What’s Wrong With Academia 3: The Disconnect From Practice
Sean Moran CEng FCIWEM
Independent Expert Engineer: Chemical, Water and Environmental Engineering
Graduate unemployment is at an all-time high, though you wouldn’t know this from the marketing materials put out by universities and organizations dominated by academics and large employers. Of course, marketers are not in the truth business, so let’s tell a few home truths.
Graduate unemployment and underemployment are a fact of life, and engineering graduates fare scarcely any better than the average. There is no longer, arguably, such a thing as an engineering degree. In the UK, the university you went to, (and indeed the school you went to) often have a lot more to do with your employment prospects in a named profession than the subject you studied, other than in the case of extreme comparisons like fine art, which is for many at least more or less a guarantee of long term unemployment.
This pattern is however in the case of engineering not quite what you might imagine. Oxbridge has excellent employment rates, but those just behind them in the research-intensive universities often have poor employment figures, and poorer still if we look at employment as engineers. The UK Government’s Wakeham Review of STEM degree provision and graduate employability May 2016 found that there was high graduate unemployment in Chemical and Process Engineering, "especially for high tariff institutions" (research led universities).
Do these failed engineers go on to great jobs in the City of London, as so many in academia like to think? I’m afraid there is no evidence to support such an idea, though this may seem to be the case to those who went to those (private) schools I mentioned earlier. Those great jobs in the City don’t go to engineers per se. They go to posh kids, who are as likely to have studied geography as chemical engineering. Its about having a face that fits, not a head for numbers.
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No, they get the kind of jobs that you used to only need A levels or even O levels to get. Ignoring the tiny percentage who get City jobs, the best prospects are for those who get jobs whose title ends in the word ‘engineer’. The 40K the remainder spent on a Chem Eng degree was wasted. 10% of them can’t get jobs at all. This is all marked by the ways in which universities record graduate employment. They talk about “graduate level jobs”, jobs “related to the field of study” etc. “Graduate level jobs” nowadays are not what they used to be. Lidl store managers or used car sales jobs might count. Deliveroo couriers might, judging by the number of grads who do it. And as far as jobs “related to the field of study” are concerned, anything working for a company - any part of which is in the same building as anything vaguely STEMy - will do, it seems.
The stats that universities usually use are from HEFCE, whose categories I think are a little broad for the purposes they are often put to by marketers. I have however recently seen an interesting HEFCE publication called “Vocational degrees and employment outcomes” from January of 2018. The take-home message of this report for engineers is that “engineering degrees” are not vocational in the way that medicine and law degrees are. The only engineering discipline that even gets a mention is civil engineering.
Of course, if a smart grad is really stuck for a job, they might do a PhD, hoping that this might lead to a lecturing job. This would be a mistake. There is a massive glut of PhDs and postdocs, and the percentage of newly minted docs making it to a lecturing position is pitifully low. The Lidl store manager job would be a better bet.
Chief Executive Officer at SteDe Associates
5 个月Sean Moran, thank for this article, majority of my friends who studies Chemical Engineer in London could not get a job with their Chemical Engineering degree, for so many years no job, their have to change career, re-study and do low value jobs so to earn a living. Some of them had a first class, what a shame and waste of years of studying Chemical Engineer
Managing Director at AD Consulting & Engineering Ltd - Energy Security and Storage Training Creator for the Energy Institute, UK. Independent Consultant
5 个月Sean Moran CEng FCIWEM thank you for sharing. When I studied for engineering degree, it was a 5 year long course after 1 year at a science college studying science and mathematics. The 5 year degree course had first 2 years common or general engineering covering mech, electrical, civil, structural, etc. Then, 3 years for the selected discipline of mechanical or electrical or civil/structural. The best part was practical training in various labs, machine tool workshops, boiler room, engine room, drawing practice and much more alongside theory and mathematics. I trained many engineering graduates in the gas and LNG industry. Unfortunately, some had difficulty in reading drawings. Some were very bright and did very well.
Principal Process Engineer at Stantec
6 个月I have a son who is apprenticing as a carpenter. He could have gone to college for a year and then worked under a qualified carpenter to gain his hours. However, after working for awhile, he decided to take the alternative route - attend school for six weeks per year while working for his employer. I wonder if we have lost that aspect in engineering. My supervisor used to say the university teaches students to think, employers teach them to be engineers. I went into engineering after two years of chemistry. Back then, you had to have at least one year of sciences before you could enter engineering. Some of my teachers had practiced and were still practicing as engineers. Some had not. They were good teachers. My degree was in “Applied Science”. I only became an engineer after working under other engineers. I think we have lost the idea that we learn and then apprentice. Universities need to rediscover how to teach and companies need to rediscover how to mentor apprentices.