Frequent Dialogue Brings Action

Certain groups within the university do respond to expressed needs. These comprise the professional schools—medicine, law, architecture, engineering, dentistry, and so on. If I dwell a little on engineering here, it is only because I know it better than the others, not because I think it displays any exceptional virtues. The engineering faculties of both universities include representatives of the New Zealand Institution of Engineers. The Auckland faculty also includes representatives from industry, and Canterbury may well have a similar arrangement. The Education Committee of the Council of the Institution of Engineers includes a representative from each school of engineering. The dialogue between the profession and the teaching institutions is thus fairly frequent. The schools of engineering are also in continual touch with employers of engineering graduates, partly because of the vacation employment experience that undergraduates have to acquire, partly because most of the recruiting of new graduates is done by the employer making direct contact with the engineering schools. Both schools make use of practising engineers to give occasional lectures. Similar practices hold in other professional schools, although there will be differences in detail. Thus as the requirements of a profession alter, the teaching pattern can respond. Indeed the schools of engineering take some pride in the fact that they give a lead as often as they follow, and doubtless this will also be true in other professional schools. This is not to say that all is perfect in the teaching curricula of the schools of engineering. Complaints are heard from time to time. But the virtue of the situation is that there is a real exchange of views. The complaints are heard; and action generally follows.