Addressing the tech talent shortfall: Laying the groundwork for better work experience for university students

It’s been a whirlwind of a month for me. Last month I was representing Future Space at the Tech South West Showcase, a first-of-its-kind national showcase in London to celebrate what makes the South West tech sector such a hotbed of innovation. Future Space was proud to be a main sponsor and partner of the event, which also served as the official launch of Look South West, the first prospectus for the South West’s tech sector – a project that again partnered with Future Space and for which I served as the research lead, working alongside the brilliant Robert Hillier as well as the Tech South West team.

The aim of the prospectus is a simple one: in an era where technology will drive green growth, prosperity and opportunity for everyone, the South West stands as a shining beacon of the true potential of the tech and digital industry – and the prospectus serves as a compelling invitation to the new Labour Government to recognise and invest in the unparalleled opportunities that lie within the South West’s tech and digital sector.

Talent is everywhere… but is it?

‘The South West has talent at every level.’ So says Nick Sturge, Non-Executive Chair at techSPARK. He’s totally right (of course he is), and yet perhaps one of the most pressing opportunities-come-challenges for the region's tech community is the need to address the striking talent shortfall and to raise awareness amongst young people about what’s truly valuable about a career in tech. Better yet, how can we develop new models for providing more and better work experience to help drive a stronger talent pipeline into the ecosystem?

In the prospectus we talk about how ‘the collaboration between the higher education institutions of South West England and the technology sector presents a significant opportunity for the UK to cultivate a world-class workforce and drive economic growth.’ In fact, the real strength of the sector is its diversity, which ‘underscores the vital role of education in securing the UK’s future as a leader in the global technology arena.’ Moving forward, by better leveraging the South West’s 12 universities, ‘central Government can enhance the UK’s position in the global technology market and address critical skills shortages.’ As for the thorny question of how, the prospectus points to the urgent need to better ‘align educational curricula with industry demands, fostering R&D partnerships, and facilitating transitions from academia to industry.’

Specifically, here are our three key recommendations for beginning to address the talent shortfall:

1. Develop curricula in collaboration with technology firms to ensure education is closely aligned with real-world applications and emerging technologies.

2. Expand opportunities for internships, co-op placements, industry projects and collaborative R&D projects.

3. Encourage partnerships between universities, colleges, and technology companies for joint research projects.

The university-shaped elephant in the room

None of these recommendations are particularly radical, but it's now more important to move forward with them than ever before. Why, you ask? Well, it’s estimated that the South West’s tech sector is on a trajectory to expand its workforce by 26% between 2022 and 2027, greatly outpacing the growth rate of any other sector in the South West (University of Exeter, 2024). It’s also true that the region currently has close to 170,000 students, 19,500 of which are said to be tech or engineering students. And yet we need to acknowledge the huge elephant in the room: many universities, including those in the South West, are struggling. In some cases, really struggling. According to a new report published by the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB):

‘Universities have had to manage significant financial challenges in recent years. It is becoming clear, however, that these financial challenges are systemic and will become increasingly acute without policy intervention, creating significant consequences for the UK. Overall, universities face an annual financial deficit of over ￡1 billion for teaching and ￡5 billion for research. An urgent review is needed to ensure that universities continue to be able to sustainably undertake activities that are essential to the UK and its economy.’ (NCUB, 2024)

Frankly, this is serious, and while yes it’s true that we can all look to central Government to review policy around the higher education sector, it’s my firm belief that universities also need to take a good look at themselves and review what they need to do differently to ensure they continue to play a deep and meaningful role in supporting the economy, not to mention young people.

In other words, what’s painstakingly apparent is that universities now need start-ups more than they ever did – and start-ups urgently need universities, too.

Enterprise should be the university sector's #1 priority

This shared plea for the education sector to do more was also shouted loud and clear at last week’s Tech Leaders’ Summit, another event for which Future Space partnered. Tech leaders from across the South West gathered in Bristol, mere days after the UK General Election, to issue a rallying cry to the new Labour Government and to lay the groundwork for the development of the tech roadmap for the region. We discussed everything from unlocking investment to building an innovation portal, from ways of ensuring the South West's MPs become advocates for the tech industry to growing a vibrant tech talent hub.

I myself was fortunate enough to lead a track on university-business collaboration at the Summit, which I used as a platform to share my own expertise working across the borders of both universities and industry to try and share some good practices and insights around how tech start-ups might more easily and productively engage with local universities.

Before I get to what those best practices and insights are, for me the real takeaway from the Summit was just how much of a priority it is amongst the South West's tech leaders to raise awareness amongst young people about what’s truly exciting about tech in the South West – and indeed how we might offer more and better work experience to help drive a stronger talent pipeline into tech. (To be clear, this issue was voted the sector's single most urgent issue to address, getting 21% of the total vote amongst the tech leaders in the room!).

And it’s obvious as to why. The latest results of the Employer Skills Survey reveal that skills gaps are rising, whilst vacancies have been persistently high at around 1 million (NCUB, 2024). In short, there’s a real mismatch between the supply and demand of skills right now.

The beginnings of a plan

As you’ll hopefully have gathered from reading past editions of Innovate Together, at Future Space we’re now galloping forwards with a new university engagement framework that, we hope, will work to both nurture collaboration, innovation and growth for all our trailblazing businesses – through which we’ll aim to feed three enterprise priorities for the University of the West of England: income generation, knowledge exchange and graduate outcomes.

As I see it, Future Space has a responsibility to help create a stronger talent pipeline for tech businesses, doing what we can to at least partly address the skills shortage in the region by better nurturing the university’s student body as future talent for the tech ecosystem.

So, as I shared with the 100+ tech leaders in attendance at the Teach Leaders’ Summit last week, our implementation plan at Future Space for doing this work wholeheartedly mirrors that which we advised in the pages of the Look South West 2024 prospectus:

Short-Term Actions: Initiate pilot projects for curriculum redesign, establish initial R&D partnerships, and launch career networking events. For us at Future Space, this means facilitating 6-month R&D projects between our companies, a student and an academic based across UWE’s Engineering, Applied Sciences or Business Schools.

Medium-Term Actions: Evaluate and scale successful pilot projects and broaden the scope of academic-business partnerships. For us at Future Space, this means working more closely with our companies and our partner Schools at UWE to support the scaling of early-stage student-led projects into funded research like Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.

Long-Term Actions: Achieve systemic integration of industry-aligned education. For us at Future Space, this means getting Future Space properly written into the curriculum at UWE Bristol, building in effective transition mechanisms for graduates entering the technology sector.

None of which, I believe, is particularly unrealistic – be it for us at Future Space or for other university-aligned R&D and innovation hubs. With a rich mix of talent, infrastructure and supportive ecosystems, our region is genuinely primed to lead the charge in driving economic growth, battling climate change and fostering innovation. So let’s GO!

(And don't forget to download your free copy of the Look South West prospectus here).