Professor Elena Rodriguez-Falcon, the Acting CEO and Provost of NMiTE (www.nmite.org.uk), Britain’s engineering university being created in Hereford, has called on universities around the country to mark International Women in Engineering Day on 23 June by reviewing the overly-restrictive requirement for students to have A Level maths & physics.
Professor Rodriguez-Falcon, whose goal is to have an equal balance of female and male students when NMiTE opens its doors to undergraduates in September 2019, said: “Britain has a huge shortfall of talented engineers and part of this problem is that few young females see it as the sort of career they want to undertake, and are not inspired to take maths and physics A Level. There have been lots of attempts to change this, but to no avail.
“For us at NMiTE, the dogmatic insistence on these subjects is at the heart of the problem with attracting enough people into engineering. It is time for a total rethink so instead of trying to catch them at 14 and 15 we catch talented people once they seriously start thinking about careers in the sixth form. Taking away the entrenched requirement of these A levels for entry into an engineering degree programme will allow this, as long as there are catch up courses within the degree for those without it.
“It is worth noting that Brunel, Eiffel, George and Robert Stevenson, to name a few, did not have an A Level in maths. However, they were no doubt excellent mathematicians, so it just shows this is not the only way of doing things. In NMiTE’s case we will be doing it through recruiting the right people with the grit and determination to learn the maths as part of their degree.
“Can it be done without dumbing-down the profession? Quite frankly I think that has already happened through the limited gene-pool it recruits from.
“The approach of wanting smart people who have lots of aptitude and attitude to become engineers, rather than only drawing from the restrictive numbers of sixth-formers taking these subjects, is radical in the context of England. In fact, the approach in England and Wales for the past 60 years is out of step when you look internationally, including Scotland, where their syllabus is not so specialised.
“The requirement for these qualifications in England is out of step with much of the World and it is now time for this to change!”
NMiTE Information
Britain has an estimated shortfall of 40,000 engineering graduates and closing this gap is essential if the country is to have the high-value skills needed for a successful modern economy. NMiTE is being created to help solve this problem with a radical new approach and a curriculum that combines the best innovations from leading universities around the world.
Subject to validation, NMiTE will open its doors to a Pioneer Cohort in September 2019. By 2020, it’s expected that 350 students will be based at a purpose-built city centre campus in Hereford from where NMiTE will deliver the world’s most distinctive and innovative engineering curriculum. Its approach can be summed up as “100% learning by doing: no lectures, no set textbooks and no exams”. It intends to be educating more than 5,000 engineering students by 2032.
The future university is being strongly backed by engineering businesses, the Herefordshire community, Herefordshire Council, the University of Warwick, Olin College of Engineering (USA), professional engineering bodies and the UK Government, which recently announced up to £23million in initial funding and featured it in its recent White Paper Industrial Strategy: Building a Britain fit for the future.
£8 million of this funding for the project was awarded to the Marches LEP via its Growth Deal with Government. Growth Deals are awarded to LEPs through a competitive bidding process to fund the delivery of projects to boost the local economy.
