(*) Professor Black holds the Chair of Industrial Design at the Royal
College of Art, London. The ideas quoted are from an article in
'Export', the Coral Tractala journal, Vol 6 no 3 (1972).
July 25 1973
Justin Wallace, in the 'Irish Journal of Education' (vol IV, no
1, 1972) has summarised the history of science teaching in Ireland
from 1860 to 1970.
By 1890, two thirds of the Intermediate Board examination
candidates were taking either physics or chemistry. Examiners'
reports criticised the book-learning system and the lack of real
acquaintance with experiment. Reforms introduced in 1900 (under the
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction) emphasised
laboratory work and increased both its quality and popularity.
Under pressure from the school managers(10) in 1916, the written
examination was upgraded relative to practical work. By 1920 the
decline in practical standards was noticeable; this persisted, with
unaltered syllabuses, for decades, until the demand for change,
triggered by the impact of the Sputnik on Western European education,
began to assert itself in the 60s.
We are now beginning to innovate with science curricula.... to the
extent that in a few schools here and there we are returning to the
emphasis on practicality characteristic of the 'belle epoque' of
1900-1916. The latter flowering may be attributed to the British
feeling the competition of the German Technische Hochschule, in the
period leading up to World War I.
For strategic reasons, no doubt, they placed the emphasis on the
link with the Department of Agriculture, Ireland's role as a
food-producer being in mind.
Dr B L Powell, of the TCD Education Department, has an article in
the Spring 1973 issue of the 'Secondary Teacher' in which he outlines
new curriculum trends: away from 'subjects' and towards experimental
projects directed towards goals...... This idea is developed also in
'Compass', a new journal produced by the Irish Association for
Curriculum Development....
The October 1972 issue contains an article on the role of manual
training by Seamus Rossiter. For a scientist, the importance of
knowing how to make equipment for an experiment cannot be
over-emphasised, even if the final version is made by someone else.
August 1 1973
In Connemara recently I gave a lift to a young building worker,
who offered some perceptive comments on the safety factor associated
with some pre-stressed reinforced concrete structures, in the welding
of which he was currently taking part. Some school buildings, it
seems, had collapsed, and the design was now in question. I am not
suggesting that there was substance in his remarks, but I was
impressed by the degree of educated concern. It turned out that he
was an Arts student on vacation work. He seemed however to see no
further than his degree; this was just a vacation job to help him get
it. The idea that his true career might be as a construction
engineering technician, and ultimately perhaps as an architect, did
not seem to occur to him.
How many misfit Arts students, I wonder, result from the stunting
of people's practical sense by the academic bias of the private sector
of post-primary education? My guess is about 50%.
Mr Barry Desmond TD is quoted at length on this theme in the
Education Times of July 19, from his intervention in the AnCO(11)
debate. He touches, pertinently, on some related issues. He wants
broad education for all, no discrimination against Leaving Certificate
holders as regards apprenticeships, and correspondingly he wants
opportunities for skilled technicians without Leaving Certificate to
go on for technical qualifications of degree level. He stresses the
need for a broad-based education leading to a versatile work-force.
I coundn't agree more. We must avoid like the plague the type of
over-specialised, narrow approach of the English system, turning out
specialists, whether craftsmen or academics, at a tender age.
The positive feature of the Irish scene at present is the close
connection which appears to be developing between the Regional
Colleges, the Vocational Education second-level system and AnCO. The
negative feature is the continued existence of a large private sector
in education (on average of lower quality as regards teachers'
qualifications) which holds aloof from these positive developments,
and which persists in turning out an undue share of academic cripples.
In some cases where the State has made a modest effort to bring the
private sector into the scheme of things, via the community school
principle, the private sector has resisted by whipping up campaigns
based on ignorance and prejudice.
If people must learn the hard way.... it could take a generation
for parents to learn that the all-rounder with practical skills will
get on, while the academic Leaving Certificate is a passport to a
London building site. On the other hand, the message could break
through quickly. The obstacle to this breakthrough is an obsessive
sense of property on the part of the private sector. Insofar as this
sector reflects the religious denominations, then all denominations
are equally guilty.
October 31 1973
Professor Paul Cannon, of the UCD Department of Pharmacology, has
produced a closely-reasoned article on the question of how the medical
schools would be likely to develop under various conditions of
specialisation between institutions in the basic sciences.
This article was published in the June issue of the journal of
the Irish Medical Association. I cannot attempt to summarise the
arguments; they are in the form 'on the one hand this, on the other
hand that'. They do, however, serve a purpose in displaying what
looks like a situation of some complexity. No wonder the 'merger'
issue has faded into the background, since the early University of
Lancaster graduate student research project was sponsored by the
Department of Finance(12).
Nowhere in the discussions on the TCD/UCD merger has the issue of
the role and status of the Colleges of Technology been faced, or
indeed of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.
I do not believe any system with rigid boundaries will work. The
system is, and will remain, multi-centred. To force specialisation by
central 'diktat' would be counter-productive.
Specialisation can be encouraged by allowing the good people to
congregate where they want, with the minimum of barriers. In other
words, what is needed is easy mobility of staff and postgraduate
students around a four, five or six-centred system, with each centre
maintaining all the essential undergraduate teaching services, the
smaller ones being in a position to draw on a mobile pool of
specialist expertise, who would individually spend most of their time
in their chosen centre of specialist interest.
I agree with Professor Cannon's basic opposition to the
'debiologising' of UCD. The debate continues.
December 5 1973
The Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the National Council for
Educational Awards (NCEA) are jointly sponsoring a three-day
conference on business studies at third level next January.
This conference is to be of the OECD 'confrontation' type, and is
by invitation only. Nearly 100 orgnaisations have been invited,
including the universities, colleges of technology and regional
colleges, research institutes and various voluntary professional
bodies.
The organisers hope by this means to....find out what they want,
enabling 'overlapping contributions to be identified' with a view to
planning the allocation of finance and academic resources.
Presumably those groups which can between now and January
establish lines of communication among themselves, presenting thereby
a unified set of identified needs, will be able to use this
'confrontation' event to get the Establishment to accept their way of
thinking. This is the State's way of establishing a consensus on an
issue, in a situation where there are no established democratic lines
of communication. The conference chairman is Eoin McCarthy, who is a
member of the HEA.
The participants are invited to submit memoranda before next
Monday.....(two or three pages). It is particularly important that
organisations rooted in technology should make their impact....
What we need nationally is a competent middle and upper
management which understands quantitative methods of analysis, is
familiar with information-technology (ie is not afraid of the computer
and understands its positive potential as a planning tool as well as a
routine data-processor), and is familiar with the technology of what
it is managing. The way towards this ideal is to take quantitatively
competent people with a primary training in some branch of science and
technology, and steer them towards management by further education.
There is a surplus of such people coming out of our education
system at the moment, and a high proportion of them are going abroad
without returning. This is a regrettable position, which university
appointments officers are now beginning to verify by keeping
quantitative records.
At this point it becomes of interest to scan the list of invitees
to discern whether there is the makings of a 'science in management'
lobby, if this is the term. I suggest that if the Dublin and Regional
Colleges of Technology were to form a core, and were to gather round
them a group of such other invitees as share this common ground, such
as the Institution of Engineers of Ireland, the Quality Control
Association and other such bodies... they might come up with some
sort of unified set of needs identified by competent people at the
working level.
The missing element in the list of invitees is...organised
scientists as such. Clearly the organisers have not identified these
as possible contributors to their consensus system, although they are
apparently prepared to reckon with the views of the Catechetical
Association.....
The only bodies verging on the specialist scientific disciplines
are the Agricultural Science Association and the Psychological
Society.... Where are the Chemists, Chemical Engineers etc? Are they
supposed to come in under the wing of the IEI?
I am not optimistic that a meeting organised in this ad-hoc
manner can lead to any great clarification. If there were continuous
procedures functioning, it might make sense, as for example if the
Senate were to assume the function for which it was originally
intended....
May 22 1974
I referred on May 1 to the Galway postgraduate degree in
Industrial Engineering and suggested that a study of the progress of
the firms which had allowed their staff time off to do this work would
be of interest.
There is, of course, more experience of this in the Dublin area,
since UCD pioneered the MIE degree in 1967. There have been an
average of 17 per annum through the UCD system since then; applicants
exceed places by a factor of 2-3.
Initially applicants from the public sector were twice as
numerous as those from the private sector; the numbers are now
approximately equal. The total to date is 166 from 84 firms.
According to the Irish Management Institute there are about 100
industrial engineers needed per annum; the Institution of Engineers
more conservatively estimates about half of this number. Clearly
there is scope for increased production to fulfil a real need.
Perhaps the way forward is to provide conversion courses,
somewhat like the Chemical Engineering Diploma, but adapted in such a
way as to steer specialist science graduates in the direction of
industrial engineering and management. The bottleneck with the
present courses is that they seek to take the graduate who has already
found a place in industry, and to adapt him or her towards management
from a specialist role.
Why not begin at the beginning, with the Honours specialist
science graduate, who is at present being grossly over-produced and
pushed off abroad, where he or she becomes a super-specialist and
virtually unemployable, should the speciality become the victim of a
change of fashion.
This type of graduate would respond with alacrity to an offer of
a conversion course orienting him of her towards a relevant technology
(ie one having some relationship with the scientific speciality),
possibly with the sponsorship of a firm, with a practical project of
genuine scientific and technological interest, related to the needs of
the sponsor.
September 25 1974
The June issue of the periodical 'Engineering' has an article
evaluating a new syllabus which has been examined since 1969 for GCE
in Britain. It covers mechanics, materials science, transport
processes, field phenomena and applications, periodic and wave
phenomena, analysis of systems, electronics and thermodynamics. It
counts as physics for university entrance purposes.
The examination includes a project, the basis of which is
building a system and getting it to work. One project was described
which involved controlling soil moisture in a greenhouse by the use of
a detector which depended on electrical conductivity; this actuated a
moisturiser, the key element of which was a fish-tank aerating pump.
Another project was implemented by a Blackpool Grammar School
girl, who studied the problem of sweeping the road by mechanical
means, and designed an appropriate system which differentiated between
large and small objects, making some of the components herself.
There are at least two lessons for us in this:
(a) if a practical subject is offered at school, girls will take it, despite a
hitherto male tradition. The bias towards male engineers at third
level is primarily a result of lack of second-level opportunity for
girls;
(b) a practical project like this would be a 'natural' for the
Young Scientists Exhibition.
Let me continue on the Young Scientists Exhibition: firstly, and
relatively easily remediable, is the lack of an 'Engineering Science'
section. Many of the projects are in fact engineering orientated, but
get in masquerading as physics, or in some 'pure' discipline.
Secondly, and only remediable by Department of Education action(13),
is the need to allow project work, such as that displayed in the
Exhibition, to count towards examinations. If this were the case, we
would not have the disastrous fall-off of senior participation which
takes place due to the Leaving Certificate.
October 10 1974
At the Engineers' 'Crossroads' conference on September 19.....
the main problem.... appeared to be how to ingest the flow of
technicians who are beginning to emerge from the Regional Colleges.
The suggestion arose that the IEI might host a technicians'
conference, with a view to taking them under the IEI wing, and might
establish a system of accrediting the NCEA awards, and generally
avoiding an 'us and them' situation developing across the
grading-barrier.
There was a call for the development of team-work in the
engineers' training.There was concern that the RTC courses were 'too
academic' and a call for more 'sandwich' procedures. This depends on
employers agreeing to block-release of trainees. Senior engineers
here are in a position to apply pressure. An RTC spokesman complained
that in 32 class-hours per week there was no time for practicals....
December 6 1974
There are several indications of a welcome trend away from the
amateur dilletante tradition which has in the past been a feature of
industrial management in Ireland, in the wake of the British
tradition, and in contrast to that on the Continent and in the US.
These are (a) the MAI course in TCD (b) the Galway industrial
engineering course (c) the Sligo RTC conferring event which took place
on November 22.
(At this point I must make the statutory bow in the direction of
the UCD masters-degree course in industrial engineering, which is the
'daddy of them all', and to recognise the natural evolution of
engineering through chemical and systems engineering towards systems
having human elements (ie management) which has occurred in UCD under
the influence of Professor O'Donnell and Professor Leahy. On this
occasion I mention the others, as they happen to be the ones which
have supplied me with material.)
On November 11 there was a reunion dinner of the TCD engineering
postgraduate students. Dr WG Scaife referred in his speech to the
phenomenal success of the postgraduate diploma in management for
engineers. He attributed this to the large-scale use of extern
lecturers whose experience was immediately relevant, and to the fact
that the students were mature engineers who were able to bring in
their own experience.
As well as the MAI course there are now available courses in
computer applications, production engineering, applied electronics,
engineering structures and information studies.
The MAI masters degree programme integrates the diploma lectures
with the MSc modules in a flexible manner. Currently there is a group
of 12 engineers completing a course on 'aspects of metal manufacture'
which has been tailored to meet the needs of a large international
corporation(14) which employs them. To service this course, the TCD
Graduate School of Engineering Studies has drawn upon Bolton St,
Limerick, Manchester and Salford for specialist part-time lecturers.
The Galway industrial engineering course began at undergraduate
level in 1972 and the first primary BE (industrial) degrees were
awarded this summer. The first year of the course is the same as the
traditional mechanical and electrical engineerig course. The
industrial option should prove increasingly popular as more people
realise that the main problem is not to design new hardware, but to
assemble existing hardware into systems that work effectively,
reliably and economically.
The masters-degree course takes two years and depends on
employers releasing students on Fridays and Saturdays for work in UCG;
a project is also completed in spare time.
The undergraduate industrial engineering course involves, in the
third and fourth years, laboratory work in electronics, electrical
machines, light mechanical engineering, ergonomics and quality
control.
In Sligo the Regional Colleges Engineering School is offering a
course in Transportation leading to the examination of the Institution
of Municipal Engineers.....
Mr CP Power, the Principal, defended the present form of the
association of the Regional Colleges with the Vocational Education
Committees, and suggested that any other administrative arrangement
mght be less favourable.... I have heard criticisms of the present
structure, mainly from the younger members of staff. I am inclined to
go along with Con Power, however, on the grounds that an autonomous
College board would, under present educational policies be unlikely to
be democratically structured. The present VECs, although in many
cases dominated by political co-options, are subject to democratic
pressure and are therefore capable of reform. The tradition of
political co-option has been allowed to develop by default. Now that
the Regional Colleges are there, with their graduates becoming a force
to be reckoned with, the potential exists for organising democratic
pressure against political co-options and to replace them by
co-options of nominees of relevant specialist organisations, or
competent people in their own right.
Alderman McSharry TD, Chairman of the Board of Management,
reminded the public that all coures offered in the College having the
Leaving Certificate as entry requirement are now within the scope of
the Higher Education Grants Scheme. This is an important
break-through, as it means that the bright holder of four or more
honours os not funnelled, often against his or her will, into the
ivory towers, as was the case until recently. All of which will help
to upgrade the Regional Colleges in the eyes of parents who are still
(quite wrongly) worried about their academic status.
January 17 1975
I do not normally refer in this column to work with which I
personally have been associated, but I feel that in self-defence I
should amplify slightly the news reports...relating to a paper
produced by Mrs Genevieve Franklin and myself and read at the
Statistical abd Social Enquiry Society on January 9.
In the radio report the emphasis was on 'too many scientists'.
In the press reports, the suggestion was that the National Science
Council was in some way to blame for this over-production. Taken at
their face value, these reports look as if they are blows aimed at the
scientific community. Nothing was further from my mind. Let me try
to summarise a complex argument, if I can do so without ambiguity, and
without starting more hares.
According to the 1971 Census, which contained a question on
qualifications in science and technology for the first time in
history, enabling a head-count to be done, there were 568 people at
work in the Republic in the age-group 24-27, with degrees in the
natural sciences. The annual supply of graduates in this category in
the period 1966-69 was on average 395. Express the age-cohort as
'jobs per annum' and you get 142, suggesting that in those years 253
per annum were lost by emigration. In the case of engineers, the jobs
per annum comes out at 168 and the supply at 249, suggesting loss of
79.
Now we do not know the response-rate for 'question 18' on the
1971 census, as Mr TP Linehan (Director of the Central Office of
Statistics), who chaired the session on January 9, pointed out. So
the head-count may be low, perhaps by as much as 30%. All right, let
us 'up' the head-count, thereby bringing the engineers more closely
into equilibrium. We are still left with a substantial surplus of
holders of science degrees, who are produced for a world market which,
by all accounts, is contracting. One way or another we are left with
a strong indication that we are producing, at high cost, specialists
for export.
The conclusion of the paper, however, is not that we should cut
back the honours specialist schools, but that we should explicitly
recognise that only a relatively small fraction of their output will
end up as academic specialists, and provide opportunities for the
greater part of the honours specialist output to divert towards
relevant scientific technologies, without loss of face. Thus, for
example, a physicist could easily convert towards the status of
systems engineer, and be productive as such.
This is at present starting to happen in any case, but not
enough; in any case the loss to the economy of so many
expensively-trained people is too high. Think of it in terms of the
discounted future earnings of 200 scintists lost annually: possibly
20M or more.
The trouble is that the average Irish employer does not see
aOon~~wence graduate as a cost-reducer or a revenue-generator. He or
she does not 'look' productive. The objective of the proposed
sponsored, problem-orientated masters-degree programmes is to change
this image, and generate job-opportunities. It is up to potential
employers to provide the sponsorships and the problems, and it is up
to the academic staff who are concerend about the mismatch situation
to interact with potential employers (possibly on a consultancy
basis), to help them to define their problems and to pull in the
sponsorships. This is what 'industrial liaison' is all about.
Finally, a word on the role of the National Science Council. I
admit that in the paper as read the surplus situation was attributed
to 'pressure from the NSC', and that this emphasis was wrong. Dr
Diarmuid Murphy brought this out in the discussion, and in the final
version it will be amended appropriately.
I should like to re-define the emphasis as follows: in the
1966-69 atmosphere, most of the emphasis was on 'science', while
technology and the industrial links were under-valued. This reflected
itself into the naming of the NSC, despite pressure from engineers and
others to give explicit recognition to technology. It also reflected
itself into the composition of the Council itself, and expressed
itself in a policy of dealing mainly with university science
departments.
Thus the NSC was not a prime mover, but a reflection of the
subjective realities of a situation in which science was beginning to
be recognised by the administrators as important, but without
understanding the mechanism of the linkages with technology and
industry.
March 4 1975
When the Regional Colleges of Technology were set up in the late
sixties, there was very little idea how many technicians should be
produced, and of what type. Some survey-work was done among the
professional bodies and the third-level education system, and figures
were produced which estimated the needs as imagined or conjectured by
working scientists and technologists.
This market-research was known to be very preliminary, and as a
result the emphasis in technician training was on knowledge of the
basics, with a view to producing people with understanding and
adaptability, avoiding over-specialisation. There was no provision, however,
for producing a continuous market-research procedure, with an
informed influence on career guidance.
Nor is there much opportunity for feedback-loops to develop
between the Colleges and local industry, with staff having 21-25 hours
of contact-time. The effect of this is illustrated by a press-release
from the Sligo College, which treated a one-day visit of the chemistry
students to the Mayco plant at Ballina (which produces PVC
blow-mouldings) as a newsworthy event. All the indications are that
the development of close industrial links with the Regional Colleges
is proceeding slowly and encountering obstacles.
There is no centralised machinery for measuring supply and
demand, even over broad categories..... this has been left to the
initiative to the RTC Principals and departmental heads.
Following on a preliminary survey by Dr Sean Cawley of Carlow
(May 1973) a paper has been produced by Dr B D Place, who is the head
of the Galway RTC Science Department, which analyses the production of
diplomas and certificates in chemistry and biology and relates it to
the advertisements for jobs in the national newspapers appearing in
the period October 1973 to September 1974. The trend in jobs is as
follows:
Year: 1971 1972 1973 1974
Jobs: 478 471 902 383
The three earlier years are estimated by a sampling procedure, so the
1973 peak should be taken 'cum grano salis', but there is a suggestion
of an upward trend, followed by 1974 (a disastrous year on all fronts)
appearing as a setback.
Breaking down 1974 in detail, we get the following picture:
%
Chemistry: 137 35.8
Medical: 178 46.5
Biology: 39 10.1
Physics: 10 2.6
General: 19 5.0
---- ----
total: 383 100.0
One wonders where in this are the engineers, but of course this
is the output of the science department; no-one is working to
co-ordinate this data-gathering.
The discipline analysis by sector follows:
Employers: A B C D E F G Total
discipline
chemistry 52 23 47 7 18 10 15 172
medical 4 20 16 146 2 188
biology 17 25 2 1 1 46
physics 1 5 1 3 13 23
general 2 4 1 9 16
------------------------------------------------
totals 59 65 93 10 35 157 27 445
% 13.2 14.6 20.8 2.3 7.7 35.3 6.1 100
A: fine chemical/pharmaceutical
B: universities/colleges
C: State/semi-State
D: IIRS
E: food
F: hospital/veterinary
G: other
Clearly the main market is the food and pharmaceutical
industries, apart from the medical field.... But the total demand in
industry, including the 'other' category, is small, a mere 27%, only
slightly greater than the demand from the State bodies.
Now follows the most disturbing part of Dr Place's report.
Taking the biology/chemistry ratio as a measure of the goodness of fit
of supply to demand, he points out that on the supply side biology
contributed 63% of the total biology plus chemistry, having increased
from 54% in 1972. On the demand side, only 22% of all advertised
posts were for biologists. Thus the mismatch is bad and worsening.
As regards absolute number....he predicts a total demand in the
region of 600-1200 for 1975. There are suggestions that the 1974
slump has 'bottomed out'. The predicted output, excluding Limerick
and the Dublin colleges, is only 183.
This picture complements a study completed by Genevieve Franklin
and myself for the IDA....... Basing ourselves on the 1971 Census, we
exposed the fact that, while graduate engineers were roughly in
balance, there has been chronic over-production (for emigration) of
graduates in the natural sciences, to the extent of a factor of two or
three.
The resolution of these complementary anomalies, I suggest, is
possible in a system with free lateral mobility. Most university
entrants and undergraduates, if they had the choice, would welcome the
chance of taking a job at an intermediate practical leve, where the
demand is, rather than over-shooting the market and ending up with a
poor degree in an over-supply situation. But they would only go to an
RTC in the first place if they felt that they had the option of going
on to degree level, whether in the RTC (eg polymer technology) or the
university (chemistry or physics).
July 29 1975
I had occasion to visit Derry city recently and I took the
opportunity to look in at the College of Technology, by courtesy of
the Principal, Mr Ambrose Thompson (who incidentally is a TCD
graduate). I also met some of the staff members of the NUU outstation
known as the Institute of Continuing Education which now occupies the
Magee campus.
I found an educational system fairly bristling with problems,
rather poorly adapted to cope with the underlying economic problems of
the area....
Firstly the recruitment situation is dominated by the crippling
effect of the so-called '11-plus', which splits the educational stream
at an early age into 'grammar' and 'secondary' categories. This split
takes place earlier under UK conditions than in the Republic, so that
a higher proportion of 'late maturers' are condemned to a stream which
by all accounts appears to be appreciably more 'B' than the
corresponding stream (ie the vocational ) in the Republic.
Such is the general disorder in the Derry second-level B-stream
that few are able to get the four O-levels in appropriate subjects
needed for entry to the College of Technology. Consequently the
latter has to recruit from the grammar-schools, where however it has
to compete with A-level courses offered by the schools themselves, and
promoted by their Principals, as the direct road to the more-coveted
university places.
It has not yet dawned on the Derry parents, or Principals, that
the type of qualifications offered by the College of
Technology.....are in fact surer passports to jobs than a university
degree, and that in many universities they are acceptable as entry
qualifications for masters-degree postgraduate programmes.
As a result of the depressed intake, the College of Technology in
Derry has not had the chance to develop any significant research or
local enterprise generating potential. The philosophy is simply to
train people for such jobs as there are, or for further education
elsewhere (eg at the Ulster Polytechnic at Jordanstown, near Belfast).
There is no apparent realisation of the need to train people for
enterprise (ie to invent their own jobs), as is clearly necessary if
the extreme economic depression of the Derry area is to be reversed.
The standard and numbers at entry could be improved and increased
if students could come from Northern Donegal. There is already a
trickle; ie those who can conveniently live with cross-Border
relatives. If the Department of Education in the Republic were to
open up the option for grant-holders in Donegal to register in Derry,
this trickle would be likely to become a steady stream. Reciprocal
arraangements for Derry students to go to Letterkenny RTC would help
to compensate the latter for the loss of some of its market.
Complementary specialisations could be worked out, and new specialist
subjects introduced with shared staff, where in either College
separately there would be insufficient demand to merit an appointment.
Both Colleges are feeding trained personnel to factories on both
sides of the Border which share common managements. It seems
reasonable to call for the development of some co-operative
complementarity.
Turning now to the NUU out-station on the Magee campus: a group
of well-intentioned staff, having academic status in NUU, have been
left hanging in mid-air, with instructions to develop 'continuing
education'.
The objectives of the Institute are admirable: the fact that
education is not a 'one-off job' is being faced systematically, and
resources have been devoted to studying how best to provide an
'updating service' to the levels of education which the members of the
public have undergone at various times in the past.
There are four divisions: Community Studies (D T Carter),
Education (Rex Cathcart), Liberal and Contemporary Studies (Reggie
Smith) and Public Services (F S Bradley).
Community Studies is a novel concept and fills a gap; as well as
training professional social workers it attempts to educate the
community at large in the functions of the various social
institutions. To attempt to do this 'from above' in war-torn Derry is
courageous, and it will be interesting to see its degree of social
acceptance.
It is within the scope of this division to face up to the problem
of the College of Technology. How, for example, do you train a group
of unemployed youth, who have developed some craft or technical
skills, to pool their resources and go into business as a producers
co-operative, without capital, depending entirely on credit and
goodwill?
The Education division approximates in function to the division
of the Department of Education in the Republic which organises summer
schools for teachers. The Liberal and Contemporary Studies division
carries out some Arts Council-type functions. The Public Services
division approximates to the Institute of Public Administration; it
also service the demand for courses for managers and trade unionists.
It makes good sense to bring all these educational services with
entrepreneurial potential together on one campus. However I feel it
makes bad sense to isolate them from the College of Technology, as
well as from their parent university campus. If the two Derry bodies
were to amalgamate, it would give the College the unquestioned
third-level status it needs, killing for ever the old 'Strand Street
Tech' image. (This is already in decline with the move to an
excellent new building, just completed, despite the bombs). It would
also give the Institute stronger roots and a technological dimension.
One project being studied within the Community Studies division
of the Institute is an idea for a Design Centre. The Kilkenny model
may be in mind: a link between the technological and craft skills
available, and a market for aesthetically pleasing and useful objects.
There is an input here from the UCD Psychology Department and Dr Ivor
Browne, who perhaps deserves more recognition as the pioneer
ofcommunity studies at university level in the Republic.
I have not had the chance to study this project in detail.... I
take this opportunity of again pointing out the essential role of
technology in design (and, indeed, design in technology), and
stressing the potential for a design centre as an essential element in
any proposed College/Institute link-up; indeed, it could be the
keystone of the bridge.
If ever there was an example of the crippling effect of the 1921
Partition settlement on Irish enterprise and economic life, it is
Derry City. Perhaps now that it is fashionable to seek to promote,
with EEC support, economic developments in natural hinterlands which
cross political boundaries, it will be possible for the appropriate
agencies in the Republic and the UK to sit down and look objectively
at North-West Ireland..
September 2 1975
The first degree course in industrial design engineering to be
offered in Ireland is being developed jointly between the National
College of Art and Design and NIHE (Limerick). The unprecedented
relationship established between the two colleges is intended to make
optimal use of the combined staff and facilities.
An advisory committee under the joint chairmanship of Professor
David Sherlock (Deputy Director of NCAD) and Dr Evan Petty (Chairman,
materials and industrial engineering division at NIHE), with members
of CTT, Kilkenny Design Workshops, the Society of Designers in
Ireland, the IDA and the Department of Education is assisting in
developing the programme.
Hitherto students could not qualify in industrial design in
Ireland, and were obliged to go abroad to do so. A number of
government reports, including the Scandinavian Report of 1961, have
stressed the importance of the link between a strong tradition of
industrial design education and the general health of the economy.
The new degree programme is a four-year course incorporating
periods of practical experience in industry; it is planned to
commence in 1976. Annual admissions to the programme will be limited
to 15 students....
January 6 1976
Dr Edward Walsh, Director of the National Institute of Higher
Education in Limerick, some weeks ago launched publicly a new (for
Ireland) concept in continuing education, the 'link-in'. This
consists of a procedure whereby someone working locally in industry
can register for a specialist module in some skill or technology for
which he or she has a need. The module is taken alongside the current
undergraduate population, which is also taking that module in its
option-set. On completion the participant obtains a credit. If at a
later date further modules are taken which add up to a diploma course,
then a diploma is issued. In other words, anyone in the Limerick area
who is prepared to arrange to get off work at the times required by
the particular module of interest can over the years accumulate
third-level qualifications while working.
Hitherto in Dublin this has worked on a twilight or evening
basis, for a relatively small number of options. In Galway you take
Friday off and work Friday and Saturday over two years for your
masters degree in industrial engineering. This Limerick system, if it
gets the co-operation of employers, adds a new dimension to
third-level opportunities.
The indications are also that it is an advantage for student
morale and cultural development to have undergraduates mixing with a
proportion of mature and highly-motivated colleagues.
A 'module' extends for one term and involves attendance at two
lectures and one or two laboratory sessions/tutorials per week. At
present, some 25 modules are being attended by 'link-in' students, in
subjects ranging from psychology to electronics.
February 17 1976
I have tended to avoid the Byzantine intricacies of university
merger politics in recent years, although I can claim to have been one
of the earliest in the field with my 1967 articles in this paper(15);
these were my first serious incursions into scientific journalism.
I proposed.....a multi-college university in Dublin, on the
London University model, taking in the colleges of technology,
education etc as well as both university colleges, as constituent
units, with mobility of students and staff throughout the system.
This I still think is the best solution, in that it would get rid of
the so-called 'binary' system, equalise staff working conditions and
strengthen the interaction between science, technology and industry.
It would also permit the constituent colleges to retain such of their
traditions (Renaissance, Enlightenment, Victorian, Jansenist or
whatever) as they felt contributed significantly to their
micro-climates. The students and staff would vote with their feet,
instead of being trapped, as they are now.
I am provoked into looking at the issues again by the student
demonstrations of last week, the principal objectives of which were
(a) to retain the status of the NCEA as a degree-awarding body (b) to
impose the principle of democratic consultation as an alternative to
government ukase in the planning of the future of the third-level
education system.
In addition, documents have come to hand, namely a report of the
TCD Faculty of Engineering and Mathematics, and a report from NIHE
(Limerick). The latter discusses the rationalisation of the higher
education in Limerick in the context of a comprehensive national
structure. It is appropriate to consider these against the background
of the student demonstration, and they developing relationship between
TCD and the Dublin Colleges of Technology.
The main TCD problem is the threat of a future 'without capital
investment' for engineering. In the event of a rundown of engineering
in TCD, not only would the mathematics, computer science and
statistics departments suffer, but the embryonic industrial liaison
function, with which I am personally associated, would be strangled at
birth. The engineering school forms an essential bridge between
industry and the basic specialist disciplines in the physical
sciences, just as the medical school is the bridge between public
health and the biological sciences. Weaken engineering, and you leave
dangling in the air the basic physical sciences, with their future
firmly confined to the ivory tower.
The TCD engineering school has opted for an alternative approach
in undergraduate training, in which the basic degree is 'engineering
science' rather than with a specialised mechanical, electrical, civil,
chemical, agricultural label as is the case in UCD. This is not
necessarily better or worse; it is an alternative which allows a more
flexible approach to specialisation at a later career-point.. In a
situation of rapid technological change, it is eminently desirable
that a proportion of the flow of raw engineering manpower should be
uncommitted to a specialist profession at their entry into the labour
market.
It is also useful to industry to have available a system which is
propared to provide custom-designed postgraduate programmes,
reflecting the changing needs of industry. By association with such
programmes an engineering science graduate can in effect develop an
area of specialisation, which may or may not merit a label. (Many
interesting developments in mechanical engineering, for example, are
taking place as a result of interaction with electronics.)
In this context the link between the TCD engineering school and
the Dublin colleges of technology may be understood as part of the
survival strategy. I suggest to its critics in the USI that it is
rather unfair to label it 'academic imperialism', and to suggest that
it is a recent panic measure. The linkages in fact go back for a long
time, and reflect a genuine community of interest between the
centre-city colleges at the working level. Also, the ending of the
old London extern degree validation procedure precipitated a situation
to which the TCD school was willing to rise, at least as an interim
measure.
There is however some substance in the USI argument; there is a
sort of 'noblesse oblige', a touch of condescension, in the principle
whereby a degree obtained by work in a college of technology is
awarded by a university. It suggests that there is some magic in the
mediaeval ritual. Whence the demand by the students for the
restoration of the NCEA to its prior degree-awarding status.
There is a parallel situation which has developed between NIHE
(Limerick) and that shadowy body, the National University of Ireland.
I quote from the NIHE document of December 1975:
'The Governing Body, in accordance with government direction, has
applied to NUI seeking 'Recognised College' status... Having examined
the relevant statutes.....it is satisfied that these could lead to no
feasible solution and that Recognised College Status would be
inappropriate to the pursuit of the NIHE objectives....'
(Recognised College status is decidedly a poor relation of
Constituent College status, and could lead to initiatives taken by
NIHE being blocked by the NUI or taken up and developed elsewhere.)
The NIHE governing body has called for the termination of the
negotiations with NUI (initiated under government direction) and for
the awarding of degrees by NIHE itself.
This position is in fact endorsed by UCC and UCG; in the UCC
case they envisage a joint Dublin/Limerick Technological/Vocational
University, with provision for Recognised Colleges and extern
examinations. The UCG submission stresses that '...to emphasise the
university as the sole source of degrees is to mistake the symbol for
the reality.'
It seems that the present Minister for Education(16) has managed
to get himself a fully-fledged crisis. Between now and degree-time
for the final-year NIHE students, someone is going to have to climb
down. I doubt if it will be the NIHE, whose students, staff and
governing body are united in their determination to have nothing to do
with the NUI.
The political ramifications of this battle extend down to the
secondary and primary levels, where the present Minister's record is
blatantly feudal, with religious denominational control nailed to the
mast as a principle (unique in Europe), and a policy of submerging the
lay-managed democratic vocational sector under local majorities
representing private denominational interests in cases where
vocational/secondary mergers produce 'community schools'. The
consequences of this policy, in terms of the narrowing of the cultural
horizons, and undermining of technical competence of the working
population, can only be disastrous.
In the case of the NIHE, however, the Minister is not dealing
with a recalcitrant primary-school parents' committee. The
industrialisation of the mid-west is at stake; the cost to the nation
of a decline in credibility of the NIHE is measurable on the scale of
the accumulated investment into high-technology industry in Limerick
and Shannon, much of which has taken place with IDA support.
April 13 1976
On February 17 I took up the question of the degree-awarding
procedures in the NIHE (Limerick), suggesting that to make these
dependent on the NUI procedures would be against the spirit in which
the NIHE was founded......
The way in which a report produced by a UCC team on the NIHE
courses was leaked to the press on February 18 before the NIHE had
seen it savoured of an assassination job. I am credibly informed that
at least one of the UCC investigating groups, while being familiar
with the basic science, was not at all familiar with the technology
and applications of the material that they were supposed to be
evaluating. I know of a number of UCC staff who were shocked an
embarassed by this particular piece of academic mayhem.
On March 23 a meeting of the development consultants took place
at NIHE; these are a panel of leading academics and industrial
practitioners. At this event, Niall Meghen, Director of the CII
Engineering Division, urged that the NIHE should not dilute its basic
ideas, nor change direction. This was supported by John Beishon,
Professor of Systems at the Open University in Britain.
The February issue of the IDA News came out strongly in favour of
the original NIHE concept: that of theoretical understanding
reflected in practical competence in relevant industrial technologies.
Words like 'practical', 'flexible' and 'enthusiastic' keep
appearing in the reports of employers who are involved in the
co-operative scheme.. This is in contrast to the attitude of
employers of the traditional university output (four years of
theory-cramming, after which they only become useful after a lag-time
of years, their apprenticeship period being related to their
theoretical formation by accident, if at all).
Yet apparently it is possible for a Minister of Education.....tp
meddle destructively with the third-level system in its key
technological areas, about which he visibly understands nothing, nor
is he apparently teachable. This in the face of the advice of the CII
and the IDA, whose main concern is the industrialisation of the
country with a technologically competent workforce.
Consider now the NCEA, which has been deprived of its
degree-awarding function. It happens that the assistant registrar
(science) of the NCEA, Dr JV O'Gorman, has just recently won an award
from the Society of Chemistry in Industry for the best paper (in a
two-year period) on 'water-pollution control or water treatment'. Dr
O'Gorman took his chemistry degree in UCC, worked for Biotox and for
the IIRS, after which he went to Pennsylvania State University where
he did his PhD in 1971. He joined Imperial College staff and worked
on pollution control at Stevenage. He joined the NCEA in 1974 after a
period with the Dublin County Council.
It was a real break-through with the old NCEA/NIHE system to have
people with career-profiles like this associated with the
degree-awarding process. This the Minister has reversed.
Far be it from me to claim that every course in Limerick is
perfection. Where they do score, however, is in the theory-practice
mix. This is just not comprehended by the university traditionalists,
who for example judged linguistic proficiency on the basis of written
material alone, without regard for oral fluency, in which area the
Limerick teaching had concentrated. Thus the 'written exam' tradition
(which incidentally has virtually killed the Irish language) is being
used to strangle at birth the Limerick attempt to raise our
export-business practice above the level of the Anglo-Saxon monoglots.
The USI, in opposing the downgrading of the NCEA, was expressing
a correct instinctive understanding.
The present antics of the Minister for Education are quite
inconsistent with the attempts the Government is making through the
Ministry of Industry and Commerce to upgrade the level of skill
available to industry in Ireland. With the critical forces ranged
against him as they are, it is feasible to force the restoration of
the status of the NCEA, the vindication of the stand of the NIHE on
its original principles, and the resignation of Mr Burke. If this
does not happen, the embryonic technological revolution we are
beginning to discern will abort, and the present Government will be to
blame.
May 11 1976
....I must defend the concept of an elite technological centre
independent of the traditional universities, such as was promised by
the original NIHE/NCEA concept(17). This system would have provided
the required good people to fill the gap between academic theory and
industrial practice. A touch of elitism is needed to pull good people
into this wilderness, which is at present populated by unqualified
people, qualified expatriates or dropouts who have rejected
traditional academicism...
It is relevant in this column to touch on second-level education
problems, because the existing elitism of the traditional academic
system tends to pull the brightest pupils into the privarely-owned
secondary and away from the vocational sector. The fact that the
private sector is owned and managed by various religious bodies
compounds the problem.
An elite third-level technological university could have the
effect of upgrading the prestige of the public sector at second level,
thereby reducing the barriers to integrating it along with the private
sector into a unified State comprehensive system......
The present Minister's conservative approach to second-level
education is helping to prevent young people from becoming enthused
with science and technology, and from developing their critical
faculties in a problem-solving educational environment.. The
tradition of verbal skills from book-learning isolated from
practicality is being reinforced, while we have to import people to
fill key gaps in technology and technicianship.
If the NIHE were to be allowed to develop independently of the
NUI, and the university engineers were to cultivate the cross-links
with it at the working level (as indeed TCD has been doing with the
Dublin colleges of technology for many years), the prestige of the
whole technological system would rise, university engineers included.
If on the other hand the NIHE is to be kept visibly 'second-best'
then technology as a whole will suffer; prestige would remain
unproductively with the university academic system as a whole, rather
than with its engineering schools(18).
NOTES
1. Education policy in Ireland has tended to avoid oversize schools,
so that the national experience of integrated community/comprehensive
schools where these exist is good.
2. The SCL is basically a pressure-group seeking to get genuine
third-level status for college of technology staff. The 'Vocational
Education Committees' of the local authorities tend to think in
second-level terms, where most of the activity takes place.
3. See Chapter 3.3 (Innovation) on 9/7/70.
4. There has been a resurgence of this influence under the Reagan
administration. The writer attended in 1981 a seminar in TCD
addressed by serving US airforce officers, who outlined the physics
research areas they were prepared to finance, and invited proposals.
An NBST observer was present.
5. Profesor Seamus Timoney (UCD Mechanical Engineering) has taken
this to the manufacturing stage. His firm, Adtec ltd, has
manufactured some units for use by the Irish army. It is also
licenced for production by a firm in Belgium.
6. At this time the Ballymun site in north Dublin (where the old
Albert Agricultural College was located) was allocated for re-locating
the old centre-city municipal colleges of technology. Such has been
the rate of expansion that it is now (1983) the site of the new NIHE
(Dublin) (on the Limerick pattern). The old VEC colleges remain on
their centre-city sites, and have integrated themselves into the
Dublin Institute of Technology.
7. The name of the Northern Ireland seat of devolved government under
the British administration: 'a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant
People'.
8. New town joining linearly Portadown and Lurgan, named after the
founding-father of the Stormont regime who was responsible for the
above quoted slogan.
9. The same holds for food-processing in general; see Chapter 3.2
(Chemistry and process engineering) on 29/7/70 and 19/4/72.
10. These would mostly have been clergy, who occupied important
positions of local influence when the education system was set up in
the 19th century. This situation remains unchallenged by the
democratic process.
11. An Comhairle Oiliuna: the Industrial Training Authority.
12. This was carried out by John Cantwell who subsequently became the
head of the Operations Research unit in the Civil Service. The
failure of this project to bear fruit may perhaps reflect the
limitations of the linear optimising philosophy which has tended to
dominate OR. See also the last entry of Chapter 3.6 (Systems
analysis/Operations Research).
13. In the 1983 Young Scientists Exhibition this problem was again
mentioned as being on the political agenda. I wonder how long it will
take? It has been the norm in the UK for years, if not decades, and
Northern Ireland entrants to the Exhibition benefit by it.
14. Standard Pressed Steel Inc. See also Cahpter 1.2 and 3.1 on
22/11/72.
15. See Chapter 2.1 (Irish Background).
16. Mr Richard Burke, who subsequently became the Irish member of the
EEC Commission.
17. This entry was in response to a letter from Professor Seamus
Timoney, of the UCD Mechanical Engineering Department, who defended
the traditional UCD Engineering School as a centre of excellence on
the continental pattern, and criticised the writer on the grounds that
he seemed to wish to disperse and proliferate our 3rd-level
engineering schools, thus wasting resources, producing too many
graduates and not enough technicians. Professor Timoney himself is an
exceptional example of academic ability combined with industrial
entrepreneurship. The problem is that there are too few like him. It
remains to be seen whether the NIHE approach will prove to be a more
favourable environment for the 'Timoney process' than the traditional
engineering schools. I was then inclined to predict that it would,
and I see no reason to change my mind. As regards the technician
ratio: the RTC/NIHE system enables people to drop out at various
level of attainment, so that it ensures a supply of technicians, some
of whom are of graduate potential, with the option of taking their
education further when it suits them. The market should influence the
drop-out, and drop-in, rate. Perhaps 'elitism' is an inappropriate
word; I prefer it however to the negative formulation 'non-dustbin'.
18. Lest the writer be thought inconsistent: he does not like the
'binary' system and would prefer total 3rd-level integration with
diverse specialist nodes. Given that we are stuck with the
inheritance of the binary system, let us make sure that the
technological sector attracts the best people.
[To Irish Times Column Index]
[1970s Overview]
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Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999