UK developments in chemical engineering education
Special Symposium - Education
The Future of European Chemical Engineering Education in a Globalized World
Keywords: chemical engineering programs, UK, national and international factors
Chemical engineering education in the UK faces a period of substantial challenge driven by a wide range of national and international factors. The UK system is strongly driven by the market, with departments needing to become increasingly agile in their development as a result of direct links between course success and the income of universities and departments. Departments face a range of partly conflicting pressures, with the drivers including the following.
•A desire to attract non-EU students as a means of generating fee income outside the constraints of the UK funding framework. Many of these students aim to develop skills relevant to chemical engineering in bulk industries and relevant to the needs of developing nations.
•A need to meet the needs of home students in a rapidly moving employment market, where there has been a substantial shift away from traditional bulk process industries towards pharmaceuticals, personal care, water, pulp and paper, contracting.
•A recognition that many students do not enter the process industries at all, but rather consultancy, financial services etc.
•A shift in the skills base of entering undergraduate students, with generally weaker skills in relevant mathematics and science.
•A developing culture of cynicism in student approach to examination – partly driven by learned behaviours in secondary schools – with many students working through their courses on a diet of “cram-exam-forget”. This is combined with a lessening culture of personal responsibility for learning – increasingly students see their failure as one of the university and not themselves, and are more likely to appeal against decisions or even go to law.
•Pressure from professional bodies to deliver 4-year rather than 3-year undergraduate programmes.
•A desire driven by universities in response to the need for more cost-effective teaching to adopt e-learning techniques.
•A lessening enthusiasm among academics to devote time to teaching at the expense of research.
•The high cost of teaching chemical engineering compared with other subjects.
•Pressure on the curriculum from a wide range of sources to deliver personal skills, business and enterprise skills, knowledge of sustainable development etc etc.
This paper will discuss the approaches that are being adopted in the UK, and particular report on some of the innovations being implemented at the University of Manchester. These include a move to remove artificial barriers between topics and to increase skills in problem solving that require a broad range of technical skills to be applied, as well as the use of senior teaching fellows, peer-assisted learning, e-learning and “egg race” events.
Presented Tuesday 18, 16:10 to 16:35, in session The Future of European Chemical Engineering Education in a Globalized World - IV.
