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Full co-operation may not be so far away
Page 100
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I OUTLINED some of the steps last week that can be taken in preparation for higher management posts in road transport through university qualifications and experience. These are new routes—few of the courses mentioned existed in any form a few years ago. But there are several other ways to obtain higher management qualifications —how, for example, do the awards of the professional institutes fit?
The problem facing the institutes is that their awards have not been specifically geared to management training. Their work has been regarded in the past as being an educational adjunct to the industry. Their courses of study give a good general background to the industry's problems but specific management problems have been ex eluded. Study has been almost entirely parttime and even day-release courses preparing for institute examinations are only a product of the last few years. Further, the Associate Membership grade has been regarded as the end of the academic road with no further disciplined study stretching beyond this stage.
Times are changing slowly and ladders are at last being placed beyond the Associate Membership grade. All the transport institutes have been lifting their ceilings in an effort to make their qualifications much more in accord with the needs of modern transport management. The Institute of Transport is now most anxious to forge important links with universities and is hopeful that the Associate Membership
(AMInstT) will be widely recognized as an entrance qualification to degree courses. Salford University readily takes those possessing AMInstT for the transport first degree course but it is a more difficult operation to gain acceptance to post-graduate studies in transport. At the moment only slow progress is being made in this direction and it seems likely that only those who have gained Honours and Distinction marks in AMInstT will be considered of the calibre to proceed to a higher degree transport course.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that the AMInstT award has become one of the recognized qualifications for progress to the Department of Education and Science sponsored Diploma in Management Studies. At the moment this course, which can be taken as a full-time activity or under "sandwich" arrangements, concentrates on generai management studies but plans are going ahead to bring in a transport option—and in view of the RTITB interest in the scheme—with a road transport bias.
The Institute of Traffic Administration is providing a Diploma course beyond its corporate member examination stage (AMInstTA) which will be concerned with a piece of transport research. This award, which has not been yet examined, could form an important bridge to further advanced study, given that the research is properly conducted and supervised. The Industrial Transport Association has also been thinking along these lines and is currently seeking a much closer co-operation with the Insti, tute of Transport_ Most progress along the lines of providing studies beyond corporate membership has been made by the Institute of Road Transport Engineers which is building a two-way route beyond the Associate Membership (AMIFtTE). One road leads to higher level engineering qualifications and the other will branch out towards university studies in transport management and administration.
MI this is exciting progress. What is really satisfying is that co-ordination is beginning to stretch right across the board of various qualifications awarded by a variety of organizations. Certainly, I am more hopeful of full co-operation between the various transport educational providers than at any time since I first entered the field of transport education in 1952_