It all sounds very similar to the problems emerging in the games industry, where the Westminster Media Forum keynote seminar followed on a games industry lobby group warning that UK games developers struggle to find staff, as dedicated video games courses fail to equip  graduates with the right skills for the workplace.

Amongst those attending ‘Engineering the Future’ was Carol Marsh, the student from the Institute for System Level Integration (iSLI) sponsored by Algotronix, who won the Elektra Award for ‘Student Engineer of the Year’ in 2007 and is in her fourth Engineering doctorate in System Level Integration at the iSLI, 

“Engineering the Future” group demonstrated its commitment to achieving this evolving long-term goal by presenting a scheme  to introduce technology into mainstream science lessons for pupils attending primary and secondary schools. As a result of young people not opting to study engineering, there is a major difficulty recruiting employees with the necessary key skills.

One of the major industry players revealed it had spent time defining these requirements and is now working with Universities to shape future engineering courses to ensure that students graduate with the skills-sets that are relevant to industry.

In many cases niche designing is disappearing and technical staff now need to have a much broader understanding of Engineering. Tony Harker, CEO at iSLI comments "Our aim at iSLI is to maintain core skills for industry, producing engineers  who are adaptable to industry requirements and have a good grasp of fundamental issues such as analytical techniques and structured problem solving.

"UK Academic Institutions do not always have the option to move as fast as industry requires to meet a rapidly evolving market. ISLI helps to address this through our targeted continuing professional development courses.”

Source:http://www.sli-institute.ac.uk/
http://www.computescotland.com/uk-games-industry-urged-to-educate-the-educators-in-skill-sets-1417.php
http://www.computescotland.com/scotlands-isli-student-engineer-comes-top-550.php