In Search of Technological Excellence

Using a plethora of previously unpublished sources, this book analyses the policymaking and policy implementation in the education of British engineers and technologists between 1944-1994. The notion that Britain was losing its international industrial competitiveness has preoccupied governments since the Second World War. Policymakers have sought to address this over the years, and yet Britain's relative industrial decline has appeared to continue, raising questions about its root causes. In Search of Technological Excellence analyses the policymaking and policy implementation in the education of engineers and technologists from the 1945 report of the Percy Committee on Higher Technological Education to the conclusion of the Thatcher government's Enterprise in Higher Education Initiative. Using a plethora of previously unpublished sources, this book focuses on the untold story of what the reports of the three key committees in this fifty-year period - Percy (1945), Fielden (1963) and Finniston (1980) - actually achieved in secondary and higher technological education. The core themes of this volume include industrial training and its assessment, the controversy over the structure of industrial sandwich courses, the perceived requirements for qualified specialists (the 'manpower' controversy), curriculum development, creativity and innovation in engineering, engineers as managers, and engineering in schools. Thought-provoking and comprehensive, In Search of Technological Excellence reflects on perennial problems to help clarify how this history can inform policymaking today and will be of interest to policymakers, practitioners and students in engineering education and public administration.