It's kicking off in London...

[JohnH]

...but I have turned my back on engineering as engineering is dying in Britain.

Engineering can't afford to die in Britain, or Britain will die with it. As James Dyson said when he gave the Dimbleby lecture in 2004:

Today, a Chinese company bought IBM Personal Computers lock, stock and barrel. Manufacturing, management and the brand.

Chinese corporations have bought Thomson and RCA televisions, Dirt Devil and Vax vacuum cleaners, Alcatel cellphones, and Dornier aircraft.

To survive against them, we can't just rely on shallow styling. We need technology and design that they don't have.

As long as we continue to innovate and produce products that have better features and work better, we can compete.

Our only chance for survival is better engineering.

Now I'm frequently told that championing manufacturing is yesterday's game. That we live in a post-industrial society. That the service and creative industries have replaced manufacturing.

Well consider this:

Of the world's ten largest corporations by revenue, nine make big, heavy things. Like cars or ships' turbines or computer hardware or consumer electronics.

These companies rely on their engineering and their technology – not their styling – for their wealth. Only one – WalMart – is a service company.

Look at the most profitable companies and again the facts speak for themselves. In the top ten, only three are service companies.

And as for the world's least profitable company? Why it's Vodafone, a service company that made a loss of more than 15 billion dollars last year.

So why does Britain need a manufacturing industry in this supposed age of the service economy?

My answer is simple. We have no choice. Only one in seven
British jobs is in manufacturing, yet they generate nearly two-thirds of exports.

Manufacturing creates the wealth and spending power that feed the service industry.

It's obvious. The rest of the world relies on manufacturing for its wealth.

Why do we think we can be different? If we want to maintain our position alongside other leading nations, we've got to join the rest.

The whole lecture's worth reading....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressr ... yson.shtml

 

[JohnH]

I don't think that these fee increases even apply to students of maths and science. So if these upstarts had taken a course that was going to actually contribute to this society (and no, media studies doesn't count), then they wouldn't be moaning about high fees.

So by your logic, maths and science are all that contributes to society.

Sorry for not playing nice but that's balls and you know it.

If we left everything to the mathematicians and scientists, the world would be a very boring place indeed.

Okay dbmtb, I was talking about a financial contribution to this country (including the taxes that keep those nurses and teachers in jobs).

In 1997, the new prime minister talked about the importance of having a "knowledge economy", and with this in mind he set a target that 50% of school leavers should enter higher education, so that this country would have an army of "knowledge workers" that would enable us to compete in this new "knowledge economy". Sounds good, right?

Well, what actually happened was that while student numbers grew and grew, maths, science and engineering faculties shrank and shrank. During the 13 years of Labour government, 25% of all university physics departments closed in this country and 33% of all university chemistry departments closed.

Young people wanted to go to university, but they didn't want to study the "boring" (your word) subjects like maths, science or engineering. They wanted to study "fun" subjects like media studies, comparative religion, French literature, drama and sociology -- subjects that involved warm, fluffy concepts like 'critical analysis' and 'reasoned argument' but didn't involve difficult things like numbers, symbols, formulae or learning technical skills.

And so, British universities churned out more and more arts & humanities graduates and fewer and fewer science & technology graduates.

But it turns out that in the free market, we don't want to spend our money on 'critical analysis' or 'reasoned argument'; we want to buy technology that makes living our life easier, better or cheaper. And the countries who make that technology are the countries who had bothered to learn the difficult stuff (like numbers, symbols and formulae). And they are the countries who are not now in recession but whose economies are actually growing as we speak: China, the United States, Germany and Japan.

The economies of the UK and France (who both happen to produce record numbers of psychology graduates every year) are both struggling to re-start, because in this "knowledge economy", our graduates don't have the knowledge to create and manufacture things that the rest of the world wants to buy. So the government has to cutback, and the universities' funding gets chopped.

If those young people rioting yesterday had really wanted to secure the future of university funding in this country, they would have chosen to study a subject that would financially contribute to this country's tax coffers. But no. Most of them picked a subject based upon their own narrow desire to avoid anything that was "boring".

"Solidarity, comrades." :roll:

 

[silverclaws]

I know, I know we need it, but the government is not supporting it and so it is a struggle, something I am not prepared to continue struggling with, Engineering was my life, my dream but not now although I do incorporate my past skills into my art work, as an engineer I can design my own foundations for my land art and observe the structural mechanics of what I do, I am at least qualified as such. For my processes I design and make my own machines for I understand what the requirement is and how to create it.

But with a history of watching superb British design and engineering innovation get gobbled up by multi national or plain foreign interest as it seems the motive in Britain is to create the idea and sell it as soon as you can. That is not engineereing, it does not provide jobs or skills for a wanting work force all it suits is those that buy and sell peoples futures in the city.

When I was young HOTOL inspired me, I watched that thing a brilliant idea and I watched what happened to it then Dyson he was my hero all the way upto the point where he decided to move his operation to the far east thus going back on his ideas of a British design being built in Britain employing British people to produce it. Noises about no space to expand so production went to the far east where no doubt Dyson increased his profit. An innovative man no doubt, but he sold out at the expense of British industry.

The country as I see it is in the grasp of the get rich quick mentality, got something useful, sell it, no developing skills for the future, no investment in a suitable workforce, so you can see my belief is that British Engineering industry is stuffed whilst the present mentality reigns supreme.

But it is so expensive to get materials to make things, well it would bearing in mind we had it ourselves but closed it all down, too expensive to produce against the competition but what went wrong was we saw foreign materials as superior to our own just because it was cheap, when it is Japanese steel is lousy stuff, probably the reason those old swords had to be folded so many times in production to put some strength and durability into the metal, as a black smith, I know what folding metal does and it does make you wonder when it is needed.

My suspicion is that influential people purposfully ran down British industry purely for profit, what we had can we get it back, I don't know when it is there has been no investment in Engineering for a long time, the skills are dying out. If we do get back then I fear it will be foreign skills at work, not Brits, for we have been well and truly hammered into nothing.

We are just a collection of islands of the coast of mainland Europe where everything costs to get here so meaning the only thing we can excel at is anything that does not have haulage costs, the service industry, Jobs for the few and hard times for the many.

 

[marin man]

You are a man of too many words......BORING

I am going to study the musical history of the pointer sisters for my next degree

That should help fill the coffers huh......


I agree with you yet again john h............

 

[Neil]

...but I have turned my back on engineering as engineering is dying in Britain.

Engineering can't afford to die in Britain, or Britain will die with it. As James Dyson said when he gave the Dimbleby lecture in 2004:

Today, a Chinese company bought IBM Personal Computers lock, stock and barrel. Manufacturing, management and the brand.

Chinese corporations have bought Thomson and RCA televisions, Dirt Devil and Vax vacuum cleaners, Alcatel cellphones, and Dornier aircraft.

To survive against them, we can't just rely on shallow styling. We need technology and design that they don't have.

As long as we continue to innovate and produce products that have better features and work better, we can compete.

Our only chance for survival is better engineering.

Now I'm frequently told that championing manufacturing is yesterday's game. That we live in a post-industrial society. That the service and creative industries have replaced manufacturing.

Well consider this:

Of the world's ten largest corporations by revenue, nine make big, heavy things. Like cars or ships' turbines or computer hardware or consumer electronics.

These companies rely on their engineering and their technology – not their styling – for their wealth. Only one – WalMart – is a service company.

Look at the most profitable companies and again the facts speak for themselves. In the top ten, only three are service companies.

And as for the world's least profitable company? Why it's Vodafone, a service company that made a loss of more than 15 billion dollars last year.

So why does Britain need a manufacturing industry in this supposed age of the service economy?

My answer is simple. We have no choice. Only one in seven
British jobs is in manufacturing, yet they generate nearly two-thirds of exports.

Manufacturing creates the wealth and spending power that feed the service industry.

It's obvious. The rest of the world relies on manufacturing for its wealth.

Why do we think we can be different? If we want to maintain our position alongside other leading nations, we've got to join the rest.

The whole lecture's worth reading....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressr ... yson.shtml

For all of this principled posturing from Dyson, though, where does his manufacturing happen?

Design is one thing, but where are his products actually made?

 

[silverclaws]

MM, if that was aimed at me, I am not even going to bother retaliating as I mentioned before you have too much negativity for me to, but for the sake of your own being and I do care, perhaps you need to take a step back away from the country situation and take a breath of fresh air or else I fear your negativity will destroy you.

But regards Dyson and his products, I have an observation gleaned from the industry that repairs machines. Pre move to the Far East we hardly saw Dysons in for repair and when they were it was just blocked filters, but Far Eastern constructed machines, we saw loads of them and for the same faults, which indicated to us the repairmen quality suffered with the move.

Now Dyson is a very canny fellow, he keeps bringing out new models, new colours new designs, a Dyson product is even a fashion statement in the home, but by creating a must have it scenario not many machines come in for repair as the notion is skip them then we can buy the latest fashion. He is in fact negating the lack of quality construction by tempting the customer with new supposedly better products, a sure winner as far as Dyson is concerned, but not good for a long term user, but even with that most people now do not expect a machine to last, we are well and truly in the throw away mentality a mentality that serves no one but the manufacturers. Good if it were British industry, but then again because British Engineering is superior it might not break in the first place so they would in effect endanger their own jobs by making things that last.

 

[sgw]

All this pro-engineering, anti-arts talk is irrelevant in the context of this protest. The fees will not affect the students currently involved. If they do come in they will affect students in all departments. It would hardly improve the impact of the protest if only engineering students had taken part.

 

[IDB1]

It would hardly improve the impact of the protest if only engineering students had taken part.

Not even by way of the construction of a hefty trebuchet?

 

[one-eyed_jim]

Okay dbmtb, I was talking about a financial contribution to this country (including the taxes that keep those nurses and teachers in jobs).

In 1997, the new prime minister talked about the importance of having a "knowledge economy", and with this in mind he set a target that 50% of school leavers should enter higher education, so that this country would have an army of "knowledge workers" that would enable us to compete in this new "knowledge economy". Sounds good, right?

Well, what actually happened was that while student numbers grew and grew, maths, science and engineering faculties shrank and shrank. During the 13 years of Labour government, 25% of all university physics departments closed in this country and 33% of all university chemistry departments closed.

Young people wanted to go to university, but they didn't want to study the "boring" (your word) subjects like maths, science or engineering. They wanted to study "fun" subjects like media studies, comparative religion, French literature, drama and sociology -- subjects that involved warm, fluffy concepts like 'critical analysis' and 'reasoned argument' but didn't involve difficult things like numbers, symbols, formulae or learning technical skills.

...

If those young people rioting yesterday had really wanted to secure the future of university funding in this country, they would have chosen to study a subject that would financially contribute to this country's tax coffers. But no. Most of them picked a subject based upon their own narrow desire to avoid anything that was "boring".

A 17 year old choosing a degree course isn't in a strong position to influence the national economy. Most will choose according to their personal aptitudes and preferences, and according to the field they think they might find employment in when they graduate. Many employers simply require "a good degree" - subject unspecified, and the majority of graduates don't find work in a field directly related to their course. Given that that makes the degree course a three-year extension to the interview process, it's entirely reasonable for an applicant to lean towards a subject they think they might enjoy, or that they think might be lucrative, rather than one they think might be - in some abstract sense - socially useful.

I picked physics. I personally wish I hadn't. I graduated with a 2:1 from a well-regarded London college at the height of the last recession. Most of my classmates went into the financial services industry, or did postgraduate study to avoid the lousy job market, then went into the financial services industry.

Of the classmates I've kept in touch with, one works on a large (government funded) plasma physics project in the south of France, one is a full-time mother, one edits commercials and horror films in California, one is an intellectual property lawyer, one is in senior management in a European mobile phone company, one is in particle physics research in the USA, two work for big management consultancy firms in the City, one is in web design, two are science teachers, one has a career at an ombudsman, one runs a campsite, one works in the press office of a pharmaceuticals company. Broadly speaking, those that left physics are happier and wealthier than those that stuck with it.

The boom industries for science graduates in the years after I graduated were biotech and emerging web technologies, neither of which could have been predicted in 1990 when I picked my degree course, or in 1987 when I picked my GCSE subjects and chose not to study biology - a "soft" science.

In my class of 200, about half would have got a 2:2 or lower. Because degrees are allocated according to proportions of the class, and not according to some measure of notional competence, fully half of my graduating class would not even have had the option to pursue postgraduate study in physics, and certainly wouldn't have found employment in it. Most of them had been studying nothing but sciences from the age of 16.

 

[one-eyed_jim]

Not even by way of the construction of a hefty trebuchet?