The UK needs up to 240,000 engineers and technicians every year for the next 10 years, according to government analysis of priority occupations. Part of the answer might be changing how we educate them.
Original article link: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/cracking-the-engineering-skills-conundrum
A recent article in The Engineer (link in comments) quotes Dr Rhys Morgan of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Professor Ian Ritchey OBE FREng, formerly of Rolls-Royce. They back a more modular approach: do the first year of a degree, get a Level 4 qualification, go and work as a technician, then come back later for more. Morgan imagines taking modules from different universities and continuing to learn throughout your working life.
I agree with the reasoning. Great engineering depends on people working together, and understanding where other engineers are coming from helps break down silos and makes better products.
It’s also how I did it. I started with an HNC in Chemistry at UWE, then took Open University modules that interested me rather than continuing down one path. Maths, Design and, as a curve ball, English Grammar. My degree is in “Stuff” (the capital letter is deserved). Those modules were more useful than parts of the HNC probably ever was, and I studied them around work. It was far from easy, but I know a lot of people who have completed university-level training around work.
But there are downsides. Many employers are what I call “qualification blind”. They want someone who can be up and running quickly, and the easiest way to get that is the “best” degree from the “best” university. Persuading them to take on people with fewer qualifications will be hard, even for companies with strong graduate and year-in-industry programmes.
So perhaps we should start at the other end. Ritchey suggests short “sector specific overlays” delivered by universities, for people moving into a new sector. I’d extend that: individual university modules for people already in work.
Most engineers want to keep developing. This would give them up-to-date training at a commitment employers can bear. This already works for some individual engineers, especially using the apprentice levy. Once it became the norm, hiring someone with fewer qualifications would look far less risky, because there would be a clear route to building them up and moving between sectors and specialisms as they go.