ABSTRACT
A part-time BSc in Engineering started at Humberside in 1980. Four years later the course was approved for honours also, and became a BEng. The 1984 submission, agreeing with the Finniston, GEEP, and other findings, underlined that many new graduates, trained to enter careers in research and development work, were in fact employed in the application of engineering in industry, transforming ideas into hardware or services, operating within the constraints of ‘scientific knowledge, engineering techniques, available time, cost limits, problems of manufacture or construction, the state of the market and the competence and willingness of the work force’. There was an insufficient number of degree courses ‘with a broad engineering approach which reflects the needs of many practising engineers’. The college therefore defined as the major aims of the course:
(i) to provide a sound academic education in the fundamental principles of electrical and mechanical engineering;
(ii) to provide a knowledge and understanding of present practice in electrical and mechanical engineering;
(iii) to develop initiative and imagination in the solution of engineering problems;
(iv) to develop the applications skills required by a professional engineer;
(v) to develop an understanding of the role of the engineer in industry and society.
