Cutting the cost of engineering education

摘要

Universities could subsidise expensive engineering degree courses by charging more for courses that are less expensive and highly oversubscribed, says David Howard of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). The much anticipated publication earlier this year of the UK Government's White Paper on the future of higher education was met with a mixed reaction within the engineering professions. Whereas the document contains a number of proposals that are welcome, there is concern that the consequences of some of the proposals have not been fully considered and that other proposals do not go far enough. Low salaries for academic staff is an important issue and the White Paper rightly acknowledges this by proposing additional funding to reward teaching excellence. But will the additional funding be sufficient to address this very serious problem? The Higher Education Funding Council for England's annual survey on recruitment and retention shows that difficulties in recruiting university staff tend to be concentrated in certain subjects such as computing, engineering and science. The reason is that job opportunities and financial rewards in industry are considerably greater than those available in acade-mia. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that many of the best students are tempted away from the academic path due to financial considerations.This has resulted in a decline in the supply of PhD students and consequently young researchers leading, in turn, to a shortage of career grade academic staff. Significant increases in lecturer salaries are required if this trend is to be reversed.