes that Britain's commercial and

economic future rests on its engineers rather than its

legions of accountants. His vision of the future involves aserious shake up in education and pay scales, as well as a

radical change in popular cultural stereotypes.

In 1992 we will have a true European Marketwith free exchange of goods and servicesacross national boundaries. In effect it will giveUK companies an enhanced domestic market.

Success in this market will ensure that companiescan employ economies of scale and thus increase thecompetitiveness of their goods in markets outside ofEurope. It is an exciting prospect, and if we aresuccessful we can look forward to emulating theliving standards of the more prosperous of our NorthEuropean neighbours.

If we are to gain a greater share of the Europeanmarket our goods will need to match those of ourcompetitors in terms of technological sophisticationand manufacturing quality. However, our Europeancompetitors, particularly the West Germans, aretechnologically advanced, well educated anddetermined to maintain at least their share of themarket. Furthermore, whatever attributes we considerapply to our European competitors are even moreapplicable to our competitors from the Far East. Wehave a long way to go to catch up the opposition. Inthe months of August and September of 1988 thevisible trade surpluses of Japan and West Germanywere $15.5 and $10.9 billion dollars respectively. Inthe same two months the UK deficit was $4.9 billionand that of the USA $23.3 billion. At the same timethe interest rates in Japan and West Germany weresignificantly lower than the UK (Interest rates Nov'88: Japan 3.6%, Germany 4.4%, UK 11.6%).

Most of our competitors have the advantage thatthey live in societies which value engineering andtechnology. In West Germany, for example, it is asincere compliment to refer to someone as a goodTechniker'. The result is a manufacturer-friendlysociety and one that admires the professional ratherthan the amateur. The culture in Britain is quitedifferent. In an article in The Times in 1978, it wasstated that: "The British image of the 'educated man1

is built into the very texture of the Oxbridge college: aworld of pastoral withdrawal from the everyday worldwhere reflective and bookish pursuits may go onunhindered and uninterrupted by the humdrumindustrial society . . . From this world, our leaders,our educated men, particularly in the Civil Serviceand the professions, emerge in steady procession."

You may argue that things have changed since1978 but if you look at the membership of the House

of Parliament there are only one or two who areprofessional engineers, and we in the profession aresignificantly under-represented compared to lawyers.The Prime Minister, initially a chemist, is the nearestengineering has ever got to being represented at thehighest political levels.

This tradition in Britain of the gifted amateur, whichsome find attractive, has an adverse effect on any hopewe have of competing effectively in Europe. InGermany their polytechnics (Facchoschules) areinundated with students wishing to study engineering,and in at least one Facchoschule of which I havepersonal experience, the engineering courses are sofull that the students end up sitting on the window sills.Conversely, in Britain, many engineering courses areundersubscribed with the universities indicating aslump of interest in engineering (Financial Times 2ndDec '88), reflected by a fall of 15% for those applyingfor civil engineering, an 8% fall in mechanicalengineering and a 7% drop for electronic engineering.This against a background of reported skill shortagesin engineering.

In contrast to engineering, interest in financialmanagement has increased significantly. Applica-

tions to university courses in this subject areaincreased 27% in 1986-87. Over the period 1975-85the number of accountancy graduates increasedeight-fold so that the UK now has 60% of Europe'saccountants. The total number of qualifiedaccountants in the UK is 120 000 whilst there are6000 in Japan and 4000 in West Germany. Takinginto account the populations of these two countriesand comparing them with that of the UK we find thatwe have roughly 32 times more accountants per headof the population than West Germany and over 40times more per head of the population than Japan.

There is little doubt that accountants have animportant role to play in any modern industrialsociety. However, their role should be subservient tothat of engineers. They could not, for example, startup a company such as Hewlett Packard, a financiallysuccessful engineering company now employing82 000 people world-wide with an $8 billion turnover.Hewlett Packard was started up by two engineers in1939 who had developed an audio oscillator. Theoscillator was of advanced design (for the times) andthe company has retained its original philosophy ofengineering excellence. From my experience with myfriends and colleagues in West Germany and Japanthe importance of engineering excellence is wellunderstood by them. It is also appreciated by thestudents in my faculty and by my industrial andacademic engineering colleagues. So why are welikely to have a balance of trade deficit this year of£13 billion whilst the West Germans are expecting asurplus of £39 billion and the Japanese surplus lastyear was in excess of £40 billion?

The paranoia implicit in the above paragraphs iswell recognised as being an essential part of thepsychological make-up of all engineers. The reasonsfor the paranoia have been articulated throughout allof this century and much of last. The Finniston Report(Engineering Our Future) was an imaginative attempt,although not the first such attempt, to analyse theproblems facing engineering industry and to providelong term strategies for solving them. This yearrepresents the eleventh anniversary of the FinnistonReport.

Many of the problems identified by Finniston arestill applicable to contemporary Britain. The strategysuggested to solve them fell into three broadcategories, viz:

MANUFACTURING ENGINEER 30 MAY 1989

• A need to change the way we educate engineers.• A need to increase the numbers of engineers.• A need to improve the pay and status of

engineers.Consider now how far we in the profession have

progressed in meeting these needs.

1. Changes in Engineering EducationRelated to the changes needed, Finniston made thepoint: "The curriculum of engineering degrees, which(in 1979) is biased towards engineering science,should be radically altered and biased much moretowards the philosophy of 'Technik' which placeseverything taught in the context of economicpurpose."

In the engineering education sector, the FinnistonReport was an 'event'. It initiated a new generation ofengineering degrees, titled BEng. These new degreesencompass many of the ideas prompted by Finnistonin that they are biased towards project work andengineering applications. The technical studies arecomplemented by work on finance, businessorganisation, marketing and communication skills. Inthe public sector of Higher Education, the Council ofNational Academic Affairs, through its peer reviewsystem, has played a major role in ensuring that thenew BEng degrees are not pale imitations of their BScpredecessors.

2. Need for Increasing the Number of EngineeringGraduates

Finniston estimated that in 1978 the number ofUK engineering graduates was 10 800. Throughoutthe early 1980s this number has increased so that in1983 there were 12 800 engineering graduates and afurther 7000 or so in related subject areas (egcomputing and data processing), roughly 20 000 inall. (In comparison the 1983 statistics in Japanshowed there were 74 000 graduates in engineeringand related disciplines and that the ratio ofapplicants/places filled was three times as high inJapan as in the UK).

Demand for places on UK engineering courses islower than in other subject areas such as law,business studies and finance. For example, I canquote the case of one Higher Education estab-lishment (and this is typical) where the rate ofapplications for places was almost 19:1 in Business

Studies and Law and 7:1 in Engineering. For a coursein Media Studies over 59 students applied for everyplace available.

3. Pay and StatusInterest in engineering, and the demand for

engineering courses, must in no small measure berelated to the pay and the perceived status of itspractitioners. The Finniston Report was unequivocalon the need to improve both, stating: "Werecommend that all employing organisations under-take a comprehensive review of their salary andcareer provisions for engineers to ensure that havingregard to their key roles within the engineeringdimension, engineers are not undervalued.'

My favourite example of the general public's viewof an engineer's role is the comment, 'He does thedrains in XXXX' (the person being commented aboutwas the borough engineer of XXXX). A more up todate comment, made at the 1987 StandingConference on Schools Science and Technology,was: 'There seems to be a cultural bias in this countryagainst technology and investment in it and yet oureconomic future depends on it.'

There are, of course, many other examples andreaders will I am sure be able to provide their ownspecial favourite. We may argue that they areuninformed views and that engineering has a muchhigher status than is implied in the comments. Indefence of our position I am often told that we are awell paid profession. Untortunately, whenever I finddata to support this viewpoint it seems to prove theopposite. Table 1, for example is a shortened versionof a pay comparison which was recently published inthe Financial Times.

The data in the Table should not be taken tooliterally. A number of other factors (such asgeographical location of the people from whom thedata is obtained) alter the bias, and in real termsreduce the gap that a straight-forward interpretationof the raw data would suggest. Even so, over a 12month period the differences between the threespecialisms increased, with a consequent worseningof the engineers'position.

As evidenced by pay, by the comments ofindependent observers and by student demand forengineering courses, we do not seem to havesufficiently raised the consciousness of the purse

FinancePersonnelEngineering

FinancePersonnelEngineering

! £.44=057/ £34-649

' £20,830£25 000£21 994

£'17 943£16 095£16 010

--^.t. .......

Table 1: Comparative pay scales for different ranks and departments

string holders and the general public to theimportance of engineering and its practitioners. Sowhat would I like to see done to improve the position.I would much appreciate that:• In the next series of Howard's Way (BBC 1 TV)Tom (The Engineer) takes the Freres (the Financiers)to the 'cleaners'. They (the Freres) end up living in asmall (tiny) flat in an unprepossessing part of townwith the glitzy Jan (successful business woman whohas no discernible talent or education). MeanwhileTom marries his scientist/engineer girl friend andlives in professional and monetary luxury for the restof his life.• Someone coined another word for engineer whichwas totally unrelated to the word engine (it would alsohelp the image if it was derived from Greek or Latin).• Companies endeavoured (even more than now) toimprove career prospects (including pay but alsosuch things as early responsibilities) of engineers sothat they approximate more closely to the perceivedattractiveness of other professions.• The professional engineering Institutions couldforget their differences and set up, in partnership withthe engineering employers' organisations, a com-mittee to look seriously at the two recent reports onmanagement education (Handy: 'Making of Man-agers' and Constable and McCormick: 'The Makingof British Managers'). Having looked at these reportsthe Committee then ignored a high proportion of therecommendations made in them and instead ofadopting the (recommended) USA model for thetraining of managers, recommended that we followedinstead the West German or Japanese models.• As a result of the recommendations made by thecombined engineering organisations, engineeringand management schools throughout the UK gottogether to provide courses in engineering manage-ment to a curriculum which, in broad terms, is laiddown centrally.• More companies should look at participating inre-training/up-dating programmes in order to makebetter use of its main resource, ie its staff.• There was greater company participation withpolytechnics and universities in the research andtraining schemes (such as the Teaching CompanySchemes, the Integrated Graduate DevelopmentScheme, The Applications of Computers in Manufac-turing Engineering Scheme) that are funded by theScience and Engineering Research Council (SERC)or by the SERC in collaboration with the DTI. (Anyonenot fully conversant with these schemes pleasecontact either the SERC or their local polytechnic oruniversity).

Much of the above is, of course, merely arestatement of similar points made by others (eg theEngineering Council). Many companies are partici-pating in some, or all, of the activities listed and arecontinually striving to improve both the pay andworking conditions of their engineering staff.However, we need to do more to improve both thequantity and quality of those who take up theprofession. If we don't, who is going to fund mypension? I think the West Germans might, notunreasonably, object. M

MANUFACTURING ENGINEER 31 MAY 1989