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The UK engineering skills shortage: true or false?13 September 2011 Fewer than half of graduates who leave university with a degree in engineering are working within the field six months later, according to statistics presented to the British Educational Research Association’s (BERA's) annual conference earlier this month. The figures reveal that around 20 per cent of those with engineering degrees end up in unrelated graduate jobs, while a further 24 per cent find work in sectors of the economy that don’t even require a higher education qualification.
The figures were presented by Professor Emma Smith of the University of Birmingham who says they undermine claims that the country’s businesses are facing a shortage of well-qualified people with science and technology degrees. “It is astonishing, in the light of claims of science graduate shortages, that so few new graduates go into related employment,” she told conference delegates, citing a 2008 CBI survey which reported a third of respondents suffering relevant skills shortages.
In 2009, the Council for Industry and Higher Education stated: “We cannot stress too forcibly our concern at the critical shortage of graduates and postgraduates with STEM capabilities.” However, Professor Smith’s analysis used figures from the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA), which are based on a survey of what graduates were doing six months after finishing university.
For engineering science, the latest figures (2009) showed that 46.4 per cent of graduates were working in fields directly related to their degree, such as engineering per se (38 per cent) or engineering-related IT (five per cent). Professor Smith’s paper focused on engineering, but separate data for 2008 from the same annual survey suggest the rate of physics and chemistry graduates taking up work in related fields within six months of graduating is around 55 per cent.
Professor Smith said the high numbers of engineering graduates taking jobs not requiring graduate-level qualifications – 12 per cent were working in sales and five per cent in “elementary administration and service” – suggested there was “not a ready supply of engineering jobs for all of them”.
“Just under a quarter of newly-qualified engineers report every year that they are working in what are considered to be non-graduate jobs, including unskilled and routine employment, such as being cashiers and waiters,” she said. “Around 10 per cent are in general management and a further 10 per cent are classified as ‘other’. The figures suggest it is not easy or automatic for qualified engineers to get related employment in the UK, despite the purported shortages.
“Perhaps, because of recent initiatives, there seem to be too many people studying science for the labour market to cope with, or perhaps graduates are no longer of sufficient quality. It is more likely, however, that all of these scientists are without relevant employment every year because the shortage thesis is wrong and there are no jobs waiting for all of them, or because they are ‘dropping out’ having learned that they do not enjoy their subject areas.”
There have been huge efforts in recent decades to increase the supply of science graduates, with an estimated 470 separate projects to attract more young people into STEM subjects. But Professor Smith argues that what is needed now is more research into the real demand of UK STEM businesses for new recruits.
Not surprisingly, the UK's professional engineering community has bristled at these claims. Speaking on behalf of the profession-wide Education for Engineering (E4E) policy group, Royal Academy of Engineering chief executive, Philip Greenish said employers recruit engineers from wherever they can in a global marketplace. “Only a proportion will be fresh UK graduates. To infer that employers don't know their own workforce needs when they identify a shortage of engineers, and to do this based on data that only considers a subset of recruits is just plain wrong"
Paul Jackson, chief executive of EngineeringUK believes the situation is a lot more “nuanced” than Professor Smith and her co-workers suggest. “Skills shortages do exist in particular areas, notably in power engineering, petrochemicals, systems engineering and advanced manufacturing," he said. "Talented students who have the potential to be our future graduate engineers must not be put off by the headline-grabbing statistics taken from this research, rather than looking at the detail of the situation. The key message from this research is the challenge to the engineering community to ensure that our degree programmes continue to meet the future needs of industry."
Mr Jackson says the reason that government is so focused on engineering and science, and has tried to preserve funding in these areas, is because they are critical both to rebalancing the economy and creating an infrastructure fit for the future. “Between them the engineering and manufacturing sectors generate 25% of UK turnover,” he says. “The future lies in an innovation economy, based on new industries such as green energy, nanotechnology and plastic electronics, where many of the key advances have been made in Britain."
Research by the engineering profession shows that almost nine in ten engineering graduates who graduated in 2010 were either in (full or part time) work or had opted to undertake further study. According to the HESA Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey, the mean average salary of engineering and technology graduates six months after graduating is 11 per cent more than the mean average salary across all degree subjects.
The Royal Academy of Engineering cites additional statistics from the same HESA data that indicate 56.9 per cent of engineering and technology graduates being in full-time employment six months after graduating, compared with 53.1 per cent of all graduates. And some 61.2 per cent of engineering and technology first degree graduates who were employed took up an engineering related role. Moreover, 62.3 per cent of engineering and technology first degree graduates who went into employment went to work for an employer whose primary activity was engineering and technology.
Les Hunt
Editor
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