Sandwich degree courses: industrial training and its assessment

Ten years ago, in 1956, the National Council for Technological Awards was set up under the chairmanship of Lord Hives. The central theme of the proposed award of the Diploma of Technology was the integration of academic and industrial training not only in engineering subjects but also in applied science. It was not until 1959 that the council set up an Industrial Training Panel to give guidance as to the part industrial training should play in the integrated course. This panel did not report until 1963 on engineering subjects, although a short interim report was submitted in 1961, and 1964, just before its demise, on applied science subjects. This appears to me to have been a great mistake. I would have liked to have seen the council attempt to encourage the growth of the academic and industrial contributions to the course side by side. The sandwich course does not seem to have recovered from this sequence of events and is even now suffering from the council's apparent preoccupation with the academic angle of the courses, in that colleges tend to regard these courses as academic with industrial attachments.