An engineering education should be free to boost the number of number of students opting for the profession and to ease the skills crisis, according to the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE).
“Waiving tuition fees for engineering courses will increase the demand for those courses and ultimately increase the number of professional engineers the nation so badly needs,” said Nelson Ogunshakin, ACE chief executive.
“Multiple precedents for this change already exist,” continued Ogunshakin. “A similar system has already been implemented in the United States, and the UK government has for some time been offering this incentive for those completing teacher training. This issue has also been raised recently in parliament during the current Universities and Skills Committee hearings on engineering skills - a positive sign that the change is coming closer.”
“We are entering a critical period for our education system; maybe our last chance to get these policies right before highly-skilled jobs start to disappear overseas. This is a radical but proportionate proposal and I urge all engineering organisations and government to work to make this proposal a reality,” Ogunshakin concluded.
Source
Building Sustainable Design
