Education for Design and Production: Professional Organization, Employers, and the Study of Chemical Engineering in British Universities, 1922–1976

Abstract

Educationfor Design and Production: Professional Organization, Employers, and the Study of Chemical Engineering in British Universities, 1922-1976 COLIN DIVALL The influence of business interests on the development of educa­ tional programs in universities is a theme of recurrent interest to historians. Several studies of the engineering professions in the United States and Britain have suggested that professional societies played an important role in integrating the many and often conflicting views of businessmen and in shaping the content of academic courses in accordance with the interests of business.1 Yet the “revolt of the engineers” identified by Edwin T. Layton shows that some sectors of the professional community resisted the complete identification of engi­ neering with corporate business ideals. Consequently, as Peter Meiksins has cogently argued, it is necessary to delineate the historical divisions within the professional societies and to investigate the complex pro­ cesses whereby the business ideal emerged triumphant.2 Dr. Divai.i. is lecturer in social studies of technology at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Financial support for some of the research for this article was provided by the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council under award A33250032, held by Drs.Jon Harwood andjohn Pickstone at the Centre for the History ofScience, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, and by Professor Richard Whitley at the Manchester Business School. The author wishes to thank them, Dr. James F. Donnelly at the Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education, University of Leeds, and Technology and Culture's referees for helpful criticism. ‘For example, Edwin T. Layton, The Revolt of the Engineers, 2d ed. (Baltimore, 1986), pp. 1-24; Colin Divall, “A Measure ofAgreement: Employers and Engineering Studies in the Universities of England and Wales, 1897-1939,” Social Studies of Science 20 (1990): 65-112; Peter Lundgreen, “Engineering Education in Europe and the U.S.A., 1750-1930: The Rise to Dominance of School Culture and the Engineering Professions,” Annals of Science 47 (1990): 33-75, esp. 67-75. 2Peter Meiksins, “The ‘Revolt ofthe Engineers’ Reconsidered,” Technology and Culture29 (1988): 219-46. See also Thomas Brante, “Professional Types as a Strategy ofAnalysis,” in Professions in Theory and History, ed. Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl (London, 1990), pp. 75-93; Randall Collins, “Changing Conceptions in the Sociology of the© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3502-0004$01.00 258 Chemical Engineering in British Universities, 1922-1976 259 One of the most important analyses of the situation in the United States, David F. Noble’s America by Design, argues that in the opening three decades of the 20th century, business leaders from the chemical industries were second only to those in the electrical sector in the degree to which they shaped the development of higher educational programs. Noble sees the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICE) as the principal body through which consultant chemists and senior company officials influenced the evolution of the academic discipline of chemical engineering.* 3 More recent studies of the AICE, by Terry S. Reynolds, and of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), by John W. Servos, have shown that the discipline’s development in the United States was the result of a considerably more complex series of negotiations among consultants, businessmen, and educators than that suggested by Noble. However, these studies agree that the need of the early chemical engineers to differentiate their calling from the profes­ sions of chemistry and mechanical engineering led, in the academic sphere, to a much closer and less troubled relationship with business ideals than in the older engineering specialties.4 Historians disagree over the extent to which the pattern of events in North America influenced those in Britain. Jean-Claude Guedon has suggested that the emergence of chemical engineering as an academic discipline in Britain after the First World War was directly related to the example of the United States. By contrast, a more detailed study by James F. Donnelly shows that British educational programs had indig­ enous roots dating back to the late 1880s.5 However, neither Guedon nor Donnelly has examined the educational policies of the British equivalent to the AICE, the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), or the...