Articles
The combination of the UK’s departure from the European Union and the development of a new industrial strategy presents a unique opportunity to refocus our efforts to boost the supply of home-grown engineering talent.
What we teach engineers at university is so useful that employers from all sectors – from finance and management consultancy to retail, entertainment and sport – all want their skills. Some 25,000 UK domiciled students start engineering courses each year, and after graduation around 70% of graduates go into careers in engineering.
As they have very transferable skills, it is unsurprising that a proportion go into highly-paid jobs in accountancy and management consultancy. Indeed, it is helpful to have some engineering-literate people among those who make investment and economic decisions. However, it still appears to be the case that many graduates do not possess the skills that engineering employers are looking for.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology’s 2016 skills survey showed that 62% of the 400 employers surveyed believed that engineering graduates don’t have the right skills for today’s workplace, and the trend is going in the wrong direction: 54% of employers said the same in 2014. Engineers are at the heart of the shift to a digital future, but too many still do not have the digital skills that they will need. Just 17% of manufacturers surveyed by BDO and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers last year said that they have the right staff and skills to incorporate Industry 4.0 into their businesses. Universities will be key to ensuring that all engineering students acquire the right skills for industrial digitalisation – artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics.
We should also do more to encourage our future engineers to develop an entrepreneurial mindset, to spot opportunities and know how to capitalise on them. The 2017 CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey found that 40% of recruiters were dissatisfied with graduates’ business awareness across all subject areas. So we have much to do to embed business skills and entrepreneurship in the education system – at all phases, from schools through to further and higher education.
Industrial engagement is a useful tool, and schemes such as the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Visiting Professors programme bring practising engineers into universities to ensure that students are exposed to insights from industry, helping to improve their employability.
Increasing the permeability between industry and academia will help to ensure that education meets the needs of industry. This could be through visiting professors or teaching fellows, short-term secondments, or more flexible career paths that encourage people to move between academic and industrial roles.
While we must applaud UK universities for the world-class teaching they provide in engineering, we must continue to reshape degrees to ensure that graduates have the skills and knowledge that will best equip them for the engineering careers of the future.
The engineering skills crisis is a challenge that cannot be solved by one sector alone. Industry leaders from right across the spectrum of engineering disciplines, education professionals from primary through to higher and further education, and government all need to work together to address the barriers to attracting new entrants to the profession, for a sustained period. Universities have a critical part to play in this effort. n