An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

130A CHRONICLE OF THE ENGINEERING COUNCILentirely supported the thrust from the start. The academic community’s fear was thatengineering departments might shrink or even close with renewed competition for studentsbright enough to cope with the increased standards. For some universities and colleges, thiswas real enough.“Our view throughout was that low standards would be counter-productive, even by thenarrow standards of self-interest used by many protagonists, and leave us with a club that noonewould think it worthwhile joining. A well-judged challenge would, on the other hand,stimulate the right sort of young people with the necessary ability and preparedness to workhard. Although some compromises had to be made, nothing fundamental was sacrificed andin the end wide agreement was achieved. I am clear that history will judge this as afundamentally important step in the development of the Profession.”And this is from David Rogers, a civil engineer with long service on EngC Qualifications andInternational Committees:“The first two versions of SARTOR were probably fairly innocuous and didn’t make manywaves among the larger Institutions, all of whom had a qualification process that was notwidely dissimilar. The major impact was probably felt by the smaller Institutions, but they allappeared to respond positively.“A major change was the publication by the EngC of Competence and Commitment. Therewere several concerns, one of which was the dramatic increase in entries to universityeducation, the removal of the binary divide between the universities and polytechnics, and thefear that there was some lowering of standards. The Government initiative on GNVQs wastaking place and the EngC had recognised that there would be an increasing number ofpathways to reaching professional engineering status.“Whilst Competence and Commitment tended to devote much space to NVQs, the chapter onthe concept of competence and commitment was – with hindsight – a very profoundstatement. It led to the development of SARTOR-3 which was due, and which resulted in anattempt to bring CEng standards back to earlier levels and also establish a much clearer rolefor IEng, which had always been difficult to “sell” to the Profession. The rapid expansion ofelectronic communication and manipulation assisted this.“The writing of SARTOR-3 was a considerable exercise and succeeded only with a majorinput from the Institutions. The two-part document was generally accepted as a firm basis forensuring the reinstatement of standards, but the one area that caused a furore was therequirement for entry standards for accredited degrees. It was the only area where numberswere used - perhaps this is the only thing that engineers understand!! - and the usualarguments about no correlation between entry standards and output standards were trottedout. Curiously none of the academic critics could explain why, if entry standards were sounreliable, they continued to use this method when offering places to potential students!!“By 2001 SARTOR-3 had settled down pretty well, but there were still some Institutions whocontinued to grumble. What it showed up was a continuing and rather worrying problem.Within all the Institutions there was a small group of members and staff who understood thedetails of the qualification process and the constitution of the EngC and how it worked. Thesewere the people who sat on EngC committees and working parties and without whom nothingever got done. However, there existed a very considerable gulf between this group and the© Engineering Council UK 2004