Engineering360: "Inventor Dyson Launches Institute to Bridge Engineering Gap"

I've always had a great deal of respect for James Dyson but have read a fair few articles where he has appeared to whinge at the government for not allowing enough engineers from outside the UK to come in and solve his recruitment problems.

I've suggested in comments to these articles that sponsoring good engineering students using bursaries and training schemes would be the better solution (for the UK) rather than taking the quick and easy option of external recruitment.

Now my respect for James Dyson as an engineer (i.e. an innovative problem solver) has increased because I can see that he is tackling the true cause of the skills shortage - the failure of successive governments to tailor education funding to the needs of the nation.

I hope that he can influence the UK government thinking on its education policies and that, the example Sir James has set will be taken up by other UK companies.

As a member of my wifes family works for Dyson I might be seen as biased, but I hope this works out, the UK is desperately short of capable practical 'engineers', for too long anything hands-on has been seen as 'blue-collar' work.

In my direct experience most 'graduates' have no hands-on experience and little understanding, the best illustration was a new 'graduate engineer' turning up at the tool-room in an IBM manufacturing plant with CAD drawings for new devices prototype bent sheet metal case-ware, with a dimensional tolerance of 0.01 microns. When we finally finished laughing we asked how he thought we could make it to such accuracy? His answer, well the CAD package said you could!