Both economic growth and technological innovation is hampered by the fact that the supply of qualified engineers does not meet demand in Eastern Denmark, according to a new report prepared by IRIS Group for DTU. The report is based on figures from Statistics Denmark and qualitative interviews with companies in Eastern Denmark.
According to the report, the pharmaceutical and biotech industries in particular are demanding more engineers than are currently being trained, but other industries such as IT and consulting engineers are also finding it difficult to recruit enough qualified labour.
‘The result is a society that is poorer both in terms of economics, but also in terms of the knowledge and innovation that are crucial for us to remain competitive while moving in a sustainable direction,’ says Anders Bjarklev, President at DTU.
Barrier to growth in life science companies
Several factors play into the large shortage of engineers now and in the future. First and foremost, many engineering-heavy companies in the pharma and medico industries are characterised by high growth, which requires additional highly specialised labour.
Already today, many of these companies are struggling to recruit the number of engineers they need.
‘In the short term, the consequence of an increasing shortage of engineers will be fewer products and development tracks. In the long term, it will mean that both development and production will take place in other countries,’ says the HR manager of a pharmaceutical company in the report.
If the problems are not to grow even bigger, politicians must take the increasing demand into account when working on future reforms, says Anders Bjarklev:
‘Right now, a university reform is being implemented that lacks the flexibility and finances to create attractive programmes, which could ultimately mean that we have to educate even fewer engineers. When we also have a life science industry that is starving for skilled and innovative people, you have to ask yourself whether we are making the right political decisions.’
Increasing need for engineers
Companies that are struggling to find enough technical specialists today are likely to continue to do so in the future.
The demand for engineers is growing much faster than the supply, according to a projection in IRIS Group's analysis. So fast that by 2030, there will be a shortage of somewhere between 17,000 and 21,000 people with a technical degree in Eastern Denmark. Today, the figure is around 7,000.
The large increase is partly due to high growth in engineering-intensive companies, and partly because, as a consequence of the political agreement ‘More and better educational opportunities throughout Denmark’, from 2021 DTU will have to relocate programmes corresponding to 300 students and reduce the intake of new students accordingly in Lyngby and Ballerup.
Overall, the reform will result in DTU educating 4,200 fewer engineers between 2027 and 2035.
In addition, as part of the master's degree reform, DTU will have to reduce admissions to the bachelor programme from 2025 to 2029 by 9.5% compared to 2023, corresponding to approximately 130 fewer new students per year.
Read the full analysis here.
