Too few Engineers and Natural Scientists Jeopardises the Competitiveness of the German Economy

In the past 15 years, the proportion of graduates in employment in the German economy has increased significantly. In the future, demand for university graduates is also expected to continue to rise. Meanwhile, the number of university graduates as a whole, but particularly the number of STEM graduates, has been declining since the 1990s.

The German education system, in particular the higher education system, is alarmingly insufficient when it comes to training sufficient numbers of engineers and natural scientists. The problem is that the qualification of individuals in these fields is key to ensuring the future technological performance and competitiveness of the German economy in the global market.

An important contribution to solving this shortage would be to increase the participation of children from less privileged backgrounds in academia. Until now, a disproportionately small number of children from such social backgrounds have entered higher qualification. This is the finding of a recent study carried out in collaboration between the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the Hanover Hochschul-Informations-System GmbH (HIS, "Higher Education Information System Limited").

The following numbers illustrate the extent to which the future scope for innovation in German companies is being put at risk by this development. In the middle of the 1990s, around 48,000 engineers, and almost 19,000 natural scientists graduated from German universities each year. 2001 saw the graduation of only around 33,500 engineers and 13,500 natural scientists.  According to the prognosis made at the latest conference of the Federal States' Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusministerkonferenz), graduation numbers for engineers will rise only slightly before 2006. Among the natural scientists, only the number of graduations in computer science is showing any significant rise.

This development is particularly alarming in view of that fact that in international comparison, Germany already has a low proportion of academics and particularly lacks graduates in the STEM subjects.  In 2000, the share of university graduates in the relevant age group was almost 20 per cent, while the OECD average was 25 per cent. At the end of the millennium, the number of engineers and natural scientists per 100,000 employed persons aged between 25 and 34 years in Germany, totalled 700 – far below the OECD average of 1,000. It must therefore be assumed that without a quick increase in graduate numbers, or the arrival of a significant number of technologically qualified foreign academics, Germany will be hit by a severe skills shortage and the respective economic consequences.

What educational potentials can be taken advantage of to avoid a shortage of STEM academics in Germany? First and foremost, Germany must significantly increase the proportion of individuals pursuing a degree. At the end of the millennium, the percentage of German school-leavers who qualified for university entrance (per age group 33 to 37 per cent, depending on method of measurement) was not only significantly below the OECD average of above 55 per cent, but also below the average of all other important industrial countries.

A prime reason for this is the German school system which offers the children of poorly educated and low-earning parents very little chance of qualifying for university entrance. Amongst 100 children from a privileged social background (highly educated parents with a high income), 84 achieve the advanced high school level and 72 pursue further education. On the contrary, among 100 children from an underprivileged social background (poorly educated parents with a low income), only 33 achieve the advanced high school level and only 8 pursue further education. These differences are not a reflection of class-specific levels of intelligence, but rather a reflection of the fact that the German school system fails to level the playing-field by providing children from less privileged backgrounds with the correct support. In regard to the technological performance and competitiveness of the German economy, the limited participation of students from less privileged social backgrounds in academia is especially problematic since it is aspiring academics from these social groups who show a disproportionate tendency to choose subjects in STEM fields. A drastic increase in their numbers in academia would therefore have significant positive effects, increasing the number of urgently needed engineers and natural scientists.

Contact

Jürgen Egeln, phone:+49(0)621/1235-176, E-mail: egeln@zew.de  

Dr. Christoph Heine (HIS), E-Mail: heine@his.de