Loss of a college

[kevinaston1]

I went into Leeds yesterday, something I have not done for a few months. As I swung around the corner, I was surprised to see a big hole in the ground where Kitson College had stood for many years.


It has gone completely. Obviously, there is now a total lack of requirement to teach mechanical and electronic engineering in Leeds.


Kevin

[joebog1]

Sounds the same deal as Australia. We will take on anything using technology. Then cut university funding by 680 million dollars.

Go figure,

Joe

[Radio Wrangler]

Kitson? Went to a few good gigs there, back in the day. That's an institution with a long history behind it. Monsieur Citroen was an alumnus back before the name became Kitson

If you look at the prospectus of most universities, you'll find electronics missing. Usually morphed into computing. Departments simply found there weren't enough jobs for their produce, so they throttled-back courses and merged subjects. Besides, it was too mathematical and too hard to compete with media studies etc.

The world still needs creative electronics designers, but the need has moved to other parts of the planet. We have niche products left here, but overall, fewer designers are needed. There are few component shops and surplus dealers for similar reasons.

"If we're not going to make anything, Then what are we going to do?" Fred Dibnah.

David

[mark_in_manc]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Departments simply found there weren't enough jobs for their produce...Besides, it was too mathematical and too hard to compete with media studies etc.

The second part of the exerpt of your post I have quoted, chimes with my experience of a closed HE elec eng dept. But the first part (if you'll forgive me) isn't really right; HE no longer really speculates very much (beyond something perfunctory, or perhaps performative) on the destinations of graduates, else there would be no media studies courses! HE is a business now, which is all about intake and retention.

[Radio Wrangler]

It seems that there is a significant shortage of experienced RF engineers right now. I'm getting hammered by agencies wanting to talk me into upping sticks and moving south. THe problem is property prices (equestrian!) and all my friends are up here. Or they want me to start commuting into Edinburgh again. (shudder)

There was a period when jobs didn't come up to supply rate, and the universities overcompensated. Inability to seduce youngsters onto courses perceived as difficult is holding that position, though the cause of the swing has gone away.

Engineering doesn't have the status or salary here that it does in Germany or Japan, and that too makes it harder.

I once explained it to a very senior manager "You decide what the company will do. I set what the company can do." Subtle, huh?

David

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Kitson? Went to a few good gigs there, back in the day. That's an institution with a long history behind it. Monsieur Citroen was an alumnus back before the name became Kitson

If you look at the prospectus of most universities, you'll find electronics missing. Usually morphed into computing. Departments simply found there weren't enough jobs for their produce, so they throttled-back courses and merged subjects. Besides, it was too mathematical and too hard to compete with media studies etc.

The world still needs creative electronics designers, but the need has moved to other parts of the planet. We have niche products left here, but overall, fewer designers are needed. There are few component shops and surplus dealers for similar reasons.

"If we're not going to make anything, Then what are we going to do?" Fred Dibnah.

David

The writing was on the wall when so called electronics magazines started to fill their pages with computer stuff. Gradually (suddenly?), the idea of making a plant moisture detector didn't interest anyone any more.

[Wendymott]

When I became an electronics technician at the University of Bradford in the 70's, it was in the Physics department...... Even then sections were "spinning" off, Opthalmic Optics, Material Science, Solid State Physics, Science in Archaeology, and Nuclear Physics, all which became separate schools. The Physics teaching labs became unused, The Leybold apparatus, junked in the skip. Physics was the basis for science, even Elec Eng students used to visit. OK I was partly instrumental in setting up the School of Archaeology, at it was electronics based. I attended Bradford Tech to do my City in guilds in Radio and TV from 64. a 5 year course, now closed obviously.

[AndyWright]

Am I correct in thinking they used to hold the RAE there? I sat mine in 1981, I'm pretty sure it was at Kitson college but the memories have faded with time.

Andy G4OJY

Maidenhead had a technical college just up the road from me, proper mechanical engineering workshops with "dragons back" roofs. It also had a multi story building for the less practical courses. One of my work colleagues went there for his apprenticeship for De Beers . I have been in Maidenhead just long enough for me to see him cycling to and from the college, 31 years.

It is now a housing estate.

[ms660]

Of the colleges I went to this one's still there (Stockport):

https://goo.gl/maps/oLBub5Qsfrc25MfV9

So's this one (Pool, Cornwall):

https://goo.gl/maps/BdGKngGS3ysTbuVcA

Another one has been flattened (Hartford):

https://www.northwichguardian.co.uk/...ts-demolished/

And the building for Alf's Academy still survives (College of International Marine Radio Telegraphic Communications) Who gives a Tosi, I expect Bellini does :

https://www.radioofficers.com/wp-con...3564139270.jpg

https://goo.gl/maps/tBCqnP7akTqGxijq9

Lawrence.

[mark_in_manc]

I've risked public exposure by admitting I live 5 mins from your former 'Alf's Academy'. The 'Friendly Society of Iron Founders' stonework survives on the building next door, but I didn't know it had served as a union building as late as your older photo suggests. It predates me (here about 30 years - how time flies). Anyone who went there might remember the next building along was a cinema, now (and for at least 30 years) a wood-yard, where the vaulted cinema ceiling and slanting floor with wood inserts to which the benches were presumably screwed, is fully evident as you go searching in vain for a bit of straightish PAR 4x2 white pine.

Another local institution which was very big in electrical-and-electronic-engineering has a Maxwell Building where (as you might imagine) all eee was based. Now there's merely a small remnant in an adjacent building, and Maxwell rotates in his grave (an opportunity for an enterprising green energy project, though the design of alternator coupling might be rather grisly) as former lab spaces have been stripped out for a Starbucks franchise.

Edit to add - it's not all conversion of colleges, to housing estates. I drove past Dagenham Town Hall last week, visiting family in the bit of the country I come from. It is now apparently a branch of a midlands former poly who offer (so the bus-stop ads say) 'degrees with no exams'. There's progress

'degrees with no exams'. There's progress

I think it is as long as the years (plural) spent doing the degree is monitored (mentored these days) properly. I know many people with a degree i.e. they passed the exam that can't do a thing and people who haven't that are very good engineers and can "do". I know which I would choose...

[superjust]

I retired from teaching Physics A level and Electronics at a Sixth Form College in 2011. I was also a Tutor dealing with Student application forms (UCAS) for studying at university. During those times I remember more students studied Psychology at one university than the total number of students studying Physics at all of the universities in the UK. I also seem to remember (but I could be wrong) that you could no longer do a PhD in Nuclear Physics (sometimes called unclear physics).

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by superjust

I also seem to remember (but I could be wrong) that you could no longer do a PhD in Nuclear Physics (sometimes called unclear physics).

I suspect that it mutated [decayed?] into Particle Physics for marketing reasons, mention of "nuclear" being enough to give some misguided people the heebie-jeebies.

One of the problems I found when arranging non-Degree-level education for up-and-coming staffers was that many of the Polys/HE/FE colleges were rather laggardly in what they taught; I remember one of my guys I let out on day-release in the early-90s was horrified to find that the computer-networking course was still teaching X.25 networking as the up-and-coming thing when he was already working for me deploying TCP/IP and ATM-based Internet stuff!

He was also disappointed at the non-mathematical treatment; he had Pure and Applied Maths A-levels so could happily have digested Erlang, Shannon, Nyquist etc as part of the course but anything involving trigonometry or equations was seen as 'too hard'.

Reminds me of how I used to introduce one of my courses:

"The Optimist says the glass is half-full.
The Pessimist says the glass is half-empty.
The Analyst says the glass is twice the size it should be.
The Auditor criticises the person who specified the oversize glass and has him fired.
The Financial Director has the oversize glass sold, replaced by a more-appriopriately-sized one, and the profits distributed to the shareholders.
You need to become all of these people!"

[mark_in_manc]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

He was also disappointed at the non-mathematical treatment; he had Pure and Applied Maths A-levels so could happily have digested Erlang, Shannon, Nyquist etc as part of the course but anything involving trigonometry or equations was seen as 'too hard'.

Benign paternalism (by which I mean I kept hard stuff in, because it was 'good for you' [that is - genuinely vocational], and sent under-qualified people on OU preparatory maths modules, so they could handle the hard stuff) is very out of fashion in HE. These days one has to keep quiet about knowing what is best for people, even when one knows what is best for people.

To tell them would be to demean them somehow. To not tell them, is no longer associated with exploiting them. Trebles all round, as they say in Private Eye. These issues are related to why I left HE - the lower divisions of which used to sometimes do a very useful job in upskilling people with less-than-stellar academic CVs.

[Bazz4CQJ]

Originally Posted by kevinaston1

I went into Leeds yesterday, something I have not done for a few months. As I swung around the corner, I was surprised to see a big hole in the ground where Kitson College had stood for many years.It has gone completely. Obviously, there is now a total lack of requirement to teach mechanical and electronic engineering in Leeds. Kevin

I remember Kitson as I did my RAE there. Of course at that time (1960's), the City of Leeds had just one University, whereas it has now got five Universities.

I make no pretence at all as to offering any insight as to what such statistics may tell us about our country .

B

[mark_in_manc]

Sounds like Soviet radio (keeping this on-topic) -production statistics to me

[TonyDuell]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I suspect that it mutated [decayed?] into Particle Physics for marketing reasons, mention of "nuclear" being enough to give some misguided people the heebie-jeebies.

I feel that nuclear physics and particle physics are different, although related, areas.

The former covers the properties of nuclei, fusion, fission, etc. The latter concerrns the particles that may make up nuclei (protons, neutrons) along with others.

[Wendymott]

Speaking of Nuclear Physics as I mentioned earlier... the Post grad school building at U O B , won a prize for architectural design. The background radiation was quite high... why ? The building had only been made from Granite from Aberdeen, which is radio active . There was a "special" room called the tank. Originally it was to hold a large tank of water, but it never got fitted out. Instead I helped install a 0.4MEV Linear accelerator. The control panel was on the outside of the "tank" which had a 2Ft thick wall. The roof was of a similar dimension. It was ok until it was fired up, with a Tritium target. The radiation was contained in the tank room..... except, the door, which was supposed to be protected with concrete blocks. The fast neutrons were bouncing around the room being deflected through the door by the metal conduit fixed to the wall.

[joebog1]

EEKK Wendymott, I dont know much about nukes or particles, but that sounds scary.

Joe