Engineers will determine the future economic status of Britain, says Lord John Browne, former BP CEO.
“I do believe engineering is the only way to get growth in any economy,” says Browne, a past president of the Royal Academy of Engineering which has produced a report saying Britain needs 1.25m science, engineering and technology professionals and technicians by 2020.
Without them, Browne predicted that: “The UK will be a backward-looking country resting on the laurels of the past and will eventually decline in power.”
The UK is currently graduating 90,000 people a year in those disciplines and 25% of the graduates don’t get a job in areas related to their degrees.
Browne runs the new million pound Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering which will be presented for the first time next week. He bemoaned the lack of an engineering equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
“There really aren’t any global engineering prizes that put engineers on the same footing,” says Browne, “engineering in modern times is the only way to express the result of discovery and gives us the practical results. We hope the prize provides aspiration and inspiration for those in engineering and those who might come into it.”
"This is the beginning of a push," says Browne, "but it requires consistency. It's a way of life, not a one-off project."
