College deserves credit for its technical efforts

YOUR article about the Sheffield University Technical College (Yorkshire Post, April 8) put a negative slant on the issue of unfilled places because only half the eligible 14-year-olds can resist the pull of staying instead with their friends at secondary school.

However, when we read that post-16 courses have attracted 180 students rather than the 120 planned, and that 187 staff have applied for 13 places, we have to congratulate college principal Nick Crew.

More so when we consider that science and engineering have been out of fashion for decades, with successive governments putting their faith in the money-shuffling trades, such as financial services, law and retail.

Not to mention when the subjects are deemed too hard 
for many boys and of no interest, in general, to young women.

These attitudes are not new 
of course. At the turn of the 
1900s, when Sheffield steel men such as Vickers, Cammell 
and John Brown built huge industrial empires, underpinning the British Empire with their warships built in their yards on the Tyne, Mersey, Clyde and at Barrow, they complained that too many young men “filled their heads with bookish learning” instead of delving into the wonderful arts and science of steelmaking!

Now that even the British government has realised that engineers, manufacturers and exporters are desperately needed we must wish the Sheffield University Technical College, and others around the country, every success.