Skills shortage "will worsen

Citation

(2001), "Skills shortage "will worsen", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443bab.003

Skills shortage "will worsen"

Skills shortage "will worsen"

Keywords: Skills shortages, Electronics industry

The furious pace of change in electronic engineering, coupled with a decline in student funding and inadequate undergraduate facilities, has led to a growing gap between what a university can realistically deliver and what most employers want and need in a new graduate. This was the message delivered by Professor John Midwinter, in his inaugural address as Institution of Electrical Engineers president. "Clearly, hard choices must be made, completely rejecting great swathes of material altogether for later study during lifelong learning," he said. "In addition to understanding many emerging and developing technologies, engineers need to understand the markets into which they must project their systems, and how the global competition is reacting to them. The dilemma facing educators seeking to convert school leavers into practising engineers, working in fast-moving sectors such as information technology, amounts to a head-on conflict between the desire to teach technical width and the desire to cover depth. In addition, heavily-indebted students are demanding shorter, not longer, courses and are voting with their feet."

The dilemma was made worse by the huge decline in public funding per student. He continued: "Such a decline hits hardest at those topics that consume the most money or where economies are most easily made, such as laboratory provision for advanced project work, an area usually seen as vital to an engineering student's progression in the final years of study. Offering a wide range of specialist options and backing these with meaningful project facilities is virtually impossible. Closer employer involvement, the development of industry-sponsored and technology-specific higher-education laboratory facilities and significant student exchanges between universities after completion of a two-year core programme might be one answer," he suggested.

"Within the higher-education sector," Professor Midwinter concluded, "new thinking is urgently needed to seek ways of delivering high-quality degree programmes at affordable prices."