This guest blog, kindly written by Siobhan Silas, Policy Officer, Education and Skills, at The Royal Academy of Engineering, explains how you can support a major initiative to get more students into engineering.
The Royal Academy of Engineering is seeking to better understand what influences students to choose engineering degrees at university. This is part of our effort to identify the behaviours and attitudes of young people towards engineering careers to support greater numbers of young people who may wish to choose engineering – and it builds on our work with the This Is Engineering campaign.
We have commissioned ICM, an independent market research agency, to conduct a survey among students who are already studying a course in engineering or manufacturing. The survey consists of a set of qualitative questions, asking students to focus on their interests, their subjects at school, and knowledge of engineering chronologically from around five years old to choosing their university degree, to undertake key drivers’ analysis, exploring the links between attitudes and behaviours. We hope that this will inform our work how best we and others can engage with young people as they progress through the school system and need to make choices at crucial phases of their education.
The survey – accessible here, is open to all undergraduate students studying engineering, and also to those studying wider STEM and humanities, to serve as contrasting viewpoints. It will close on Monday 14th November 2022. We should be grateful if you could promote this survey to your students as soon as possible.
If you would like to talk to someone at the Academy further about the aims of the research, please get in touch.
