The UK aerospace sector, although successful, has a relatively low public profile. How important is it for the public to know about sector performance?
The public profile of an industry is not at all important, according to the largest group of the over 500 respondents to our poll last week. Some 47 per cent of respondents said that if an industry is otherewise successful, it doesn’t matter whether or not the general public know about it. However, only 3 per cent agreed that people need only know about industries that affect their everyday lives. A little over a quarter of respondents said that public profile is important because it helps with industry recruitment, while 22 per cent said that knowledge of industry sectors is an important part of national identity.
So, actually, 50% of respondents thought that public knowledge of an industry is important either for identity or recruitment!
With great respect to the large minority who think it isn’t important I have to say that our own research shows abysmal levels of public knowledge about UK advanced and high-tech sectors – among parents, teachers and guidance staff – and this must have a significant impact on the aspirations and STEM attainment of children from age 5 to 18. Promoting the UK’s best and highest value-added sectors would go a long way to changing the poor public perception of engineers, manufacturing and high-technologies.
As a senior engineer at EADS I agree with the poll results. Nobody in the public knows EADS but we have no problems recruiting top people.
As a fellow researcher at Cambridge, public industry knowledge or the lack of it is of no consequence to our graduate career developments. High tech firms are falling over themselves to recruit one of them.
At GSK we are a truly international company and recruit from around the world. People in the pharmaceutical industry know us and that is all that matters.
As a teacher I am constantly reminding my A level students that there are millions of different career paths out there. Never mind that people have only a tiny insight of what is out there. Choose a subject that interests you, research the employment prospects and careers and a whole world will open up to you. The most interesting employers will emerge during their studies at university. So yes, I agree, it doesn’t matter about the lack of public perception.
For my employer, the MI5, public ignorance is highly valued. Increasing our profile attracts the wrong kind of candidates.
As I already wrote in managementtoday, British satellite manufacturers like Astrium are enjoying something of a moment. The brightest minds are competing with each other to work in the sector and all this without a high general public profile!
To my mind Keith Pye does not know what he is talking about. As a career advisor of 27 years working in the university sector, pretty much all industries are well set up with highly successful recruitment programmes.
If the general public knew more about professional engineering, and appreciated the excellence of the work peformed in the UK, then engineers would be held in higher esteem.
This would encourage even more bright young brains to take up engineering as a career, and help lead the UK back towards an engineering and manufacturing society, rather than the predominantly financial services provider it is today.
Alex Morris is 100% correct. I need say no more.
I am old enough to recall the PM of the time (1964) Harold Wilson’s white heat of technology speech, technology which was to transform the world. I do believe it did, albeit our own Nation has rarely received then financial value that ought to accrue from its intellectual/technical capabilities.
I also recall that same person (when in opposition a year or so before and towards the end of the grouse-moor tories being in charge) suggesting that was something deeply wrong with a society (and sadly its then meja who encouraged it- by cheque-book journalism) which paid a prostitute (the young lady who was cavorting with both the Minister of Defense and the Russian Military Attache at the same time….) more than its Prime Minister.
Frankly, what has changed. Encouraged by the meja…Those who sell themselves, their integrity, their sordid stories, their celebrity, their fame, their feet and heads as footballers, their political, legal and academic souls to the highest bidders are rewarded to levels that make the incomes of those such as we Engineers look absurd.
Is there a solution? I wish I knew, for my grand-children’s sake, let alone my own peace of mind and the future advance of the proper economy.