Engineering the Future

The UK needs to recruit more bright, young engineers - but what do young people really think engineering involves? Tim Minshall decided to find out. The only time many people see the word 'engineering' is when there are delayed trains and bus replacement services. Tim Minshall What do engineers do? More precisely, what do schoolchildren think they do? It's an important question because the UK is in need of more engineers to reboot the economy and the UK's manufacturing industry. The UK Government's new industrial policies rely on there being a healthy supply engineers, something that is particularly true for the 'high value' manufacturing areas based on emerging technologies. But is being an engineer something that many schoolchildren list when they are asked what they want to be when they grow up? Tim Minshall, a senior lecturer in technology management in Cambridge's Engineering Department, is passionate about his profession, but he says he was surprised when he went into a UK primary school and asked a group of 10 year olds to draw him some pictures of engineers. Most of the pictures depicted men fixing cars. Others showed men fixing trains.