The UK needs “much greater national coordination” of its skills agenda to meet industry demand for graduates, a university leader said.
Sir Jim McDonald, principal of the University of Strathclyde, told the British Council’s Going Global conference that closer collaboration between higher education institutions and employers would be a key part of the solution.
“As a sector we have to move away from the expectation of having a transactional relationship between industry and university,” he said. “That doesn’t serve our sector very well.”
Sir Jim, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said that the UK had a shortage of about 500,000 people with the required skills in engineering alone, which was going to be an “inhibition to the UK realising its economic potential”.
