The WPI interactive qualifying project-a model for British engineering education?

Spurred by diminishing enrolments and public hostility towards technology in the late 1960s, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the third oldest private technological university in the USA, introduced a new curriculum. Central to this were two student projects, one in the student´s subject of specialisation and the other, the interactive qualifying project (IQP), intended to provide groups of students with an introduction to how technology and society interact. In 1987, WPI established in London a Project Centre which arranges for groups of WPI students to carry out projects for British organisations