A shortage of engineers with key skills could threaten the long-term health of the semiconductor industry in the South West and beyond said business leaders at the Silicon2011 conference, writes Andy Gothard.

Hurdles include not just a scarcity of home-grown engineers, but also uncertainty over visa rules for experienced staff wanting to enter the country. But the conference also heard that firms and academia are responding with creative solutions to the problem, such as offering internships to engineering students from within the EU.

The problem starts in UK schools, said Prof David May, CTO of XMOS and formerly Head of the Computer Science Department at Bristol University. “The engineer shortage is persistent,” he explained. “Schools don’t tell children what electronics and computing are.” As a result, the UK as a whole is not ‘making’ enough engineers. And, he says, top-notch science and technology graduates are as likely to choose a job in the City as a career in engineering.

Whatever the depth of the problem, many delegates had already identified their own solutions. May has been studying the numbers of applications to University courses in the US. “Computer science is top of the pile,” he says. The subject is in fashion not only because graduates have a 100% employment rate, but also because of the “Steve Jobs effect”: the death of the late Apple CEO has raised awareness and made it ‘cool to be in computing’.

The UK has historically been a magnet for overseas engineers, but supply is starting to dry up as changes in government immigration policy begin to bite. In particular it is becoming more difficult to secure the Tier 1 visas required by high skill migrants. “The government has made it far more opaque and a lot harder,” said one conference delegate. “There’s uncertainty even amongst people who are already here. As a country we need to get the issue clear, at least in terms of what the criteria are.”

The overall result of the skill shortage is that people become very static, as existing employers trump any job offer with improved pay and conditions. And there is a danger that the UK becomes perceived as a difficult place to find engineers.

May also advised delegates to send a very clear message to UK universities that there is a demand for graduates in certain disciplines. In times of economic difficulty, departments have a strong incentive to offer courses that will prove popular – and that means courses that lead to a job. Equally, he has seen an uplift in the number of Masters-level courses in engineering aimed at graduates in related disciplines – such as maths and the sciences.

Other conference attendees praised the quality of internship schemes run in EU countries such as France. “The South West is an attractive place to come from France,” said one delegate. “And they’ve got very, very good internship programmes.”

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