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More than half of graduates feel 'unprepared' for work

Not many surprises here. With few sponsorships available (28 years ago, 2/3 of my Mech Eng course were sponsored), there is less application learned by students. Most disastrously, the indolent, inward-looking education system has, certainly in Engineering, given us a huge number of graduates who are quite literally unemployable becasue they are not taught the most basic engineering fundamentals. The basic tenet of education today seems to be to study to a test then forget that and focus on the next module, not to build knowledge progressively. Hence, when I interview mech eng graduates, few can stress a basic beam. On MEng courses, there is far too much focus on woolly project work and too little on teaching. To top that the new head of admissions in the UK is supposed to have declared that first year undergraduates should not be failed for any reason. The current University system, focussing on quantity over quality (and that's not all their fault) is not fit for purpose. Last year, out of more than 600 CV's received, we could not identify enough candidates to interview for eight places.

23 May 2012

1:19 pm