400 SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— L. 



Examinations and Certificates. 



Object of examinations and value of certificates. Multiplicity and need for 

 co-ordination. 



Some problems and difficulties. 



The whole system voluntary. Great variation in attainment, ability and needs 

 of students. Overtime and the shift system. Gap from fourteen to sixteen and the 

 summer gap. The teacher, full-time and part-time. Annual leakage of students. 

 Small advanced classes. 



Have technical schools the whole-hearted support of Industry ? Need for local 

 and national advisory committees. Preparation for trade revival. 



Dr. H. Schofield. — Engineering Training on Production. 



Although the subject of training the engineer is one full of controversy which does 

 not apparently grow any less as experience proceeds, there is yet one point upon which 

 we have almost complete unanimity, namely, that somewhere in the training of the 

 engineer must come time spent in actual practical experience on productive output. 

 This may precede or follow a University or Higher Technical College training, according 

 to the views held by those responsible for placing students in such institutions. There 

 are difficulties whichever way the course is taken, and it was in an endeavour to get 

 over these difficulties that the scheme of training now in progress at Loughborough 

 College was founded. 



Whether we approve or not, in general, the system of Engineering production in 

 this country is tending to change. The mass system of output is slowly but surely 

 gaming ground, and must extend if we are successfully to meet the difficulties of 

 world-wide competition. Consequent upon this system it may be shown that the 

 best boy tends to have the least chance. The mobility allowed to the average young 

 man in our modern works is small, and there is little connection between the manu- 

 facturing and the distributing sides. 



If we turn to the institutions responsible for the theoretical side of a student's 

 training, we find other difficulties inherent in the system. There is a tendency which 

 will grow alarming, unless carefully checked, for the College or University responsible 

 for technological training to become dissociated from the industry for which it is 

 responsible for training recruits. Many reasons may be giveti for this, not the least 

 of which is the practical difficulty of teachers keeping in organic contact with industry 

 on its commercial side. University Courses in Engineering and allied Technology 

 are designed, perhaps of necessity, on a mathematical and physical basis, yet for an 

 all-round engineer there are three aspects of training, each of which is equally 

 important : — 



1. Its Mathematical and Physical side. 



2. The question of Management. 



3. The art of Selling, Distributing, and obtaining a Market. 



The so-called engineering workshops in our larger technical institutions tend to 

 become laboratories rather than workshops in the real sense of the term. 



Various methods of training have been introduced from time to time to deal with 

 the above difficulties ; the Faraday House system embodies a very good admixture 

 of the theoretical and the commercially practical ; the works productive ' bays ' in 

 large firms such as the British Thomson-Houston Company, Limited, of Rugby, and 

 Messrs. W. H. Allen & Company, of Bedford, give an excellent method of keeping the 

 student in touch with production during his years of training ; the experiments in 

 America, at Worcester and Cincinnati, should also be quoted as giving a successful 

 method of tackling this problem. 



In the productive college the exercise is abolished in every section. Graded 

 production suitably selected giving the maximum variety of experience is substituted 

 from the beginning. Again difficulties occur: the right type of instructor is not 

 easily found ; the cost of scrap may prove serious, unless carefully watched ; the 

 attitude of interested people may not always be sympathetic, and last, but by no 

 means least, delivery is a formidable trouble. On the other side the advantages are 

 overwhelming. A student is interested, keen, and enthusiastic ; he feels that he is 

 working to some purpose, and that his work has a value which can be assessed com- 

 mercially within his own experience, his practical work is in direct and constant 

 touch w'ith his theory in the lecture room and laboratory. At the end of a fifth- 

 year course he has had a reasonably wide experience for a young man of his age, and 

 he knows something of the relative costs of the application of his theoretical knowledge. 



