Old fashioned tech schools taught many trades well including construction and manufacturing trades, and attracted international attention for the quality of training. Teachers and instructors were valued for their practical experience in trades, experience that clearly enhanced the quality of their instruction.
With the move to institutes of technology, it seems a more academic approach to instruction in trades came at the expense of some reduction in practical instruction. At the same time, the quality of institutes' advanced professional training in certain advanced professions such as mechanical engineering has been inferior to university standards,though they have been surprisingly successful in other fields such as computer software training going by senior computer industry positions obtained by graduates.
With the government's approval, several institutes of technology aspire to becoming technical universities. See an argument for this at Technological Universities Should Bring Out the Best of Both Sectors It emphasises the need to serve local and regional communities. In the USA, many non-university technical colleges have succeeded in this by keeping a very close relationship with the technical and recruitment needs of businesses in their regions and adapting their curriculums as needed,often rapidly.
With university status requiring rigid academic criteria, it would be very difficult to change curriculums rapidly , preventing efficient service to local and regional communities. In addition, instructors with years of practical experience would need to spend more years doing narrow specialised PhDs to be taken seriously,a barrier to entry that would reduce the recruitment pool of instructors. In many cases, heads of departments may be PhDs with little practical experience.
So practical technical training would tend to be downgraded for trades. That makes a case for restoring the old technical schools or a third level version of them.
The only argument that would justify technological universities is that traditional universities don't adapt quickly enough to serve the needs of industry in the sciences and engineering. This is not to argue that universities should emphasise technical training for specific short term needs of industry as opposed to thorough,broad technical education in core principles.
With the move to institutes of technology, it seems a more academic approach to instruction in trades came at the expense of some reduction in practical instruction. At the same time, the quality of institutes' advanced professional training in certain advanced professions such as mechanical engineering has been inferior to university standards,though they have been surprisingly successful in other fields such as computer software training going by senior computer industry positions obtained by graduates.
With the government's approval, several institutes of technology aspire to becoming technical universities. See an argument for this at Technological Universities Should Bring Out the Best of Both Sectors It emphasises the need to serve local and regional communities. In the USA, many non-university technical colleges have succeeded in this by keeping a very close relationship with the technical and recruitment needs of businesses in their regions and adapting their curriculums as needed,often rapidly.
With university status requiring rigid academic criteria, it would be very difficult to change curriculums rapidly , preventing efficient service to local and regional communities. In addition, instructors with years of practical experience would need to spend more years doing narrow specialised PhDs to be taken seriously,a barrier to entry that would reduce the recruitment pool of instructors. In many cases, heads of departments may be PhDs with little practical experience.
So practical technical training would tend to be downgraded for trades. That makes a case for restoring the old technical schools or a third level version of them.
The only argument that would justify technological universities is that traditional universities don't adapt quickly enough to serve the needs of industry in the sciences and engineering. This is not to argue that universities should emphasise technical training for specific short term needs of industry as opposed to thorough,broad technical education in core principles.
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