Voice of the Employer

As an engineering educator I want to meet the needs of employers. I want to ensure the graduates of our programmes are highly employable and I want to contribute to the global economy. With individuals bearing the greater part of the costs of their education, employability plays a particularly important role. It is vital therefore that the voice of the employer is heard clearly in the formation of our programmes and in the construction of curricula. Universities are very open to this engagement (this is a risky generalisation, obviously) and, within constraints discussed below, are responsive to it.

Regrettably however, few employers and employer organisations are playing a constructive role in the university and employer dialogue. There are, of course, many examples of the involvement of individual employers (or more accurately individual employees) in supporting teaching, but this, though most welcome, is largely on an ad hoc basis, and stops short of a more systematic engagement in forming the curriculum as a whole. When employers are heard on this topic, as employers, it is in quotations in the trade press, comments in interviews, asides in press releases, responses to ongoing debates, and so on. These are rarely complimentary to universities. This is not pleasant to hear but critical contributions are gold dust - or at least they should be. The problem is that the 'voice of the employer' is incoherent, inconsistent, and largely anecdotal rather than evidence-based. Often comment is simply out of date, reflecting the personal experience of the commentator rather than the current situation in higher education. This is deeply frustrating and serves all parties, but most particularly students, poorly.

From what I can gather universities fail to impart 'transferable skills' such as communication and team working, and fail to inculcate technical knowledge and problem solving. We both fail to provide our students with a knowledge of current industrial technologies, and concentrate on technical fads to the detriment of deep skills. We do not educate our students sufficiently broadly to enable them to adapt in a rapidly changing workplace, and, at the same time fail to give them the knowledge to be immediately productive in the workplace. We do not prepare our students for the independent initiative that is required in the world of work, but also provide too little student contact. Our students display insufficient ambition but are also unwilling to take on lowly paid entry-level jobs.

Frankly, this sort of feedback is useless. We have a very short time to educate our students. As a guideline we can, in a 3 year course, fit in roughly 24 modules worth of content, 30 contact hours each, assume (generously) 3 additional hours of individual student work for every contact hour. This has to include time to catch up with the shortcomings of secondary education and efforts to achieve some uniformity across a diverse student intake. Our priority must necessarily be 'deep education': developing the capacity to learn and acquire new skills, alongside a familiarity with the fundamental scientific principles underpinning our disciplines. Good curriculum design can, to a certain extent, help to use time effectively. Ensuring that modules interlock and that all content is effective in terms of skills and knowledge can gain perhaps 10 to 20% better usage of a naturally scarce resource.

We have tradeoffs to make and we need guidance on the best ways to make these tradeoffs. This is not a matter of abstractions. We need a balanced view on specific choices about what is taught. Naturally enough we will apply our own expert judgment to these matters and a knowledge of the pedagogic process, but employers are in a good position to contribute. It is recognised that, particularly in tough economic times, industry has less opportunity to support training and employee development, universities cannot be expected to provide a complete substitute but we can do something by way of adjusting the long-term - short-term balance. Employers are diverse and nobody would expect a unified voice, universities can certainly interpret the input they receive and are capable of understanding which employers matter for their institution and their graduates.

It is not simply the public pronouncements of employers that are inconsistent, it is also their behaviour. Employers want more from universities, it is clear, for on this, at least, they are in accord. If so, then they must also be more discriminating in their own recruitment practices. It appears that many UK employers (international companies are more sophisticated) do not distinguish between 4 year and 3 year degrees and do not explicitly target the graduates of masters programmes. Well, if they want more and better, then recruiting more highly educated students is a way to achieve it. At least universities have the scope in longer programmes to deliver content specifically and immediately relevant to employers. It also seems that, when it comes to recruitment, employers are not that interested in the particular content of the programmes their potential recruits have undertaken. Employers are, in general, very strongly 'brand-driven', they are not using their market power to drive the changes they want.

I have previously expressed the view that universities are poor at 'customer relationship management' and that industry is poor at connecting their internal 'silos' (research, development, recruitment, sales) in support of university partnerships. These problems can both be fixed with highly beneficial effects on the problems described above. The professional institutions could potentially play a valuable role in fostering a broader discussion between universities and employers, though this needs to be outside the straight-jacket of the accreditation framework. Universities need input from employers, employers need the product of universities, we both need a grown-up dialogue.