Rethinking professionalism

"Professional engineers have a low status in the UK: underpaid and not accorded the respect that is enjoyed by doctors, lawyers or even accountants". "Compare the standing of engineers in Germany, where the title Diploma Engineer, is recognised and honoured". "The man who came to fix the car called himself an engineer, no wonder we cannot gain the respect we deserve". These are standard statements wheeled out whenever engineering professionalism is discussed - which is pretty much anytime engineers meet en masse. Let us for a moment set aside the tired, negative, and perhaps even self-fulfilling, aspects of this discourse and look at it's ramifications.

The search for status has been driven by the fear of being mistaken for rude mechanics. We have attempted with limited success to establish the title "Chartered Engineer" as the marker of professionalism. Over time the academic component of the requirements for chartered membership have been ratcheted up so that it now requires a masters degree (or a 4 year undergraduate engineering-masters). A technician engineers stream has been more clearly delineated. Ironically however the scrutiny of the period of professional experience has been slackened. The 'graduate apprenticeship' and system of log books with signatures from supervising engineers has fallen into abeyance and is replaced largely by 'time served' (chemical and civil engineers are more rigorously assessed).

Yet, I can perceive no diminution in the rhetoric nor any sense that in pulling the Chartered Engineer away from the body of practising engineers we have achieved the rise in status that was intended. Note here that, of course, I am not arguing against the value of an extended and academically demanding engineering education for those capable of benefiting from it.

I did my engineering training in an engineering company specialising in fine mechanical manufacturing equipment and located in the east end of London. It was tough, and perhaps what I, a delicately raised, over-intellectual, boy from the mean streets of Hendon Central needed. I emerged with some sense of what the practice of engineering entailed, but more than anything a real and abiding respect for the mechanics, tool-makers and foremen who spared their time, though few of my blushes, to explain what it took to do engineering in the 'real world'. I still wish I could be half the engineer that those men were. I don't think that engineering professionalism, or the esteem that we seek, is to be found by distinguishing ourselves from them, or from the technicians who corrected my unrealisable designs. On the contrary, professional engineers will only achieve recognition when engineering as a whole is understood and appreciated for it's role in society.

Perhaps the maker / hacker movement with it's emphasis on engagement with hands-on engineering and with it's egalitarian cool contains the seeds of the sort of rethinking of engineering that I would like to see. I hope so. Perhaps too it might indicate a more relaxed self confidence which will allow engineers, in a sense broader than a narrow professional cadre, to contribute to society and gain the esteem merited by those contributions.