Both England and Ireland are taking great strides to improve their hi-tech workforce by increasing the number, quality, and perception of their engineers.

Over recent years, Ireland completely overhauled its economy. It lured investment and jobs from high-tech and pharmaceutical multinationals by offering low corporate taxes (12.5 percent) coupled with a young, well-educated, flexible and English-speaking workforce. Now Ireland wants to cultivate its own domestic engineering talent, putting forth goals of doubling both the number of engineering doctorates awarded each year and their budget to fund R&D, primarily in the areas of biotechnology/ bioengineering, and information and communications technology.

England has taken a more covert approach, investing in an Engineering Technology Board (ETB) and a strategic PR campaign. According to the Financial Times,

The ETB’s aim is to “get under people’s radar” by positioning engineering as a lifestyle choice. To do this, the body has devised a three-pronged campaign, launched [at the beginning of April], for which it has adopted the role of both media owner and marketing agency for the entire engineering industry.

The campaign involves articles in publications such as Marie Claire; a new magazine, called Technology Horizons, aimed at British youth; and Scenta, an online portal dedicated to all aspects of engineering.

Read more about what England and Ireland are doing to improve the face of engineering in the Financial Times (login required) and PRISM, ASEE’s award-winning magazine.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 4:04 pm and is filed under The National Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.