Some companies do offer apprenticships - for example where I am does, and we have a chap in the lab a few days a week, doing a degree the rest of the week,  who set off (of course) as a net drag on which ever project he was attached to. but he is keen, andwithin a few months can very well be left to get stuff moving on his own and is already an asset.

But he is the only one doing this sort of thing in the hardware part of the company in many years, and as we all go grey and drop off, there is a lack of replacement of folk who can bias an op-amp or use a network analyser..

I suspect that other companies too are winding down on things that look to hard or too risky in terms of an immedate reward.

Of course on any one job, some things can be outsourced abroad to a degree, but not sensitive things, and in the long term that compounds the problem - the other countries get the workforce with experiance at our expense, and we lose the ability to do anything on our own.
As a nation we suffer from a desire to cheap out on things and the result is
1) its cheap in the short term
2) its rubbish
This is not confined to educating engineers.

Having worked in Germany, admittedly 20 odd years ago, there is indeed another way - but it too is not perfect.
Mike.

Some companies do offer apprenticships - for example where I am does, and we have a chap in the lab a few days a week, doing a degree the rest of the week,  who set off (of course) as a net drag on which ever project he was attached to. but he is keen, andwithin a few months can very well be left to get stuff moving on his own and is already an asset.

But he is the only one doing this sort of thing in the hardware part of the company in many years, and as we all go grey and drop off, there is a lack of replacement of folk who can bias an op-amp or use a network analyser..

I suspect that other companies too are winding down on things that look to hard or too risky in terms of an immedate reward.

Of course on any one job, some things can be outsourced abroad to a degree, but not sensitive things, and in the long term that compounds the problem - the other countries get the workforce with experiance at our expense, and we lose the ability to do anything on our own.
As a nation we suffer from a desire to cheap out on things and the result is
1) its cheap in the short term
2) its rubbish
This is not confined to educating engineers.

Having worked in Germany, admittedly 20 odd years ago, there is indeed another way - but it too is not perfect.
Mike.

It does feel like we've moved as a nation so far into the 'price' bracket that we've forgotten about 'value' . The example I was taught was that there are three things - low cost / speed / quality - you can have two out of three but never all three together. I get the sense that in the UK (and maybe elsewhere too) we are all about low cost and speed and we sacrifice quality for that. We need to invest, and that will drive price up in some areas, in skills we need to take a bit of time to see whether the candidates, the trainees, the apprentices have the right qualities and can absorb the skills and cultivate the passion needed, but that comes with some risk, and risk costs. It's so difficult when there are no margins and little subsidy or support, especially for SMEs.

James Hacker :
The three articles of civil service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly; it's more expensive to do them cheaply; it's more democratic to do them in secret.

The first two apply to a lot of enginering as well. ..
Mike.

This is a new one on me - but it's very true. I'm going to turn that into a screen saver......!