Too many high-flying graduates are going into consulting, reckons the former boss of Shell, Peter Voser.
Voser who chairs Swiss engineering group ABB, said the number of graduates in the UK going into a career in professional services rather than manufacturing represents a “failure” of industrial policy.
According to the Financial Times, Voser spoke told a conference: “I think the UK forgot how important certain sectors are” adding that “it’s a failure . . . [that so many graduates go into consulting].”
The number of new apprenticeships has fallen by more than 40 per cent since the training levy was introduced in 2017, according to research by Youth Futures Foundation last month.
The FT highlighted data from High Fliers Research that showed accounting and professional services firms topped the list with under 6,700 graduates who went into this profession last year. This compared to 2,900 graduates that joined engineering and industrial companies and 3,900 that went into the finance sector.
Between 2016 and 2021, the professional services grew by 12 per cent, the rapid growth reveals the changing nature of the City as a report earlier this year showed that professional services are outpacing growth in the banking sector.
Voser pointed out that countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Nordics, it is their small medium-sized enterprises (SME) that drive their GDP.
He explained: “The UK doesn’t have these enterprises, the small manufacturing guys who are very innovative, who have to compete globally.”
Voser was also criticising the lack of technical training at top British universities including the popularity of prestigious humanities degrees.
“When you take graduates from Cambridge or Oxford, they come in with a history degree, and for the first three or four years you actually educate them to be in multinational companies,” he explained.
This comes as Rishi Sunak pledged last week in his latest general election policy announcement that he wants to scrap what he called “rip-off degrees” in favour of creating 100,000 more apprenticeships per year.
Despite this, Voser struck a more positive note on the future of the manufacturing sector in the West.
He said that robotics and automation would mean “a lot of benefits going back into the European and American space”, as they would be able to manufacture “cheaper than China . . . because salaries in China are growing”.
But he warned that “social safety net thinking” in Europe could prevent automation due to the fear of job losses. “That’s the challenge [facing Europe],” he added.