Comment "if you ask me..." [Opinion First Person]

IT IS WIDELY acknowledged that engineering in the UK is facing a skills shortage. Figures suggest that to meet future demand the country will need at least 1.82 million more people with engineering skills by 2022. We have a challenge on our hands. Business leaders, policy makers, industry bodies and education organisations recognise the need to address engineering skills shortages, but the discussion on how to do this is ongoing. At the Royal Academy of Engineering we recently held a platform debate on whether a new approach is needed. Six leaders from industry and education faced a packed auditorium to discuss whether ???Engineering should be rebranded as a creative and humanitarian discipline, rather than a scientific and mathematically-driven endeavour???. In other words, we considered whether we should take the ???E??? out of ???STEM???.