Greater graduates

Within the process industries, engineers face any number of complex challenges on a daily basis, and being able to understand and overcome those challenges is one of the main reasons engineering is such a popular career choice.

Recent figures suggest that universities are seeing renewed vigour in the amount of students applying for engineering courses – with some suggesting their numbers had tripled in comparison to 20 years ago.

In particular, companies are looking for industry experience

Verity O’Keefe

Meanwhile, a survey conducted last month by the manufacturing trade body EEF found that 66% of its member companies were planning to recruit a graduate within the next three years.

However, the EEF survey also found that those companies were facing significant challenges from the graduates they were seeking to recruit.

“When we went out and spoke to a number of companies, we found that one of the main challenges was the quality of graduates themselves,” says EEF employment and skills policy adviser Verity O’Keefe.

“In particular, companies are looking for industry experience. Last year when we surveyed our members, 80% said they were struggling to recruit, and half said that was because candidates were coming to them without the relevant industry experience.”

Moreover adds O’Keefe, those companies are looking for graduates that had taken a placement year.

Although the number of students studying engineering courses has seen a dramatic increase in recent years, O’Keefe says that a decline in engineering degrees skills placements is a cause for concern, especially for those firms that want industry-ready graduates.

“When you look at the national data, placement numbers are in decline and they’re only offered by a certain batch of universities,” she says.

“So it’s often a postcode lottery if you are recruiting locally, as a lot of the manufacturers are. It’s not always guaranteed that you will have graduates who have done a placement year.”

Another big concern raised by engineering firms is the quality of technical skills and knowledge that graduates are learning throughout their degrees.

“Even though [graduates] had perhaps done a degree in mechanical, chemical or design engineering, when they came to the workplace companies did express concern that they didn’t really have the fundamental knowledge and understanding of the concepts that need to be applied in their roles,” O’Keefe says.

However, for Les Bolton, advisor, reaction engineering at BP, the structure of UK engineering courses produces a level of graduate that is expected across the industry.

“One of [the fixed elements] is that pretty well [nearly] all of the engineering courses in the UK are Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) accredited,” he says.

“And that is seen as non-negotiable by universities, and it is seen as a highly desirable thing from an industry point of view because we know pretty much what we are getting.”

Bolton, along with other experienced industrial and academic chemical engineers, visits chemical engineering departments to accredit their degrees for the IChemE.

He says that this ensures that both the content and conduct of the degrees is what companies expect.

“[Degrees] include things such as: a formal design project, all key STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) areas, and working in teams doing experimental work but also independent work,” Bolton says.

“It has all of the elements that we would expect to see and want to see from a good chemical engineering graduate.”

As part of an audit, assessors scrutinise what is taught on a course, they interview staff and students, look at the state of the department’s workshops and laboratories, ensure that there is an adequate safety culture and generally look over the entire curriculum to ensure graduates have every opportunity to succeed when they come to working in an industrial environment.

To this end, the academic delivery of a chemical engineering degree is rigidly monitored.

A vital element of any UK engineering course is ensuring that students do not study abroad during the design phase of their degree, as it is seen as one of the most critical pieces of the entire course, and something which has to be rigorously controlled.

“During the design project phase, students would take a concept for a process and they would need to research their options, set out their heat and mass balances for the process and then design, in detail, some part of it,” says Bolton.

“It typically lasts a significant amount of time. It is usually most of an academic year. It’s a very major piece of work.”

Yet although complex, engineering courses and the number of those applying to do those courses is on the up, and both Bolton and O’Keefe outline similar factors that can explain engineering’s renaissance in UK universities in recent years.

“Previously, until the end of last year, universities had a stricter [admissions policy], so they could only admit a certain amount of students, but that has been relaxed so unis could recruit as many engineering students as they liked, if they wanted to,” O’Keefe says.

Likewise, Bolton suggests that a more positive outlook on engineering in recent years has led to the opening of several new courses at universities in Aberdeen and Hull, and says the University of Bradford has restarted its chemical engineering degree, having had to close its course roughly a decade ago because there was not enough interest from students.

What is perhaps most curious though, is that in recent years engineering courses have fared well against barriers such as increased course fees and competition for places, even though entry standards are some of the highest among all university courses.

It has all of the elements that we would expect to see and want to see from a good chemical engineering graduate

BP advisor Les Bolton

To sustain this growth, however, O’Keefe suggests that the UK needs a longer term plan or else it will face a drop in the quantity and quality of graduates, which could lead to a further increase in the industry skills gap.

“If you were going to double the number of engineering students that you recruited in the coming years at universities, you would undoubtedly need to expand your science and engineering departments, and that requires investment,” O’Keefe says.

“If the demand we are seeing continues, the government needs to take a longer term approach on how to better fund universities so that they can offer the courses to learners that are in demand from industry.”

For an industry that is constantly diversifying, chemical engineering employment is no longer confined to oil refining or the petrochemicals industry, and with the boom in UK shale extraction looking increasingly likely, for example, a high quality and high quantity of engineering graduate will become an increasingly valuable commodity, especially in the wake of emerging industries.

It is now a case for industry to continue to positively work alongside universities and their staff to ensure the right skills are being taught to the necessary amount of people.

“We are starting to make progress, there are a lot of schemes and initiatives around brokering [industry] relationships and promoting STEM in schools, and we have firms doing fantastic work, but there is always more that can be done.”