How research lost its sheen

Universities aren't just struggling to attract students to engineering - it's tough keeping them there, too. Diana Hinds on City salaries versus stipends

There is, seemingly, no end to the problems that beset engineering. With a national shortage of 21,000 engineering graduates, the difficulties for the profession of shaking off its out-moded "oily rag" image and attracting students to engineering degrees are already well documented.

But there are also growing concerns about what happens when those students who do sign up for first degrees reach the end of their three years. A recent report by the Royal Academy of Engineering warns that most of the country's top university departments are struggling to persuade the best UK graduates to stay on to do postgraduate research. Several reported that they recruit well over half their PhD students from overseas, and many of those return home after their studies.

"This is a huge problem for our economy as a whole," says Sir Alec Broers, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. "Without new researchers today, there will be no new knowledge tomorrow."

Doctoral research students are also crucial to replenish the research and teaching staff of university departments, particularly those with large numbers of engineering staff nearing retirement. But many universities are already struggling to fill staff vacancies, and unless the present decline in PhD students is reversed, tomorrow's would-be engineers could find themselves with no one to teach them.

"Universities desperately need engineers of about 30, with a good academic track record," says Michael Kelly, director of solid-state electronics at Surrey University. "And we don't just want to take the first people who walk in off the street."

Money, all agree, is one of the principal factors that dissuades engineering graduates from undertaking research. Why, after all, should a graduate who finishes a degree with, say, £10,000 of debt, opt for three or four further years of penury, when they could walk into a job in industry with a starting salary of at least £20,000? Many of the brightest engineers are being creamed off to work in the City, where their skills in technical analysis and assessment attract even greater financial rewards.

One solution is to pay postgraduates more money while they do their research. A newly published Government report by Sir Gareth Roberts, president of the Science Council, points out that the postgraduate stipend currently hovers around the level of the minimum wage. The report recommends that the average stipend should be increased, over the next few years, to around £12,000 – the tax-free equivalent of the average graduate starting salary.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council also hopes to extend its doctorate centres, which with an enhanced stipend and a strong focus on industrial problems, have in recent years proved more successful in recruiting postgraduates.

"The problem is not just about money," says Professor David Nethercot, head of the civil engineering department at Imperial College, London University. "Doing a PhD is not as attractive as it used to be, partly because of the image of becoming a specialist boffin. In fact, it's a great way of learning transferable skills and taking responsibility for a piece of work."

Employers, he believes, tend to underestimate the qualities that a postgraduate is likely to have gained from carrying out their own research. But the experience of choosing and running a three-year research project, arriving at a solution and defending it within the scientific community is invaluable for a young engineer – whether he or she then chooses an academic or an industrial career.

Research also develops a capacity for lateral thinking. Professor Nethercot cites the example of the engineer who, after completing a doctorate, went on to design the London Eye. One of his own former PhD students is now director of Arup in Hong Kong, and responsible for the design of the new North Tower there.

"I have chosen to stay in research because of the freedom it gives you, and the enjoyment," says Ambrose Taylor, a Royal Academy of Engineering post-doctoral research fellow at Imperial College. "It's about setting goals for yourself, taking up a challenge and seeing it through. There's no one standing over you telling you what to do."