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Academic Drift in European Professional Engineering Education: The End of Alternatives to the University?

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Engineering, Development and Philosophy

Part of the book series: Philosophy of Engineering and Technology ((POET,volume 11))

Abstract

In this chapter, it is argued that insights from comparative studies of higher education are essential to develop an understanding of educational systems dynamics impacting on professional engineering education. Usually such structural dynamics tend to go unnoticed among engineering educators. This chapter is organised in the following way: After a theoretical framing of the argument, three examples of institutional transformations and cognitive shifts that have taken place in similar types of professional nonuniversity engineering education institutions in Great Britain, France and Germany from the massive expansion of higher education in the 1960s to the present are discussed. More precisely, academic drift processes in British polytechnics, French Instituts Universitaires de Technologie (IUTs) and German Fachhochschulen will be examined and compared. In reviewing the relevant literature, the following questions will be considered: (1) What do we know about the processes that have constituted the engineering curriculum? (2) Are such processes inevitable and irreversible? (3) What kind of tensions and dilemmas do they create? It is argued that a particularly powerful and coherent set of values and attitudes characteristic of universities may also be seen as lying at the heart of vocational nonuniversity higher education institutions, causing them to drift towards the university or imitate them as implied in the subtitle.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These figures are based on personal communication with Bernard Delahousse, former teacher and head of the International Office at IUT “A” – Lille 1; actually they vary from one IUT department to the other, especially industrial departments versus business ones.

  2. 2.

    To be more precise, this symmetrical dimension did not apply to the personnel composition ­properly speaking but to the quota of teaching hours delivered by each category, i.e. a third of the total contact hours over the 2 years was to be taught by university personnel, a second third by teachers from the lycées, and the last third by engineers or executives from the professions.

  3. 3.

    Building research capacity in former nonuniversity institutions implies that both faculty members and students should be acquainted with the scientific culture, scientific methods and developments within their field. Moreover, building research capacity also relates to the question of research-based education. In 1998, the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation listed 5 interpretations of research-based education indicating the scope of the concept: (1) instruction in research methodology given by active researchers, (2) instruction given by active researchers within their research area, (3) instruction given by researchers, (4) instruction given in institutions governed by researchers and in which the course material has been developed by researchers, and (5) instruction given in institutions which are under supervision of research institutions and in which the course material is developed by researchers (Skoie 2000, p. 412).

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Acknowledgements

The writing of this chapter was made possible by a grant from The Danish Council for Strategic Research (DSF) to the Program of Research on Opportunities and Challenges in Engineering Education in Denmark (PROCEED). I would also like to thank Professor at Aalborg University and coordinator of PROCEED Andrew Jamison for invaluable advice regarding the organisation of the analytic narrative related to the three institutions. Thanks finally to my collaborator over many years Bernard Delahousse, former teacher and head of the international office at IUT “A”, Lille, France, for valuable comments. In particular, his comments regarding IUTs have been very helpful. At different stages, they have encouraged me and offered their help in proofreading and copy-editing the draft manuscript. Without their encouragement and advice, this chapter would never have found its present form.

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  1. Aarhus University, Birk Centerpark 15, DK-7400, Herning, Denmark

    Steen Hyldgaard Christensen Ph.D.

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  1. Steen Hyldgaard Christensen Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Steen Hyldgaard Christensen Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Institute of Business and Technology, Aarhus University, Birk Centerpark 15, Herning, DK-7400, Denmark

    Steen Hyldgaard Christensen

  2. , Dept of Liberal Arts & Int'l Studies, Colorado School of Mines, Illinois Street 1500, Golden, 80401, Colorado, USA

    Carl Mitcham

  3. , Department of Social Sciences, Graduate University of Chinese Academy o, 52 Sanlihe Rd, Beijing, 100864, China, People's Republic

    Bocong Li

  4. , Department of Languages, Clemson University, Strode Tower 717, Clemson, 29634-0535, South Carolina, USA

    Yanming An

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Christensen, S.H. (2012). Academic Drift in European Professional Engineering Education: The End of Alternatives to the University?. In: Christensen, S., Mitcham, C., Li, B., An, Y. (eds) Engineering, Development and Philosophy. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5282-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5282-5_9

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