Adapt or perish: the stark new truth about skills for the industrial 'fourth age'

Driven by the rapidly changing job market and the fourth industrial revolution, a recent research project interviewed engineers and opinion formers across a range of engineering sectors to investigate the trends and drivers for engineers’ continuing professional development (CPD) in both technical and non-technical areas.

The research was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (now the Office for Students), and jointly led by Dr Paul Rowley, from Loughborough University, and Dr. Caroline Walker, from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with the aim to identify discrepancies between such trends and the current higher education (HE) training available in the UK.

‘In the future, all engineers will be multidisciplinary engineers’ was a theme frequently voiced by participants across all industry sectors.  

The growing trend towards multidisciplinary teams, the top challenge identified in the research, creates the need for engineers to become ‘technically fluent’ in a wider range of areas, and emphasises collaboration and problem-solving skills. This means that, in order to develop a sustainable career, engineers will be required to have broader expertise and the ability to move between fields and sectors. 

Indeed, early career engineers stated that they want to stay broad in their skill set in order to future proof their careers. In tandem, there was a wider trend across all career levels to steer their career paths, with the vast majority considering funding their own professional development to shape their career.

Other key findings:

• Many future technical skills gaps were identified and, not surprisingly, these included coding, big data analytics, modelling, AI, robotics, virtual and augmented reality. Surprising, however, was the widely varying views indicated as to the importance of these specific skillsets.
• 50% of survey respondents reported that their employers were not prepared for the impacts of new advanced technologies, which suggests that that companies are still struggling to understand the impact of the fourth industrial age.
• Early career engineers observed that they left university without skills such as coding and augmented reality, and that their degrees were often out of sync with the future needs of the industry.

Embracing life-long learning will clearly become a way of life for engineers at all career stages as new, disruptive technologies come into play, however, this research suggests that there is currently a mismatch between what higher education is delivering at Master’s level and what industry actually needs.

Key requirements identified for industry 4.0-ready HE training include flexibility, tailoring and a focus on business and ‘soft’ skills as well as technical subjects. Courses will also need to allow the flexibility for learning to be combined with work, so, unless Universities evolve what they offer, they will become increasingly irrelevant as providers of advanced training, with industry looking elsewhere for CPD provision.

If you would like a copy of the full report, contact Dr Paul Rowley, Loughborough University at p.n.rowley@lboro.ac.uk.