As the much-underrated Kevin Costner film ‘Field of Dreams’ put it, if you build it, they will come. The government began its £350m, eight-year investment programme to attract students to ‘difficult’ university courses, including science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) in 2004, and this week the Higher Education Funding Council for England reported that the number of young people entering STEM courses has started to rise.
The grant includes £100m earmarked especially for meeting the higher cost of science education – the average science degree costs £8,000 per student per year to teach, about twice as much as an arts degree, and can rise to £25,000. However, as Richard Pike, chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry pointed out, the UK still lags far behind the US, China and India when it comes to investment in teaching facilities, and laboratories and equipment in the UK can be ‘uninspiring and inadequate’.
The news of rising numbers is extremely welcome, of course, and it’s hardly surprising that a funding boost and fresh equipment has helped out here. No prospective undergraduate, having decided to take the science and technology route at A-level, is going to be thrilled by looking at antiquated laboratories with antiquated equipment. Successive governments have expressed alarm at falling numbers of science students, but some real action in the area seems to have had an effect, both in making students feel like they are wanted and in making sure their environment and equipment is conducive to making sure their skills are state-of-the-art by the time they graduate.
However, the director of education at the CBI has said that ‘we still have a long way to go if growing business demand for STEM skills is to be met.’ The question of growing demand is an interesting one. In our survey, featured in the current issue of The Engineer, two-thirds of respondents said that they feared a skills shortage in the
Recent announcements from the government make it look like we’re back to Keynesian economics, with big investment plans on infrastructure and other large projects to boost employment and spend our way out of recession. It’s been suggested that this could be a major opportunity to overhaul the energy infrastructure to shift to lower-carbon forms of generation, improving our environmental performance at the same time as keeping the STEM sector up and running. Now there’s an idea.
With business uncertainty growing steadily and difficult times undoubtedly ahead, the temptation is to grab at any straw for good news. But it certainly seems that there are opportunities for engineers in the coming years. If we’ve learned anything from previous recessions, it’s that the sectors which generate growth — which actually make real things with real value — shouldn’t, indeed cannot, be allowed to wither.
Stuart Nathan
Special Projects Editor
Having done my degree as a mature student at Kingston University (Roehampton Vale Campus) I would say that the equipment they were buying in was to attract some of the dreamers and support the more niche technologies. The auto department was well equipped with sports cars and bikes and the aero guys even have a Lear Jet and a Boeing 747 ground crew simulator to play with.
The pure mechanical guys (and girls) on the other hand, had a low tech wind tunnel, which we never used, a metrology / metallurgy lab which we used briefly and a CAD CAM facility that was so out of date it was not used by anyone. The computing suite where I spent most of my time was generally excellent though.
I can say that my education at Kingston was very good, but as a student you can see that the budget has been spent on sexy toys, rather than the practical experiments and learning resources.
I would say that the more commercial side of the university “industry” where bums on seats and dollars through the door rules, the PR people are dictating where the bucks get spent and the most important thing is the glossy brochure and flash web site. When it’s a choice between buying a dull mechanical experiment and a car or aeroplane, the most photogenic will win the day.
At the age of 63, I was irritated rather than shocked to hear the (in)famous John Humphries comment as follows when he interviewed (on Radio4) an individual who was reporting the increase in numbers of Science and Engineering students.
The individual was pointing out how interesting Engineering and Science is (and it’s been a huge lifetime’s interest to me) and how students also find it interesting.
Humphries said something like “Really?!” His tone was one of disbelief that ANYONE could actually find Engineering and Science interesting. I thought that his manner was ‘pig’ ignorant. I would think that you could still hear the interview on the BBC i-player, if you were interested; as this occurred only a few days ago.
How on earth can we progress when shallow thinking fools, like him, cannot understand the artist/engineer? Thanks to the attitude of him and his media peers and the effete management the UK has ‘enjoyed’ we are, for example, the only major European country which has lost all its home grown motor industry.
I try to point out to these hard of thinking people that absolutely EVERYTHING that we see and use above ground level, that isn’t natural, has been created by Engineers, and their scientific ilk, via a long and arduous path from materials dug out of the ground. These materials are converted into buildings, tools, computers, aircraft, cars medical theatres, etc etc (obviously)….Engineering and Science is involved at ABSOLUTELY every stage.
What would the like of Humphries be doing without all the buildings, equipment and the transport to get him there…Don’t these people ever THINK where it all comes from and how important it is??
Frank Marshall
It’s ironic that on the one hand the government are spending so much trying to encourage young people to do STEM courses, whilst on the other are withdrawing funding for the majority of students studying for a qualification that is equivalent or lower than one already achieved. This move will effectively discourage many people re-training as engineers or scientists, or continuing their professional development, much to the detriment of industry.