Abstract
Recent Government-sponsored reports have criticized the majority of existing post-graduate courses because they do not sufficiently serve the needs of industry, and have suggested encouragement for new trends in these courses. Differences in academic and industrial understanding of proper post-graduate standing and activities may have contributed to existing difficulties, and classification of the courses in accordance with the stages in the careers of technologists to be enrolled and with intended changes in such careers may help to clarify the position.
Educational differences between ‘fundamentals-centred’ and ‘job-centred’ courses are pointed out and the less familiar pattern of job-centred courses is described and exemplified by the courses run by the Postgraduate Department of Applied Mechanics at Sheffield University for the last 15 years.
Over these years the number of students enrolled in each session to the courses of the department has risen from 10 to more than 250, the number of sponsoring employers from 10 to a total of 380, the number of visiting lecturers from industry and research establishments to about 80 in each session, and 40 per cent of the research work done in the department has been on problems suggested by industrial students and their sponsors. The courses of the department, therefore, are clearly accepted as meeting some of the requirements of the mechanical engineering industry. Arrangement and organization of the courses are described, and the results of a survey of past students' opinion and of their use of the instruction are presented.
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