Liberal Sciences

The traditional pattern of undergraduate education in the UK has been based on the specialist bachelors programme. Students follow a constrained and largely cohort based course of study that provides a narrow but deep foundation in their chosen subject. The educational rationale, to the extent that this sort of fundamental pattern is ever subject to analysis, is that such an immersion provides students with the tools for thought and an experience of what scholarship, for want of a better term, is like. The strength of programmes built on this basis has a matching weakness. Students are narrowly educated and have fewer opportunities to develop broader skills of the kind demanded in the workplace. From a provider point of view there are contending forces. Narrower programmes tend to suit university teachers who want to focus on their areas of specialisation. Such programmes are however expensive to provide with the proliferation of specialist content consumed by small groups of students.

The conventional pattern is now and probably has been for some time under threat. School education has changed, whether for the better or worse I would not like to say, so as to provide university entrants with fewer of the skills required to follow a specialised course. Students have become more knowledgeable, or at least more active, consumers of university education and it is their choices that determines the financial viability of course offerings. With a larger proportion of the population receiving university education, employability, with an emphasis on 'transferrable skills', has assumed a greater importance. As university education becomes more global the UK pattern has to compete with the wider, more open, US model that affords a greater flexibility to students. This is of course a slightly negative analysis  It is clear too that our intellectual disciplines and professional work are changing and that graduates need a broader exposure that enable them to work in the new spaces opening up between and across subjects.

In the context of these trends where does engineering education position itself? Engineering has been a professional course, the aim has not been to generally educate students but to prepare them for work as a professional engineer. The term 'professional formation' is often used to cover this.Syllabi have evolved conservatively in the face of the requirements of the professional institutions that provide accreditation (though it should be noted that engineers have been at the forefront of innovation in teaching methods). Even with the extension of engineering to a four-year programme, now the dominant model, there is little room for giving increased flexibility to students.

The obvious direction of travel would be the move of engineering to a postgraduate professional specialisation for entrants with an undergraduate preparation in the natural sciences. This model coincides with the so-called Melbourne model. It would not be possible to convert a science graduate to engineering in the one year of a conventional  masters programme but it could be done in a two-year 'European' style masters. Some sort of longer undergraduate engineering programme with an intercalated sciences degree might also be conceivable. I am uncertain, in the context of increased fees particularly, what the impact of this might be on the supply of engineers or on the shape of provision within the university sector.

There is an alternative but it requires a reimagining of engineering education. The alternative is to claim the intellectual high ground. In other words to claim engineering as precisely the broad subject that should form the basis of the education of a much wider set of students who might not go on to pursue engineering as a profession. Engineering as 'liberal sciences' if you like.

I do not think this is a difficult argument to stand up. The core of engineering is extremely well suited to this purpose. Engineering involves a grounding in the natural sciences, but also examines how such knowledge is applied. It deals in particular with complexity and how judicious simplifications and estimates can be used to render these complex problems into a tractable form. Engineering is concerned with creative synthesis and with decision making, combined in design. It also pays attention to evidence-based reasoning, using experiment and careful trials as a key element of practice.  Critical thinking and the ability to both take and give constructive advice again is a foundation of how engineers work. Engineers take a broad systems view, placing their work in context and seeking to understand the wider implications of their use. Engineering thus engages with the social sciences and embraces such matters as policy and ethics. Engineers are immediately concerned with the economic aspects of their work, not just better, faster, but also cheaper. Lastly, engineers are concerned with the human condition, in the sense that they aim to address the needs of people: for housing, security, food, energy, healthcare, and so on; and these concerns go beyond the material, for any practical engagement with them is sufficient to bring the other dimensions to the fore.

Engineering is thus a subject that, with it's direct engagement with technology and the challenges of society could form the armature for an engaging, meaningful, socially and economically valuable foundational degree programme. I would argue that this is a better place for engineering to be as a discipline than a retreat to being purely providers of narrow professional training.