WITH HIS big blue safety goggles and oversized apron, little Lukas resembles a miniature chemistry professor as he blows air with a drinking straw into a transparent plastic bucket filled with water. “I am producing bubbly bubbles that are filled with air,” the five-year-old explains excitedly.
This water experiment at a daycare centre in Ludwigshafen, southwest Germany, has shown Lukas that the environment is full of air. But the implications are far wider. Experiments such as these form part of corporate Germany’s increasingly desperate effort to tackle its most pressing long-term problem: the drastic skills shortage.
In spite of an unemployment rate that still stands at 7.6 per cent, employers in Europe’s largest economy are faced with a shortage of mathematicians, engineers, electricians and other skilled professionals that threatens to undermine the country’s position as one of the strongest industrial economies in the world.
German firms were short of more than 60,000 workers with technical and scientific qualifications in 2009, according to data from DIW, an economic research institute. With the population ageing and the educational system failing to spark interest in sciences, Germany’s skills shortage is expected to increase dramatically. Prognos, a research institute, recently forecast that by 2030, there would be a shortfall of 5.2 million professionals.
“We will have to do much more for education and research, otherwise we will face a very dark future,” says Franz Fehrenbach, chief executive of Bosch, the German car parts and industrial conglomerate.
The scale of the problem is such that many German companies have desperately held on to their skilled workforce in spite of last year’s economic decline, the steepest since the second World War.
So, alongside embarking on a poaching battle over existing professionals and trying to attract more immigrants – a hotly debated topic in Germany – senior managers have been starting initiatives to address a problem that in 2009 cost the economy about €15 billion.
Five years ago, Mr Fehrenbach and eight other senior managers founded Wissensfabrik – “Knowledge Factory” – which promotes science and economics and fosters language skills among schoolchildren. Since then, the organisation has launched an array of projects to improve an education system increasingly unable to cater for the needs of engineering, electronics and vehicle makers, the backbone of Germany’s export-driven economy.
In Germany, more than 30 per cent of students in technical sciences drop out of university early. According to estimates by VDMA, the German engineering association, 65,000 engineering freshmen started university in 2009 but only 31,000 finished their final exams – far less than were needed by industry.
Gerhard Rübling, executive at Trumpf, a laser machinery maker and a founding member of Wissensfabrik, says the situation is dire. “The requirements for engineering studies are too tough and the curricula do not always suit the needs of the industry. We need better tutorials and teaching plans at universities and we have to ask ourselves if technical subjects gain enough attention at school.”
While many companies work with universities to ensure that students are taught the skills that will help in their professional lives, the Wissensfabrik is focusing on children’s formative school and even preschool years.
“We want to support and at the same time challenge the existing educational system,” says Eva Müller, Wissensfabrik’s chief executive. Wissensfabrik finds companies willing to build and finance partnerships with schools and childcare centres. It provides them with learning materials and teacher training while also monitoring and supporting the projects.
Education is only part of the problem. Germany has for years blatantly ignored a large pool of existing talent and skill resources.
“We definitely have a lot of catching up to do with women, older people and the migrants who already live in Germany,” says Tanja Nackmayr, deputy director for education at BDA, the German employers’ association.
Progress has already been made with the over-55 age group. In the past 10 years, the employment rate of people aged 55 to 64 has shot up from 37.4 per cent to 56.2 per cent.
The number of women in industrial jobs is also on the rise. But Germany has so far failed to bring migrants into technical or business jobs. The number of migrants who fail to finish school is more than twice the average.
Wissensfabrik has evolved into a corporate mass movement, enlisting more than 70 companies, including some of Germany’s largest industrial groups, such as Siemens, ThyssenKrupp and Continental. Wissensfabrik has worked with 120,000 children and adults at more than 1,600 universities, advanced education facilities, schools and childcare centres.
“A successful recruitment strategy has to bank on long-term projects across the whole educational chain,” says Henning Kagermann, president of Acatech, an academy that promotes technical studies and collaborates with Wissensfabrik. “Knowledge Factory” projects range from language training for small children to one-week programmes in which primary school pupils are taught natural sciences and technical subjects.
Once the projects are up and running, some companies withdraw. At Lukas’s day care centre, sponsor BASF, the chemical group, kick-started the project in 2006 but last year handed the financial responsibility over to the centre’s provider – in this case the Catholic Church.
“BASF wants to be a company that triggers and establishes societal changes, which means that once the projects are up and running, it can gradually withdraw,” says Daniela Kalweit, head of its educational programmes. The company spends up to €5 million each year on similar projects.
At the daycare facility in Ludwigshafen-Oggersheim, the small borough where former German chancellor Helmut Kohl lives, change is palpable. With the help of various experiments the 75 children have developed considerable enthusiasm for sciences.
Lukas looks keen to learn more about the “bubbly bubbles”. But it is too early to tell the outcome of BASF’s support for his drinking straw and bucket of water experiment. Asked about his future career, Lukas is resolute: “I want to become a policeman”, he says.
