New University hopes to provide a pipeline of 'industry-ready' engineers

The engineering skills problem isn’t  going away. Despite the efforts of  various outreach programmes, publicity campaigns and government initiatives, the number of businesses complaining about the quality and quantity of engineering graduates remains stubbornly high.

While the number of engineering students has grown in line with the wider take-up of higher education, the latest skills survey from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) found around 40 per cent of engineering firms struggle to recruit graduate engineers, with 54 per cent saying graduate skill levels  did not meet reasonable expectations.

So is it time for a revolution in the way  we teach engineering in the UK? A group proposing to build the UK’s first new university in 30 years believes so and plans to initiate just that. Called the New Model in Technology & Engineering (NMITE), the private university aims to create a supply of work-ready engineers to support local engineering firms in its planned home in Herefordshire from 2017.