So much for the CAA saying its down to the industry not them to promote the profession & to try to address the problem of dwindling numbers.
If our local Borough Council can increase the status & therefore numbers of our unskilled dustmen by changing their job titles to ' Refuse Technicians 'then why are the CAA/JAA prepared to relegate ours to that of someone who collects household waste for a living?
I remember this subject being brought up in a letter to the ALAE recently & the author asked the question , what would happen if they renamed the Captain & F/O - Driver 1 & Driver 2? What a backlash that would proke so it just wouldn't happen .
My view is that there seems to be an increasingly Victorian , snobbish attitude towards us true Engineers by the powers that be & that they seem to think the only people who should be exclusively entitled to be afforded the title 'Engineer' are ones who have attended university & who have a degree.
With this obsession of high academic qualifications over practical skill & knowledge being the only route to achieving professional status, can anybody out there settle the arguement as to which of the two qualifications is the harder to attain. 1) The LWTR ( pre JAR 66 ) or 2) Degree. ?
Of course now with JAR 66 it would also appear that the current lowering of standards now blatently obvious as far as dropping penalty marking , written essays , orals etc are concerned this could fuel the argument that the Degree would be the harder of the two but I could be wrong.