K2, known to locals as Chhogo Ri, is an absolute beast of a mountain. Chhogo Ri pretty much translates as Big Mountain in Balti. It is the second highest mountain on the planet and notoriously difficult to climb.
While shorter than Everest, the great peak of the Karakoram range holds a psychological edge that its more famous cousin in the Himalayas doesn’t. That comes in the form of the Shoulder.
This false peak, about 8,000m high, looks to all approaching it like the top of the mountain. A sense of belief and joy can quickly turn to anguish for a tired climber, upon quickly realising there’s another 600m to the true summit.
Welcome to the position with Stem in Ireland. Government has, for decades, pushed hard to produce more graduates with science, technology, maths and engineering degrees. Data published by the Central Statistics Office at the start of April looked like stellar news.
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Ireland leads the European Union in the number of Stem graduates per capita, at an impressive 40.1 per 1,000, based on 2022 data. Being the best among any group of 27 countries at anything is worth celebrating. Among a group where many have far longer histories in engineering and industry, it’s a truly marvellous feat.
Yet it’s still not enough. The napkin maths, which are always kinder than the real nitty gritty, says that figure needs to be 20 per cent higher right now just to meet the current staff shortages in Stem fields in the State. That’s at least through conventional methods.
In truth, the approach to sourcing workers with Stem skills, which dates back to the 1990s, needs to evolve. Back then, the sole focus on delivering graduates through traditional third-level routes made a lot of sense. It was a clear and relatively simple policy. Experience has taught us that overcomplicating policy has all too often been a recipe for delays so Ireland’s simple “we need to do this thing” model was appropriate.
But to meet today’s skills gap, the Government needs to rethink its approach. The core focus should continue to be on delivering greater numbers in the conventional way, through university courses. But we need to improve delivery through other supporting channels if the State is to meet demand.
The obvious one is importing talent. It is something Ireland has done for decades in many sectors, including those that are Stem-related, but there are still shortages everywhere. Housing and the cost of living are the easy barriers to point out to the untrained eye but there’s a bigger one that is a lot more boring.
Our education and training mindset over the past few decades has been to try to make the person fit the system, when really we should be trying to find a system that works for the individual
The visa process itself for skilled non-EU citizens remains laborious. Part of that is due to the staff in the Civil Service not having enough resources to manage it but there’s also the psychological barrier for businesses.
Importing someone from outside of the EU is considered a pain, even though improvements have been made to accelerate approvals in recent years. Companies such as Future Direct, which is entirely focused on managing the visa process, help to fill in the gaps for some employers.
Still, improved communications, buttressed by greater resources in the Civil Service, are needed to make business less wary of importing non-EU talent.
That isn’t the only element which needs to be improved. As I said, the process that got Ireland to the top of the EU table was simple. The pipeline was from the Leaving Cert to third level, straight into a Stem course and then out to the workforce to provide a needed skill.
Efforts to address talent beyond the traditional pipeline need to be improved. There are many for whom the traditional route simply doesn’t fit.
Our education and training mindset over the past few decades has been to try to make the person fit the system, when really we should be trying to find a system that works for the individual. That covers a broad range of areas, apprenticeships and traineeships through to career changes or in-career upskilling.
When we see people come through from these approaches today, the first thought can be that they are working as intended.
That rather misses the point that these are exceptions rather than the rule in Stem. Improving access and awareness around all of these routes is vital to meeting the industry’s staff shortages.
Granted, staff shortages are an issue across every sector. When it comes to the growth and sustainability of the economy, however, Stem and construction (for housing and infrastructure) stick out wildly as core areas that need the bump in bodies more than others.
If these two areas can be locked down and pushed harder, both through organic and inorganic approaches to increasing their workforces, the skills gap issue elsewhere should become easier to resolve.
Ireland should celebrate being the best in the EU at delivering Stem graduates. Now it needs to aim higher to be the best it can be for its own future.
