Preparing Engineers for Tomorrow’s Challenges

I think FE (Further Education) colleges and HE(Higher Education) for engineering in the UK should mandated that the tutors complete a minimum of 1 week per year working in industry.  This would allow the tutor to see what is happening in industry and bring that back into the classroom.  It also allows the tutors to advise the education system of items or ideas that could/should be added to the teaching curriculum.  

I completely agree that maintaining industrial relevance is crucial in engineering education, where technology, standards, and best practices evolve rapidly. There is already a huge disparity between the “perfect textbook solution,” typical classroom scenarios, and the reality of engineering in the field. Having tutors engage with industry could help bridge that gap, giving students a more practical and realistic understanding of the profession.

One of the underlying challenges is that many training providers, much like driving instructors, teach primarily to a standard designed to pass assessments or exams, rather than to prepare students for the unpredictability of real-world scenarios. While this approach ensures compliance and assessment success, it often leaves students underprepared for the variability and complexity of actual engineering work.

Some tutors also have limited or no recent industrial experience. While they are skilled at delivering the curriculum, and that really is a skill. This can mean students are not always exposed to the latest tools, techniques, or operational challenges. Ensuring tutors remain connected to current practices is valuable—but how this is achieved in practice is not straightforward.

There are further questions around practicality, integrity, and perception. Even with correct procedures and best intentions, there are companies and individuals who do not consistently follow protocols—safe isolation being a clear example. For companies that do maintain proper standards, hosting a tutor who only attends once a year could introduce significant administrative overhead. Systems would need to be robust enough to guarantee safety, compliance, and meaningful engagement, without creating an excessive burden.

Additionally, tutors might be hesitant if such placements feel like a “work experience” exercise rather than a professional development opportunity. For the scheme to succeed, the messaging would need to be inspirational and clearly communicate the value to both tutors and students, which would likely require an industry-wide cultural shift.

Potential solutions could include short observational placements, project-based collaborations, or structured shadowing, rather than full operational involvement. Done thoughtfully, these approaches could provide insight into current practices, allow tutors to feed back into curriculum development, and strengthen the link between education and industry—without undermining the tutors’ professional role or creating an impractical system.

Ultimately, while there are practical challenges, the principle of keeping tutors connected to industry is compelling. With careful planning, robust systems, and the right approach to communication, it could help bridge the gap between classroom theory and the realities of modern engineering, benefitting students, tutors, and industry alike.

Given that on this thread we're talking about HE, in my experience most HE engineering academics do in fact work closely with industry - that's where their funding comes from. For many (most?) of them teaching is somewhat of a part-time occupation - in fact I've known academics leave academia because they are frustrated that the pressure is on them from the university to do paying industrial work rather than the teaching they want to do! (Equally of course many others look forward to the summer months when they can get "proper work done" without those pesky students around.)

In terms of technology my experience is that HE academics are generally in fact somewhat ahead of industry (which makes sense, the whole point is that universities are researching "next-but-one" generation technology).

What I do find lacking in HE, and hence in graduates, is an understanding of industrial commercial and timescale pressures. Fortunately that's pretty easy to gain by experience.

The other big thing that can be lacking, as Felicity just touches on in her excellent post, is group experience. Academia in my experience does tend to miss the point that no-one is "an excellent engineer", everyone needs to find where they best fit into an engineering team. Personally I'd rather more time was spent during degrees on exploring group aspects of engineering projects at the expense of learning facts which will quickly become obsolete.  

In my day job we've just come to the end of this year's round of our graduate recruitment programme, which as always was very interesting. In terms of technical skills and knowledge they were all fine, they always are. What made the big difference (at least from our perspective) was how well they could show they could listen and think about and analyse and discuss problems we threw at them - and incidentally very often it was clear that these "team working" skills had come from work or team experience which often had little or nothing to do with engineering. Interesting that Felicity mentioned the "T shaped engineer" model, in these interviews I was explaining this model to the graduates, specifically that we were looking for those that were starting to show the broad top of the "T", and then once they'd found which field particularly appealed to them our post-graduate and early career training could help them build on their degree to make the deep knowledge part of the "T". What we don't want to see (and to be fair we didn't this year) is a graduate who already thinks they have that deep knowledge - they absolutely don't! And shouldn't be expected to. The best graduates I find are those that come out of their degree having discovered how little they know - and being keen to remedy this.

(For FE, which is a very different world serving a different purpose, I fully agree with Michael's post.)

Given that on this thread we're talking about HE, in my experience most HE engineering academics do in fact work closely with industry - that's where their funding comes from. For many (most?) of them teaching is somewhat of a part-time occupation - in fact I've known academics leave academia because they are frustrated that the pressure is on them from the university to do paying industrial work rather than the teaching they want to do! (Equally of course many others look forward to the summer months when they can get "proper work done" without those pesky students around.)

In terms of technology my experience is that HE academics are generally in fact somewhat ahead of industry (which makes sense, the whole point is that universities are researching "next-but-one" generation technology).

What I do find lacking in HE, and hence in graduates, is an understanding of industrial commercial and timescale pressures. Fortunately that's pretty easy to gain by experience.

The other big thing that can be lacking, as Felicity just touches on in her excellent post, is group experience. Academia in my experience does tend to miss the point that no-one is "an excellent engineer", everyone needs to find where they best fit into an engineering team. Personally I'd rather more time was spent during degrees on exploring group aspects of engineering projects at the expense of learning facts which will quickly become obsolete.  

In my day job we've just come to the end of this year's round of our graduate recruitment programme, which as always was very interesting. In terms of technical skills and knowledge they were all fine, they always are. What made the big difference (at least from our perspective) was how well they could show they could listen and think about and analyse and discuss problems we threw at them - and incidentally very often it was clear that these "team working" skills had come from work or team experience which often had little or nothing to do with engineering. Interesting that Felicity mentioned the "T shaped engineer" model, in these interviews I was explaining this model to the graduates, specifically that we were looking for those that were starting to show the broad top of the "T", and then once they'd found which field particularly appealed to them our post-graduate and early career training could help them build on their degree to make the deep knowledge part of the "T". What we don't want to see (and to be fair we didn't this year) is a graduate who already thinks they have that deep knowledge - they absolutely don't! And shouldn't be expected to. The best graduates I find are those that come out of their degree having discovered how little they know - and being keen to remedy this.

(For FE, which is a very different world serving a different purpose, I fully agree with Michael's post.)

Teaching engineering needs to incorporate a certain amount of curiosity in the student.  A curious engineering student will one day become a pioneering engineer.  Curiosity will also help the engineer find their niche.