Engineering Professors’ Council

Admissions Working Group Report on EEA/Shape the Future developments – December 2007

Longitudinal Study

Since the last meeting of the Admissions Working Group, effort has been focused on trying to obtain sponsorship for the Longitudinal Study of what kinds of intervention are likely to have the greatest impact in raising student participation, engagement and career choice. A reply is still awaited from John Holman (National STEM Director) regarding his advice and, ideally, support. However, a number of agencies have offered to contribute to the study should one major sponsor not be found.

IEEE Conference

The paper written jointly by Fred Maillardet, Fiona Martland and Dik Morling entitled Attracting more entrants into engineering – the UK perspective appeared to be well received at the IEEE conference in Munich in November 2007 on Meeting the Growing Demand for Engineers and their Educators 2010-2020. The conclusion from the conference was that a lack of interest in careers in engineering has become a serious problem in all the ‘developed countries’, including France, Germany and Italy. The need for a serious longitudinal study of the kind we have been advocating for some considerable time was (once again) suggested by the keynote speaker as necessary, this view being endorsed by delegates.

FJM  3.12.07