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Old 4th Jan 2022, 12:55 am   #21
Jeremy M0RVB
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Default Re: Loss of a college

Kitson - I went there in the early 1980's - became a part of Leeds City College which also sucked in Park Lane college and I believe the building college too. There is a new build to the south of the city and I guess Kitson, being where it was is prime land for redevelopment. From memory the car park behind the civic hall was becoming more student flats or a hotel.
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Old 4th Jan 2022, 12:59 pm   #22
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Default Re: Loss of a college

It was Joe..... Our department didnt even have Neutron measuring equipment at that time..Leeds University came with theirs... All around the outside of the building.... on the roof..nothing..Door entrance EEEEEEEKKKK... luckily the control rack was away from the door. We rebuilt the entry maze with blocks.
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Old 4th Jan 2022, 1:37 pm   #23
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It's kinda chicken and egg isn't it? Due to the emergence and even dominance of foreign competition for decades, UK electronics companies have closed down, and as a consequence the call for new engineers is much reduced. Reflecting this (they have their own interests to look after), college efforts and courses are focussed elsewhere on other subjects. Ah! but if we don't produce bright young electronics engineers with ideas and passion, then the situation only gets worse! It's all part of how and why the fortunes of countries around the world ebb and flow.

I don't have the answers, but for sure our 'great' commonwealth days are well and truly over. In my opinion it began in the swinging 60s when post war euphoria and a generally laid back attitude towards life in general came in. We wrongly thought we'd be 'the best' forever. But other countries had lower wage bills and people hungry, desperate even, to better themselves. Just look at Sony, how we sometimes laughed at its early products? We're not laughing now, neither is Sony, the crown has moved on again to other companies, in other places. And it will continue to follow that path of hunger and desire. We do have niche electronics companies in the UK, but the great days I fear are well and truly over, our R&TV industry for example being a prime example.
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Old 4th Jan 2022, 10:17 pm   #24
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Default Re: Loss of a college

Radio Wrangler’s comment “they throttled-back courses and merged subjects. Besides, it was too mathematical and too hard to compete with media studies etc.” brought a wry smile to me.


Years ago, my company were advertising for a chief guitar technician. One applicant I was told not to interview, the MD would do this himself; strange I thought.


Said chap got the job, and on the Monday morning he started, I took him to my office for a coffee, and to explain company procedures to him.


I spoke to him in a language I would with each of my guitar technicians, each of which was qualified to CMIT (Certificate of Musical Instrument Technology), and very skilled. But his face was completely blank.


I asked him what the problem was, and he explained that although he could play guitar a little, he had no idea how to repair one. I asked him what qualification he had, and he explained he had just completed his degree in Music Technology – he had learnt how to use a basic studio and how to drive sequencer software; something every member of our staff was equally fluent with.


The MD had assumed that his (media studies) degree meant he was way above our guitar technician’s abilities; he only stayed a few months.



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Old 4th Jan 2022, 11:08 pm   #25
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Default Re: Loss of a college

stevehertz has it in one!!!
Australia "used" to have some excellent engineers too. I supervised some very large factories with an senior ( much smarter than I ) engineer doing the design work and all the math thats being discussed in another thread. What I could do well it turned out was production engineering. Taking a prototype from the engineers bench and transfering the information into something that could be built on a production line by clever but non educated people. Today, even we
( here ) send our PCB layouts to China to be produced. Where have all the PCB producers gone ?.
Where are the artists that we used to be with red and green droput tape to design double sided PCB's.
Even draughting on lovely big A sheets of paper have been replaced by computers. No blueprints anymore, just .pcb files.

Why bother with schooling? Today a degree is usually in acting or a BA.
So we had better get used to the fact our "west " is failing. Oh it will take a few years, but we already are nothing but consumers. I dont know what we are going to do for jobs in a few years because we cant do anything .

Those engineers produced today, are what I call paper engineers. LOTS of qualification and two left feet attached to the end of their arms.

And Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Well its our turn now.

With respect

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Old 5th Jan 2022, 1:53 am   #26
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Default Re: Loss of a college

While there are plenty of examples of people with fancy paperwork who are complete twazzocks, it isn't the possession of the paperwork that makes them a twazzock. It's rather a case that the path to paperwork doesn't adequately screen out twazzocks.

The lab at HP is a place you'd expect to find many formally qualified engineers. The microwave building had its lab on the lower floor, but the building was built into an excavated depression so as not to offend Edinburgh planners. One afternoon there was biblical rain, an intensity not seen before. On the outside wall of one corner of the building there was a kitchen/coffee area in the corner, some loos and a couple of conference rooms, and also an 11kV substation.

There was a hydraulic sort of whoosh and a clatter and water started to come out under the door of the service corridor between the two loos. I was not nearby but went over. Several engineers were staring. One opened the door. A rodding eye blanking plate had blown off with the pressure from the internal gutters a storey above. It was me that picked up the plate, walked into a 6 inch jet of warm rainwater and shoved it back into the hole. It would no longer stay in position, I had to shout at people to get someone to go and get a length of cable so I could bind it in place. RG58 has many uses.

We would have been in a mess if the water had got under the suspended floor of the lab into the cable and mains routes - also open into the substation. We'd have all lost work and had things disrupted. But no-one else had the umph to do something. I guess their mentality said it was a problem for the maintenance department, with out considering the possibility that they may be tied up elsewhere.

Then there was the time when a project I was the architect of needed some trolleys to make prototypes moveable. Ordered, they came, but with the tables steeply angled. We needed flat. Purchasing contacted the manufacturer and assured the right ones would be here at the end of the week. They met the promised timing, but the tables were also angled.

I put one of them in the Land Rover and headed home, cut the thing up one seam (they were folded sheet metal) peeled the rubber mat back, cut out a measured pie-slice on each side, re-bent it and welded up my cut. I didn't intend trailing all the way back to work, so I mixed up a bit of paint and sprayed it. Stuck the mat down in the morning and took it in.

So amongst engineers, there is a wide spectrum of levels of practicality. I think I can be as practical as necessary. But I've also got the paperwork, and can wrangle theory as needed, and invent new stuff when I need.

I do run into situations where they check up on your paperwork and promptly decide you must be a complete plonker to have all that. When I've been looking for jobs, I have to consider which qualifications to declare, and which not to mention.

There are suitable jobs for pure theoreticians without an ounce of practicality, but they are limited in what they can do, and they will miss things.

Crazy world.

David
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 6:07 am   #27
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Firstly, please don't insult people with a BA degree. I have a BA. In 'Physics and Theoretical Physics'. That actually has been a problem for me, some interviewers assume I am a theoretical person. Actually, as a friend once about me said 'He's happier with a differential gearbox than a differential equation'

But a couple of anecdotes from the engineering department of a major UK university. I was working in one of the labs there

1) A 4th year student came up to me and said 'There are no 382.54 ohm resistors in stock'. My comment 'That is very likely, what on earth do you want one for'. I expected some comment involving making a potential divider for a measuring instrument or something that needed such accuracy. But no, the reply was 'The limiting resistor for an LED'. Apparently he'd looked up Vf in the datasheet, taken the average value of If and calculated the resistor. I pointed out that any 390 ohm would be fine, actually 330 ohm would not exceed the maximum If value.

2) Same location, student wants a filter that starts to roll off at about 1Hz and has no idea as to how to calculate the values. I take one look at the circuit and say :'It's going to be about 1/(2 pi R C). Now 2*pi is around 6, so R*C is around 0.15. Try 150nF and 1M Ohms.' He did and it was fine...

And I have no engineering qualifications at all.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 9:25 am   #28
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Tony, I could say the same about media studies. If ever a dyed in the wool techie wants a fall guy, he more often than not will refer to someone who is 'media studies' raised. Well, it isn't always the case, and as they say, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

I am a fully qualified electronics engineer, I completed an electronics apprenticeship and then worked for 12 years in the test department of an electronics company. After a few years in sales (that I didn't particularly enjoy other than the tendering (writing) side), I moved into the company's PR department as PR officer. That embraced writing almost anything that the company needed to commit to print, so press releases, articles, data sheets, company newsletter, exhibition panels etc etc. The fact that I had electronics knowledge enabled me to do that job to a high level, and it was for that very reason that following closure of the department I got a job with a specialist electronics focussed PR company who only hired people with electronics knowledge, writing ability and commercial nous - three quite different disciplines. And I ended up running that department. After I retired (early) over ten years ago, I still have an income writing PRs and articles on a freelance basis.

The moral to the story being, don't assume that people in media studies occupy a technical deadland. Often we do not. Conversely, I could tell some howlers about techies making huge gaffs by talking 'money' to clients thinking they know what they're on about. The electronics industry is not just about technical excellence, it's much more than that. If our electronics industry is to grow, we need to pull together in team orientated fashion, not look down at others as being superfluous or lacking in knowledge. We're all experts in our own fields, and techie fields do not have a right to assume the role of top dog.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 10:54 am   #29
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I worked in the television broadcast industry. I was educated to degree level in electrical and electronic engineering and I was part of a team keeping all the equipment working. Some of it was video, some of it was audio and an increasing lot of it was computing based. In the beginning I was very happy receiving broken bits of kit and getting out the manuals and meters and repairing a very wide range of items. My direct engineering management were very aware to the back up needed and it wasn’t at all uncommon to be sent to the factory of an overseas manufacturer to get dedicated training. But as the years rolled by I found the kit I was working on could not be repaired - it was almost too sophisticated for the kind of diagnostic tools we had. Slowly but surely the job became not one of component level repair but one of simply swapping boards out and sending faulty items back to the manufacturer - you were not expected to repair very much in the end as it became common practice to arrange a service level agreement with the manufacturer. What kind of people does the broadcast industry require now? - qualified electronics engineers or people trained to work out which board to swap out and send off? They are not the same. Tricky question I think.

A junior colleague approached me one day and said he felt he needed to know a bit more about how a colour television monitor worked (He had the same job as me). I said let’s go back to basics; how do you think a CRT works. He replied that he knew a mono CRT had a bulb at the back of it projecting light towards the screen and he assumed a colour CRT would have 3 coloured bulbs in it projecting the different coloured lights towards the screen. I was gobsmacked by this, truly gobsmacked. He really did mean coloured bulbs. I knew there was no hope and trawled YouTube to find him the old BBC2 trade test films to look at on ‘It’s the tube that makes the colour’ and of course the ‘How to install and set up a colour TV receiver’. I didn’t take it any further and I was surprised how many of my other colleagues viewed the films with great interest (hmm).
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 12:28 pm   #30
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The BA/BSc thing is just education convention. Some universities only award BAs to actual arts graduates, others give them to graduates in a wide range of subjects. Oxford has never awarded anything other than a BA to any of its undergraduates, regardless of subject.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 1:13 pm   #31
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Quote:
Originally Posted by red16v View Post

A junior colleague approached me one day and said he felt he needed to know a bit more about how a colour television monitor worked (He had the same job as me). I said let’s go back to basics; how do you think a CRT works. He replied that he knew a mono CRT had a bulb at the back of it projecting light towards the screen and he assumed a colour CRT would have 3 coloured bulbs in it projecting the different coloured lights towards the screen. I was gobsmacked by this, truly gobsmacked. He really did mean coloured bulbs. I knew there was no hope and trawled YouTube to find him the old BBC2 trade test films to look at on ‘It’s the tube that makes the colour’ and of course the ‘How to install and set up a colour TV receiver’. I didn’t take it any further and I was surprised how many of my other colleagues viewed the films with great interest (hmm).
I must admit, I'm a tad shocked that you took that attitude with a junior colleague after he'd come to you with a fair and valid question. It seems he wasn't that far off the mark with the basic principle of how a CRT works, but wanted to know more, hence his approach to yourself a more senior, more knowledgeable person. Personally I would have sat him down and given him a five minute overview of a colour CRT tube, that's all it would have taken. Sorry.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 3:26 pm   #32
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I am finding this a fascinating thread to read, as I have always been interested in technical education. Some parts of this thread make me feel rather sad at the apparent decline in Radio and Telecommunications engineering training. I realise it’s the sign of the times, and just wonder were it will be in generations to come.
I wonder if there are uplifting stories about our engineering success stories that could bring a warm glow?
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 3:49 pm   #33
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It has been an interesting thread.

My academic qualifications are -paradoxically- in nothing at all to do with electronics. I'm a Biologist and Statistician! [or 'Bioinformatics' as it was called 50 years ago]. All my electronics is self-taught or acquired by my paying to go on technical training courses provided by specific equipment/products. I also did various buisiness/finance-courses with the local Training & Enterprise Council in the early-1990s [the cost of these courses was tax-deductible]. A friend who was doing a degree in Law helped me out by sharing her lecture-notes and handouts for the 'contract law' module of her course.

When I was recruiting people, I always looked for evidence that they were adaptable and inquisitive rather than just what job-specific skills they had. One of the best systems-analysts I ever recruited was an HND industrial chemist but also a bellringer - and his understanding of the numerical implications of his hobby meant he very quickly 'got' the idea of algorithmic methods. He went on to be a Mature Student at Oxford.

One issue I have generally had with 'technical' training provided by colleges is that they lack any business-component; it's all very well being good at 'fixing things' but unless you have a good grasp of issues like marketing, costing, depreciation, sunk costs, and even raising finance, you're unlikely to end up running your own profitable business.

"Be as good with a spreadsheet as you are with a soldering-station". Also, expect to spend at least an hour a day on 'continuing personal/professional development'. Stop watching the telly and study!

German 'technical' Hochschule education does tend to include more business-education from what I can see - which could explain a lot.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 4:01 pm   #34
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevehertz View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by red16v View Post

A junior colleague approached me one day and said he felt he needed to know a bit more about how a colour television monitor worked (He had the same job as me). I said let’s go back to basics; how do you think a CRT works. He replied that he knew a mono CRT had a bulb at the back of it projecting light towards the screen and he assumed a colour CRT would have 3 coloured bulbs in it projecting the different coloured lights towards the screen. I was gobsmacked by this, truly gobsmacked. He really did mean coloured bulbs. I knew there was no hope and trawled YouTube to find him the old BBC2 trade test films to look at on ‘It’s the tube that makes the colour’ and of course the ‘How to install and set up a colour TV receiver’. I didn’t take it any further and I was surprised how many of my other colleagues viewed the films with great interest (hmm).
I must admit, I'm a tad shocked that you took that attitude with a junior colleague after he'd come to you with a fair and valid question. It seems he wasn't that far off the mark with the basic principle of how a CRT works, but wanted to know more, hence his approach to yourself a more senior, more knowledgeable person. Personally I would have sat him down and given him a five minute overview of a colour CRT tube, that's all it would have taken. Sorry.

Perhaps I should have said ‘he didn’t take it any further’. Having watched the two films in question I think even he realised the gap was unbridgeable.
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Old 5th Jan 2022, 8:26 pm   #35
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Default Re: Loss of a college

This thread was about the loss of a single college but its clear this is a more widespread problem.

However the thread has now come to it's conclusion.

Hopefully the Engineers of yesterday and today will continue to support the Engineers of today and tomorrow.

Cheers

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