Abstract
The preferred alternative route to attain the academic educational standard of the engineering profession (alternative, that is, to the normal full-time or full-time sandwich education) should be by a part-time degree course, probably C.N.A.A. degree; and such a part-time course should foster the creative potential of the student as a major objective.
The professional engineer must be broadly educated as well as technically trained. The part-time degree course must be designed to assist the student in his awareness of the human, sociological, and economic effects of his future professional work.
Courses based largely on a tutorial system could be well suited to the part-time student, who has not the time to attend a number of specified formal instruction and laboratory periods, and is in a good position to undertake individual guided creative exercises—much of them in his own time. These could often be used to introduce and illustrate the fundamentals of engineering science. Obvious examples are design work at all levels of complexity, and the selection of apparatus and instrumentation for a specified experimental investigation; possibly they could be in collaboration with the student's employment. The course could be of equal academic and intellectual level as the traditional university degree, but with greater scope for originality. Some outline suggestions are given for a part-time degree course of this type.
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