Engineering urgent change

Complaints about the lack of engineers are not new. Similar lamentations have been heard at any time in the past 100 years and more. But that does not justify ignoring the present decline in enthusiasm for engineering. In a technology-driven world even those who will eventually work as business managers, journalists and lawyers could profit by initial qualifications in the subjects which underpin our economy, quite apart from the obvious need for large numbers of skilled people to design and maintain modern communications systems and physical plant.

Engineering should by rights be a glamour subject. Like architects, doctors or airline pilots, engineers are people whose work is vital: their mistakes can kill. But it is also work which enhances and improves everyone's daily lives. Engineering in France, which has had a tradition of education in the subject since the revolution, has a much higher glamour factor - though that is looking a bit battered as the masonry topples from President Mitterrand's cherished grands projets.

The Year of Engineering Success, planned for 1997, will address the profession's image problem, putting more emphasis on engineering as a creative and instinctive matter as well as a mathematical and logical one. Putting children who might become engineers, rather than vets or doctors, into contact with people who already are is bound to help.

But such initiatives can only influence at the margin. Potential students are not stupid. They read the signs of the market clearly, and opt for the media, the law or the financial services industry because they see them, rightly, as better paid and less of a grind.

The solution lies in employers' hands. They should be prepared to pay for the thing they say they want. It is true that starting salaries for technically competent graduates have been rising and that employment prospects are better for them than for many humanities graduates but still engineers on the long road to chartered status do not earn much compared to other professions. Nor is their job security famous, given today's fashion for downsizing everytime trouble looms.

Shortages are made worse because not anyone can become an engineer. Engineering students need to be comfortable with mathematics and physics before they can approach the subject itself. In some cases chemistry is also essential (it is no coincidence that chemical engineers are the best paid).

It has long been pointed out that the key lies in a broader post-16 education which keeps options open long enough for potential students to have a real choice of taking technical subjects in higher education.

Too many people shut the door on technical subjects too early by dropping hard subjects after 16. This has been particularly true of girls. Though their performance has been improving, George Walden, in his fiery condemnation of the education system (page 14), makes a telling and uncomfortable point when he draws attention to the number of women studying those humanities subjects which carry a high risk of under-employment.

However Mr Walden and indeed Melanie Phillips (page 15) may not be right in blaming teachers and comprehensive schools for this sort of failure. Stephen Hodell, dean of engineering at the University of the West of England, has put his finger on an important factor of the Government's own making. Schools driven into trial by league table have an incentive to push students into A-level courses where high grades are more easily achieved. Maths and science are not in this category.

Better pay and career prospects coupled with a reformed post-16 curriculum would be the best way of ensuring the flow of competent candidates for engineering is healthy.