

Warning over shortage of engineering graduates - UK - simonbarker87
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19760351

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simonbarker87
I wonder if UK firms are falling in to the same trap as their Silicon Valley
counterparts are reportedly falling into and are expecting fresh graduates to
hit the ground running without training etc. Industry moves faster than
academia and the fundamentals don't change - an electronics grad still need to
know the basics and I don't think should be a universities job to also teach
the industry leading flavours of the month which may change in 18 months time
anyway.

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eckyptang
This. I did an ee degree. When I hit industry I quickly realised that I knew
nothing. The company expected otherwise.

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simonbarker87
Did they have training in place to fill the knowledge gap or (as I fear may be
the case) was it considered your problem? What areas did you lack knowledge? I
did an EEE degree too so interested to know as I went straight into launching
a startup/company

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eckyptang
We had no training in place. I was expected to catch up in my own time, which
I did but it was hard. This was a NASDAQ/FTSE listed defence contractor.

Main things for me were by the time I left, we were in FPGA and
microcontroller territory and mixed mode simulation rather than basic SPICE
models etc. You need to look out for major industry trends and get on a
community like Element14 [1]. Things have changed since when I graduated with
respect to what gaps there will be but there will be gaps.

Looking at some colleagues and their complaints about graduates recently,
people seem to want analogue, microwave, transmission line and network
experts. I wouldn't know one end of a waveguide from another (I did digital
mainly) so I'm not the person to ask :)

[1] <http://www.element14.com/>

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simonbarker87
Well it sounds like personal development wouldn't change too much from start
up life should I need to go into industry, I'm improving my maths and systems
level knowledge in my spare time as it is.

Thanks for the link, I'll take a look around. The current gap complaints you
mention don't surprise me, I covered aspects of that in my undergrad but it
was brief and fleeting and I promptly forgot a lot of it during my phd (high
temperature semiconductors).

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zg
It's a pity the article wasn't able to dig deeper into the underlying causes.

I would suspect that the problem needs to be addressed much earlier on by both
improving the quality of school tuition in engineering required subjects
(maths, sciences etc) as well as raising the profile of engineering careers
among both children and the general public.

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chrisbennet
I wonder if there is really a shortage of engineers or if there is only a
shortage of engineers willing to work for below market pay?

From a market perspective, when there is _truly_ a shortage of "X's" [science
Phd's, teachers, engineers, etc] the price/salaries for "X's" go up.

