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Forum Report
How can Engineering Education better respond to the Needs of
European Enterprises?
On 27th October 2008, SEFI, the Thematic Network TREE-diss and SEII organised
an Industry- Academia Forum in Brussels on the theme How can Engineering
Education better respond to the Needs of European Enterprises? The idea
of the Industry-Academia forum was to establish a sustained consultation activity
with industry and to exploit and develop the 3-years outcomes of the TREEproject in order to transfer theory into materials on how to improve EE and
Continuing education accordingly to the needs of the industry.
The venue was the Royal Military Academy in Brussels, and the forum was
attended by approximately 40 persons. It was a very succesful day, which opened
up for future co-operation.
Chairman of SEII, Mr Van Hecke and SEFI Secretary General, Ms Côme welcomed
the participants and presented the activities of their respective organisations.
Then Prof Maffioli, Coordinator of TREE, Politecnico de Milano gave a presentation
of the TREE project “Teaching and Research in Engineering in Europe”,
which has come to an end after 3 years work and one year of dissemination. All
outcome and information about the TREE project can be found at the TREE
website http://www3.unifi.it/tree/.
Mr. Combueschen, Secretary General CEEMET, gave a speech on the theme
“Globalisation & Engineering Education”. CEEMET is the European employers’
organisation representing the interests of the metal, engineering and technologybased industries. Concerning education matters, CEEMET focuses today mainly on
vocational education and training issues, but as Mr Combueschen said “I hope we
can use today’s possibility to start working at university level”. Mr Combueschen
talked about how the different aspect of the globalisation process, such as
transnational companies, organisation changes, new technology and global
customers influence engineers work and the expectations that companies have to
engineers. Accordingly to him, today's engineers need to hold core skills and
management skills, but engineers need also to have understanding of social and
environmental aspects and be in a process of lifelong learning. Consequently,
education must adapt flexible curricular, and most importantly, in cooperation
with enterprises e.g. by internships. “Education must be needs driven”, stated Mr
Combueschen and added, “Higher institutions have to focus on enterprises.
Education itself must not be a self-sufficient service!”. He continued by saying
that it is necessary to prevent structural skill shortage by improving the efficiency
and quality of education, and added that universities should be more independent
and competitive. Moreover, he suggested to improve the career guidance of the
students. In conclusion, Mr Combueschen underlined that the prime factor is to
undertake much closer cooperation with enterprises.
Next theme was “Attracting and Retaining students”. The first speaker was
Prof Hawwash, University of Birmingham, leader of the TREE Attractiveness line.
Prof Hawwash set out explaining the work carried out within the Attractiveness
line of TREE. Various ways of encouraging students to engineering education (EE)
has been analysed. The reasons for the problem in attracting students to EE are
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many and diverse. EE suffers from a bad image being boring, difficult and
not applying to females. Prof Hawwash said that there is a lack of
understanding at school age about what engineers do, and it is important to
provide engineering rolemodels to make the subject more appealing. Moreover,
“Engineering is not seen as very glamorous, and the power is elsewhere, e.g. in
politics and law” said Prof . Hawwash. He suggested some practical steps in order
to attract and retain students to EE and suggested more generous government
funding to universities and funding of initiatives to attract students. The schools
need to offer stronger math and science courses, better explain the roles of
science and engineering and create stronger links with universities and
enterprises. At the universities, the focus must be on catching future students
earlier through better interaction with schools, e.g. by organising visitors days at
the university. Prof. Hawwash underlined that the universities should strive
towards project led teaching and learning and more links with “the real word”.
Finally, he suggested the industry should be more involved with schools and
universities by explaining what they do, and what engineers do at the company.
Prof. Hawwash evocated sponsorships from industry and work placements.
Finally, he said that industry also need to understand the constraints under which
universities work, and that modifying and developing curricular is a complicated
task.
Mr. Becker from SIEMENS gave a speech from the industry point of view on the
theme “Attracting and Retaining students in science and industry”. Mr
Becker put forward the lack of enrolment to science end engineering studies, and
he said that there can be done much more in balancing the gender ration, and
hence attracting more females. For the moment, engineering studies does not
appeal to multitalented students, which he considers girls to be. Moreover, he
stated that only 60% of engineering students actually end up as technical
engineers. “Young people act rationally, they follow market signals, where is the
money, the excitement and the safety. For the moment, this is not the image that
engineering gives. Since the 90ties, engineering has lost the reputation of being a
solid and safe job”. Mr Becker agreed with Prof Hawwash in the need for fostering
action at a very early stage, that can create interest in science and engineering,
but also to keep this interest awake by highlighting the many career options of a
scientific education. Mr Becker explained that this is encouraged by SIEMENS who
has developed a programme called “Generation21 Universities”. Which is a
SIEMENS university programme that is run as a cooperation with universities.
Furthermore, Mr Becker stated that companies are not looking for degrees, but
for problem solvers, which means that when recruiting, the company looks for a
wide range of competences, such as analytic skills, buisness minded, networking
skills. “It is not enough to be an engineer!,” he said. Besides making the
engineering careers more attractive, he added the need for rewarding engineers
with better salaries.
Prof. de Graaff, TU Delft, spoke on the title ”Innovative Learning”. He
explained how LLL and ICT challenge higher education. Individuals/students need
to adapt to the fact that the limited/ended degree does not exist any more.
People are forced to constantly renew and develop their skills. This also presents
great challenges to universities. Students will be more and more different and
non-homogeneous: different age and undertaking different and sometimes only
few programmes with short duration. This means that universities need to be
flexible and adaptable. Industry will also need to adapt to employees following
programmes on the side of their jobs. This needs a great flexibility of HR.
Mr. Markkula, Director of Helsinki University of Technology and chair of the TREE
sustainability line, continued the programme with a speak on “Lifelong learning
and Competence development” Mr. Markkula said that the changes in industry
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and continuing education move from being product suppliers to be
performance and value providers. Today’s economy is a knowledge
economy. This means knowledge networking that leads to productivity and
innovativeness. “Only by being multidisciplinary we create competitiveness”, he
said. This also applies to universities. Mr. Markkula gave as example the new
Finnish innovation university – “Aalto University” - which is a result of merging
Helsinki University of Technology, University Industrial Arts and Design and
Helsinki School of Economics. “The Aalto university is a world leading institution
in terms of research and education”. The university links research to e-learning
practice.
Mr. Leopold Demiddeler, Solvay Group/EIRMA, gave “An industry perspective”
to the theme of the day. He presented himself as “the voice of the customer” . As
the previous speakers, Mr. Demiddeler also underlined the need for engineers
with “soft skills”. And to the question of the general lack of engineers in Europe,
he said that there will be competition from the third countries which are
producing many engineers. He called on universities to create formations to adapt
to very specific areas as part of continuing education. This, he said, is today only
to be found at private schools. He said that only few industries make completely
own in-house research, and there is ground for more cooperation with
universities in this area.
The final point on the programme was an academia - industry panel discussion on
the theme “Towards the European Higher Education Area in Engineering”.
The panel was formed by: Mr Bauer, EC DG Education & Culture – Prof Maffioli,
Coordinator of TREE, Politecnico de Milano – Mr Freeston, ENAEE – Mr Fouger,
Dassault Systèmes. Prof. De Graaf, TU Delft, chaired the panel. The first
question that was asked to the panel was “What is the best guarantee to
train effective engineers for industry? Mr. Freeston, from the accreditation
association ENAEE, answered that accreditations is a guarantee as the regulation
to justify standards of diversity programmes, and he added that effective
engineers do not need to have all skills, but to be complementary. Prof. Maffioli
agreed, and added that a good engineer is a good learner, with a set of tools and
common sense that makes him capable to solve new problems. Prof. Maffioli also
suggested that in order to encourage industry to cooperate with universities,
government could offer industry fiscal advantages. Mr. Fouger added that
cooperation industry-university in terms of internships has big success at
Dassault. This develops an understanding of “the real world” and develops many
of the “soft skills” that are constantly being evocated. The panel agreed however,
that strong math skills are indispensable in the engineers curricula. Mr Bauer
added that university mobility is also a keyfactor when giving students the best
options in developing their curricula and core, - soft and cultural skills. The panel
was also asked to react to the provocative statement, that had been evoked from
some of the previous speakers: “Does industry need academic qualified or
just problem solvers?” To this Mr Freeston said, that society has a
responsibility and a academic qualified person gives a measurable guarantee of
competences. Mr Bauer agreed and added that degrees are important for
individuals in order to proof him/herself, and it allows industry to know what to
expect form the individual.
The following question “What are the most important assets of the
European Engineer?” Prof. Maffioli concluded many of the days arguments as
he answered that today's engineer must have diverse assets. A multidiscipline of
knowledge, responsibility and common sense. “Europe is qualified by diversity,
which in itself is a rich assets, and we need to make use of all the possibilities to
learn from each other and approach each other”, said Mr Freeston. And the panel
agreed that the fact that European engineers are formed in Europe is a big
advantage in terms of adoption and market culture compared to the international
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engineers that come to work in Europe. Mr. Fouger refrained the question
to “which assets do we want to improve in European engineers?” and he
answered that Europe need to have engineers to interfere with marketing.
“Engineers in Europe are bad marketers!”, he said .
The audience nourished the discussion with many questions, and both the panel
discussion and the presentations touched upon crucial issues and brought ideas,
advice and suggestions on how to develop engineer education in line with the
needs of industry. And the discussions gave ground for further interaction and
communication between industry and academia. Prof. Maffioli closes the forum,
and expressed his hope that the forum will be that start of future collaboration
with the stakeholders from industry and university.
By Trine Riva, SEFI membership / project officer
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