The latest UCAS data (applications by the January ‘equal consideration’ deadline) suggests a 14 per cent increase in applications to engineering and technology courses.
It’s the second double-digit surge in two years.
Good news, right? Sadly, it’s mostly not.
STEM swing
The upsurge in interest in engineering can be seen as part of a “swing to STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and medicine).
As higher education has shifted to a reliance on student debt for funding, many people suspect applicants have felt greater pressure to search for clear, transactional returns which, it may seem, are offered most explicitly by STEM – and, most particularly, by engineering, which is not just STEM, but vocational too.
Certainly, there’s a keen labour market for more engineers. Engineering UK has suggested the shortfall is around 29,000 graduates every year. According to the British Chambers of Commerce, it’s pretty much the largest skills gap in the UK economy.
Engineering is also a key driver of the growth that the government is so keen to stimulate, adding £645b to the UK – that’s nearly a whopping third of the entire value of the economy. And – unlike financial services, say – engineering is a powerhouse of regional development as it is spread remarkably evenly throughout the country.
And it drives that other key government mission, opportunity. An engineering degree confers a higher and more equal graduate premium than almost any other discipline.
The downside
So with all these benefits, why is the increase in engineering applications not good news?
The answer is because it reveals the extent of the lost opportunity: most of these extra potential engineers will be denied places to study, dashing their hopes and the hopes of the country.
Last year’s rise in applications did not lead to a rise in the number of UK engineering students. Absolute student numbers have more or less stagnated since 2019.
It used to be that the number of engineering applications broadly aligned with places because it was a highly regarded discipline with great outcomes that universities would expand if they felt they could. The limiting factor was the number of able students applying.
Now that demand outstrips supply, universities cannot afford to expand the places because each additional UK engineering student represents an ever-growing financial loss.
Engineering courses are among the most expensive to teach. There are long contact hours and expensive facilities and materials. The EPC estimates the average cost per undergraduate to be around £18,800 a year. Even allowing for top-up funding that is available to many engineering degrees on top of the basic fee income, that leaves an average loss of £7,591 per year.
It used to be that the way to address such losses was to try to admit more students to spread the fixed costs over greater numbers. That did run the risk of lowering standards, but it made financial sense.
Now, however, for most universities, the marginal cost of each additional student means that the losses don’t get spread more thinly – they just keep piling up.
Cross-subsidy
The only way out is to bring in ever more international students to directly subsidise home undergraduates.
Although the UCAS data shows a glimmer of hope for recovering international demand, at undergraduate level, there are only a few universities that can make this work. Most universities, even if they could attract more international engineering students, would no longer use the extra income to expand engineering for home students, but rather to shore up the existing deficits of maintaining current levels.
The UCAS data also show higher tariff institutions are the main beneficiaries of application increases at the expense of lower tariff institutions which, traditionally have a wider access intake.
What this means is that the increased demand for engineering places will not lead to a rise in engineering student numbers, let alone in skilled engineers, but rather a narrowing of the access to engineering such that it becomes ever harder to get in without the highest grades.
High prior attainment correlates closely with socioeconomic advantage and so, rather than engineering playing to its strength of driving social mobility, it will run the risk of becoming ever more privileged.
What about apprenticeships?
Not to worry, suggests Jamie Cater, head of employment and skills at trade body Make UK, a university degree is not the only option available for acquiring these skills and “the apprenticeship route remains highly valued by manufacturers”.
That’s small comfort, I’m afraid. The availability of engineering higher apprenticeships suggests competition is even fiercer than it is for degrees and, without the safeguard of fair access regulation, the apprenticeship access track record is poor. (And don’t get me started on drop-outs.)
This is why I haven’t unfurled the bunting at applicants’ rising enthusiasm for engineering.
Of course, it is wonderful that so many young people recognise engineering as a fulfilling and forward-looking discipline. An estimated £150m has been spent the last decade trying to stimulate this growth and there are over 600 third sector organisations working in STEM outreach in schools. It would be nice to think this has not been wasted effort.
But it’s hard to celebrate a young person’s ambition to be an engineer if it’s likely to be thwarted. Similarly, I struggle to summon enthusiasm about kids wanting to get rich as TikTok influencers. Indeed, it’s all the more tragic when the country actually does need more engineers.
This is why the Engineering Professors’ Council has recently called on the government to plug the funding gap in engineering higher education (and HE more widely) in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
Asking for nearly a billion pounds may seem ambitious, but the ongoing failure to fill the engineering skills gap may well be costing the country far more – possibly, given the importance of engineering to GDP, more than the entire higher education budget.
Johnny Rich is Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council, the representative body for UK Engineering academics.
