Although we have seen growth in output in many STEM disciplines in the last few years, debates about the widespread existence of STEM skills shortages, and whether the UK is producing sufficient STEM-qualified personnel, continue, particularly if much of the growth in some subjects is non-UK students. Several organisations have reported on the situation in their own sector or discipline, highlighting the extent of recruitment difficulties being experienced by employers seeking to recruit STEM graduates, especially into specialist areas or in very specific roles. There is a considerable body of evidence on skill shortages reported in the BIS report (2009a), and many of them are likely still to be an issue. We have not replicated this here, but aimed to summarise the more significant areas of concern relevant to our study, including more recent evidence. It is worth highlighting, however, that data on ‘shortages’ are produced in different ways and often the evidence is inconsistent between sectors or STEM occupations making it difficult to draw overall conclusions about the extent of STEM skill shortages. The key evidence on STEM skill shortages comes from:
It concluded that, generally speaking, supply and demand in STEM occupations are broadly in balance, though it included some STEM areas of work in its ‘shortage’ list. This list , updated in December 2009 , identified a number of specific jobs where STEM degree qualifications were likely to be required: certain (not all) jobs as civil engineers, physicists, geologists, meteorologists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, design and development engineers, production engineers, biological scientists and biochemists (in particular health-related), mathematics and science secondary school teachers and some engineering and science technicians. EngineeringUK commented in its annual report (2009) that these identified ‘shortage occupations’ were tied to very specific roles and the needs of employers for specific qualifications, skills, competencies and experiences for the job.
The BIS (2009a) report showed that recruitment difficulties for employers were greatest in particular areas of biosciences, engineering and IT. The concerns were mainly a lack of candidates of the quality sought. To some extent, these related to applicants not having specific STEM knowledge and qualifications, but to a greater extent employers were concerned about a lack of well-rounded candidates with technical skills and broader competencies, especially mathematical skills and practical work experience.
The Insights report (e-skills, 2008) found that around one in five employers in the IT and telecoms sector – and a similar proportion in other sectors – both large and small in size, reported difficulties in trying to attract applicants with the right skills for IT jobs. There was a reported mismatch between applicants’ abilities and company needs in terms of technical and business skill needs. In some cases, recruits who did not fully meet skills specifications were being hired. A separate survey of employers by e-skills found that around 40% of employers experienced mismatches in the business needs and interpersonal skills of new recruits.
The CBI reported in its 2009 Education and Skills Survey (CBI, 2009b) that a third of businesses recruiting STEM-skilled employees at graduate and postgraduate level were having difficulties, and this rose to 50% in manufacturing and 74% in the energy and water sectors. Over half of employers cited STEM graduates lacking employability skills as a barrier to recruitment, and a similar proportion cited lack of relevant work experience. In the 2010 CBI survey report, 45% said they were having difficulties recruiting staff with STEM skills, with science and manufacturing-based companies having the most difficulties.
A 2008 review of skills needs in the biomedical sector by the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries (ABPI) concluded that ‘the UK has substantive skills
deficiencies in biomedical sciences, many of which are at the heart of translational medicine key to the commercialisation of research’. Skills gaps in new recruits which had
been identified in an earlier 2005 survey were still problematical and in only a few instances had skills improved. Of major concern were graduates’ lack of practical experience and application of scientific knowledge and, to a somewhat lesser extent, high-level mathematical and scientific knowledge.
Research on chemical sciences graduates (IER Warwick, 2008) for the Royal Society of Chemistry highlighted weaknesses in some soft skills of graduates but of more concern to employers was a shortage of specialist chemistry skills, e.g. in physical chemistry, analytical chemistry, and handling of hazardous materials. Of particular concern was graduates’ ability to work on large-scale chemistry, at the interface between chemical engineering and chemistry (where UK graduates are seen to be weaker than those of other European countries). There was also a difficulty in finding graduates with sufficient chemical science knowledge to work in sales roles.
Most recently, a HEFCE commissioned review of evidence on the demand for certain strategically important and vulnerable subjects (undertaken by WM Enterprises in 2009) confirmed other studies’ findings that many employers were facing difficulties recruiting graduates in Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. But it concluded that there was insufficient evidence of actual widespread shortages. Some specific absolute or near shortages were identified, but these were in highly specialised academic areas where numbers needed were very small. Rather the main problem for recruiters was a quality issue – many vacancies were difficult to fill because not enough candidates came forward to match the standards set by the employers. The employers wanted to see more graduates emerging from universities who were better prepared for the world of work in terms of team-working and related skills. With respect to science graduates, they wanted them better able to handle uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity, to be better trained mathematically, to have more understanding of over-arching scientific principles (i.e. less modular learning), and in some cases better basic skills such as laboratory techniques. However, this research also pointed to employers becoming more demanding, and so it was not just weaknesses on the part of candidates, and so in part their university education, that was being criticised.
Most of the evidence on skill shortages focuses on the traditional STEM sectors and it is not clear how much it relates to other sectors requiring STEM skills and which are more likely to do so in the future, for example the business and service sectors. Furthermore, it is unknown how growth in STEM skills demand in some new and emerging sectors, and/or for specific expertise, is contributing to the reported STEM graduate recruitment problems. This is partly because the evidence is rather piecemeal, brought together from a number of sources, and also because different STEM definitions have been used by organisations depending on the scope of their interest. It is also worth noting that many of the concerns of employers on the perceived quality of STEM graduates are not new but have been cited in many reports over the last decade or so (see, for example Mason, 1999).