IEE Science, Education & Technology Division: Chairman´s address. Education for technology

Industrial employment in the UK is declining steadily, and so we need to encourage the production of well designed, reliable and competitive goods that will sell at home and overseas. It is inevitable that electrical engineering in general and electronics in particular must play a large part in increasing our production efficiency and will feature in many of our successful products. Therefore it is important that we ensure a steady flow of able graduates from our universities. This will be difficult at a time when both the universities and industry are under pressure owing to the rapid rate of change in technology and the poor economic situation. Significant changes are taking place in our schools and universities that will affect the output of graduates in terms of both number and quality. There is an urgent need to change the bias in our education system and to encourage a Government policy in favour of engineering. Those of usin the universities and in industry should work more closely to influence chage in this direction.