Gibburt

This article is the second part of the guest article written by Steven Price, the executive director of the European Institute of Industrial Leadership (EIIL), about the expected shortage of qualified engineers within Europe. For the first part of the article please refer here.
——————————————————————————————
Part II : ‘What should be done to reverse the decline?’
by Steven Price

Chronologically the first problem is attracting students onto university engineering courses. Closely associated with this was the need to keep students interested in an engineering career after university. It was notable that amongst all the responses of the survey there was not a single example of a university being actively engaged in any of the initiatives aimed at encouraging school children to take a greater interest in engineering (science).

Many universities are recognizing however that engineering degree courses containing an element of ‘management’ in the curriculum are increasingly fashionable. Several respondents recommended that engineering students should practice these management skills (such as project management, team management or effective communication skills) in schools liaison activities, and that university engineering courses should encourage students to participate in activities with local schools to stimulate better understanding of the relevance of science to engineering and then to society.

A widely held view was that Europe’s universities do not act, indeed do not see themselves, as an essential link in the supply chain for engineers into industry. Case study examples demonstrated that universities are often poorly placed to judge what should be taught in the later specialist masters years of university engineering degree courses in order to make the master both relevant to an industrial career and attractive to potential students.
In the exceptional cases where industry had become closely involved in specifying (and in some cases even controlling), the content of a specialist (masters) degree there was evidence of both demand exceeding the places available and a very high recruitment rate into industry from course graduates.

Examples of such close involvement ranged from individual company partnerships with preferred universities to instances of industry associations working together to define degree course content and then, through a tender process, engaging a suitably-qualified engineering faculty to teach the program.
It should be noted that responses from those in universities have also called for closer involvement with industry. However, these generally called for more support from industry for the existing activities of universities and, more pointedly, more industry funding of university research work.

Twenty years ago it was popular for large companies to sponsor students through their studies, engaging them in summer placement work to illustrate the relevance of their degree to their future career. However such long term investment was not consistent with the short term outlook of most companies during the nineties. Nowadays many larger multi-national companies (MNCs) have reported an intention to return to sponsoring of undergraduate students.

Post graduation, the media representation of the engineer is as the university-based professor of engineering (the engineering scientist), often asked to comment on the possible future applications of his research.
Typical engineering achievements such as producing four times the design capacity of a large petrochemical plant, or reducing its emissions by 30% would not normally be heard of let alone be celebrated outside the company.

Consequently amongst today’s young students the prospect, however inaccurate, of a very difficult and long university degree amongst ‘academic’ peers, taught by scientists, and leading to a career at the research bench or the drawing board, does not compare favorably with studies which can more obviously, and more quickly, lead to a highly rewarded exciting career in business. The wide variety of well-rewarded and exciting roles possible within an engineering career, and the contribution of these to society, is not well-portrayed to those outside the industry.

It is obvious that much can be done to improve the image of engineering careers. For more information and follow-up studies please refer to www.eiil.net.

Filed under: Science by Robert Nijssen | Social tagging: education > European Institute for Industrial Leadership > Guest article