1.If we’re going to do that effectively, we need to address the demographic timebomb, which will see the proportion of the population aged 16-64 fall from 65 per cent to 59 per cent in the next 25 years. The only way we’ll do that is by showing young people the potential of engineering and by influencing their parents and teachers.
According to the Sector Skills Assessments for the 10 engineering-related Sector Skills Councils, engineering companies need more than 2.2 million employees over the next 5-10 years. The health of our economy relies upon our ability to seize these opportunities, and convey the rewards of an engineering career to young people. Our research shows that engineering graduates and technicians have a bright future ahead of them: the average graduate salary six months after graduating for those in engineering and technology roles is ￡24,952; 11 per cent more than the ￡22,364 average graduate salary for all subjects. Non-graduates in the industry earn 47 per cent more than others in work without a degree.
Across the board, new graduates are taking longer to enter the workplace; a dispiriting experience for young people anxious to begin their careers. However, almost nine in 10 engineering graduates who graduated in 2010 were either in work or had opted to undertake further study, and two thirds of engineering and technology graduates are more likely to go into jobs related to their field of study than other graduates.
The opportunities and the demand for workers are there; what is lacking is the balance between the skills requirements of business and industry and the skills provided by education.
Our new analyses show that while demand is clearly there, economic growth risks being stalled if we leave various supply issues unabated.
Many leading UK businesses already play a significant role in education. As the future employers of today’s young people, they are well placed to help improve the content of the curriculum to meet the needs of our future engineers.
Providing young people, their teachers and the wider public with a real picture of what it is to be an engineer today, and making available the information and resources necessary to make informed career decisions seems a sensible antidote to scare stories about an industry that is vital to our society.
2.The UK has the lowest proportion of women engineers in the EU – less than one third that of Latvia. Are Latvian women more left-brained?
I am not underestimating the cultural and social challenges. We suffer from a series of vicious circles where the lack of positive images of female engineers reduces the likelihood of us having female engineers to generate positive images. I acknowledge there is an element of chicken and egg, but it is not acceptable to blame the egg. We need to break the circles and we need to do it now.
I would like to see engineers challenging the BBC and other media outlets for the poverty of their engineering coverage. I would like to see the industry championing engineering as part of our culture – a prize for the best portrayal on TV might be a good place to start. And I would like to see engineers demanding that the government reverses its cuts to the funding of science and science in society.
As CaSE recently said: ’It is time to shift from good practice that encourages gentle change to achieving real and rapid results.’The point is that it’s not good enough to say that girls just don’t like engineering. In India the proportion of women enrolled on engineering degrees in 2000 was twice what it is in the UK and that’s despite the lower rates of literacy for girls there. Are Indian women less feminine?
The picture is no better in the jobs market – engineering is one of four STEM professions that have seen no major improvements in gender balance. Of nearly 13 million women working in the UK, only 5.3 per cent are employed in SET occupations, against almost one third of the UK’s 15.4 million male employees.
This represents a huge loss for us all – the loss to the country in a talent pool half the size it could be; the loss to society of the types of engineering that might come from a nonmale perspective; and the loss to women in not having entry to these rewarding careers.
But there is an additional, intangible, but hugely important loss: engineering will never have the position it merits at the heart of our society and economy if it remains the preserve of such a narrow section of society. Given the economic, climatic and social challenges we face as a nation, it is imperative that engineering graduates from its current position as an exclusively male eccentricity.
That said, there are many organisations doing excellent work to encourage girls into STEM and retain them in STEM careers and many individual engineers are also keen to help. During my career I often worked for brilliant male managers keen to encourage women in SET, but it was never their absolute priority.
As a woman engineer I often felt excluded, but I realised I was just not being actively included. All groups have their common language. I had no problem with the geek speak, but the sporting metaphors I didn’t understand or the sexual allusions I didn’t want to kept me silent when I should have spoken up.
happy time
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