"Dead Men's Shoes" are Worn Out!
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THE necessity to wait for " dead men's shoes" had not existed in the engineering industry since 1945, said Mr. K. R. Evans in his contribution to a four-part paper, "Practical Training in Industry for the Graduate in Mechanical Engineering," presented to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers last Friday.
Mr. Evans stated that university training for the mechanical engineer became commonplace after the 1914-18 war, but it was increasingly realized that it should be supplemented by practical instruction. Between 1919 and 1939, many companies recognized the potential value of university training for future technologists, and recruited increasing numbers of men for apprenticeships. Rates of pay for graduate apprentices rose in order that graduates could accept apprenticeships instead of highly remunerative specialized employment.
The two wars had given impetus to research and development in the applied sciences, and the expansion of the nationalized industries and the scientific Civil Service made great demands for recruits and trained men.
Mr. Evans thought that students should interest themselves in matters other than the requirements of skill connected with their work, and participate in university social life. Personal abilities in a sport should be directed into team games, wherever possible.
Mr. H. W. Fulton, managing director, Albion Motors, Ltd., stated that industry should expect the graduate to understand, for instance, how strain gauges worked, but the application of strain gauges to day-toslay. ,,pipplerris should be a matter for factory training. "One looks for graduates to bring to industry a grasp of science and of the principles underlying scientific methods, and industry should , expect to give a graduate a basic training in' the fundamentals governing the working of the industrial machine," he said.
Series of Compromises The graduate also had to learn that industry • worked through a neverending series of compromises. The assessment of these .. compromises demanded just the qualities of clarity of thought and the ability to strip off extraneous foliage which encouraged industry to employ the graduate.
In West Scotland,students alternated between six-Month university courses during the winter • and courses of Similar length as apprentices in engineering works during the summer. Schciols and employers endorsed this " sandwich." systemso completely that it would be hard to, alter it, said Mr. Fulton. It conferred striking advantages on those whose ultimate employment was to beAn industry, but it might not be so desirable for those intending to enter specialized research.
A good deal of effort had been eonsentrated On the problem of instilling into the graduate sufficient practical experience. The -opposite attack
1318 grafting on to a youth whose early experience tad been essentially practical, enough scientific training to enable him to graduate—had received less attention.
Mr. Fulton said: "It is well known that there are 'boys with hands' and 'boys with brains,' What is required in the engineering industry today is a blend of the two, and it appears just as important to develop the brain of the boy with hands as it is to develop the bands of the boy with brains."
He submitted that the "sandwich ". system offered a particularly apt technique for achieving this end.
Good Starting Field Analysing overseas market requirements was a sound, field for the graduate to start in. He must have plenty of commonsense and an ability to turn his hand to anything without recourse to his principals—who might be thousands of miles away.
In their contribution to the paper, Mr. R. S. Medlock and Mr. D. P. Lant pointed out that there were three vital' stages in any training scheme—selection, training and placing. Failure in any one must bring proportionate failure to the scheme as a whole. Considering the expense involved in post-graduate training, it was vital to the company concerned that everything possible was done to ensure reasonable success in all three stages.
Broadly, graduates in industry tended to specialize as production engineers, sales engineers or research •engineers. Every training programme should be tailored to meet the needs of the individuals concerned.
A graduate's stay in any department should not be so short that he was never trusted with a worthwhile job, nor so long that he began merely to duplicate experience. Early specialization, apart from the slight bias of training along one of the three main_ branches, was strongly to be discouraged. .
All graduate apprentices should regularly complete a report on the type of work they had been doing. These helped the apprentice to crystallize his experience and assisted the supervisor in Maintaining the students' balance of learning. "There might. however, be a temptation to encourage graduates to include remarks on points of possible improvement and general efficiency of the departments through which they pass_ This would be most unadvisable if the vital co-operation of heads of departments is to be improved and maintained," Mr. Medlock and Mr. Lant observed.
The first-class honours man with a good capacity for leadership should be given the opportunity of rising rapidly to somewhere near the top, even if this did occasionally mean upsetting, or even displacing, the long-established but truthfully less adequate man, they stated. They recommended that companies should have committees at the highest executive level for placing graduates and superintending their progress.
It was difficult to make a reliable estimate of an undertaking's future needs for executives, and good young men could not be kept waiting inderinttely for older men to retire: Some systematic approach could be devrsed which would give several alternative lines of advancement, while the individuals concerned were doing responsible and satisfying jobs, yet fitted into an overall policy of managerial training.
Prof. J. A. Pope . considered it obvious that the engineering graduate today was much less an engineer than his counterpart in 1910. In fact, he said, the universities did not train engineers. They trained students in engineering science and left it to industry to complete their, training.
The larger engineering companies were aware of this and had designed training schemes to meet this need. The most common pattern for training the graduate engineer was for him to proceed direct from school to university for three years and then to an engineering concern for two years' training.
Co-ordinate Training Better results could be obtained by having the two sections of training co-ordinated, Prof. Pope thought. The best results were not obtained by allowing the undergraduate to go straight to university from school and receive the whole of his practical training after graduation.
He suggested that a trainee should first go through a year's practical training, then three years at a university, followed by another year in the workshops. There were many trainees who entered industry at the age of 16 and tried to better themselves by part-time study. They might resent the injection of graduates into posts which were the object of their ambitions.
If, however, a boy entered the works direct from school, he would be much more acceptable. After returning from the university, he would be regarded as " the boy who got on from the bench." Such an attitude was in the best interests of industrial relations.