Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe, 1850-1939

by Robert Fox, Anna Guagnini

Overview

Education, Technology and Industrial Performance in Europe explores the development of advanced scientific and technical education in seven European countries and the USA between the mid nineteenth century and the 1930s. The essays seek to replace the conventional notion of a simple interaction between education and industry with a far broader perspective in which not only educational institutions and industrial employers but also national and local governments, professional bodies, and private patrons can be seen to have made distinctive and often conflicting contributions. Although most of the essays are concerned with individual countries, the thrust of the volume is comparative. As the authors show, in nations as diverse as Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden there were similarities in the conditions from which the spectacular innovations in higher technical education emerged in the later nineteenth century. But the results that were achieved were by no means uniform. A provision for education that was highly effective in one industrialized or industrializing economy could well be ineffectual in another. And everywhere the balance between the supply of educated manpower and the capacity of industry to exploit knowledge and skills was a delicate one. As educational innovators throughout Western Europe (as well as the USA) came to realize, there was no universally applicable ideal of education for industry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521381536
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/15/1993
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.26(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; Part I. Setting the Pace: 1. Worlds apart: academic instruction and professional qualifications in the training of mechanical engineers in England, 1850–1914 Anne Guagnini; 2. The training and career structures of engineers in France, 1880–1939 André Grelon; 3. Technical education and industrial performance in Germany: a triumph of heterogeneity Wolfgang König; Part II. Coping with the Giants: 4. The training of engineers in Belgium, 1830–1940 Jean C. Baudet; 5. Technical education, engineering, and industrial growth: Sweden in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Göran Ahlström; 6. Industrialization and technical education in Spain, 1850–1914 Santiago Riera i Tuébols; 7. Academic qualifications and professional functions in the development of the Italian engineering schools, 1859–1914 Anna Guagnini; Part III. The Exploitation of Knowledge: 8. France in perspective: education, innovation, and performance in the French electrical industry, 1880–1914 Robert Fox; 9. Training for specialists: the precision instruments industry in Britain and France, 1890–1925 Mari Williams; Part IV. A Transatlantic Perspective: 10. Education, industry, and the American university Arthur Donovan; Bibliography; Index.