Posts Tagged Manufacturing
Stephen Clarke: Why we need to manufacture a new kind of graduate
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Education on 07/12/2011
IT is not just higher borrowing and lower growth that is grabbing the headlines. Despite the Government’s attempt to rebalance the economy, Britain is struggling to increase goods exports and the resurgence in manufacturing hoped for by ministers is not coming.
It is a question seldom asked when discussing the country’s economic woes, but is Britain producing the right graduates to increase manufacturing output?
Read the rest of the comment piece in the Yorkshire Post here
Rise in STEM subjects disproportionately due to overseas students
Posted by Nick Cowen in Economics, Education, Press Release on 05/12/2011
Universities are educating 6,000 fewer British engineers a year than 10 years ago
British universities are adding fewer STEM subject graduates to the labour market than total student figures suggest, according to a new Civitas report. The STEM subject push by Stephen L. Clarke finds that the number of overseas students attending British universities to study engineering increased by 12,308 from 1997 to 2007, but that the number of British engineering students declined by 5,769. [p. 3] As a result, the British economy will struggle to find the skills necessary to drive a production-led recovery.
A far from BAEsic problem
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Politics on 26/09/2011
Tomorrow will see BAE Systems disclose how many jobs the company will cut. Expectations are that around 3,000 jobs will be lost across 3 sites in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Unions and opposition politicians have called on the Government to take action, but is there anything useful the Government can do?
Homeward bound?
Posted by Stephen Clarke in America, Economics, European Union on 23/05/2011
Earlier this month the Boston Consulting Group reported that the United States could witness a ‘manufacturing renaissance’ with businesses returning to the country, as the wage gap between America and China shrinks. Can other developed economies expect a similar renaissance?
Too clever by half
Posted by Stephen Clarke in Economics, Politics on 09/05/2011
The current British Government has been characterised by many commentators as one of the most radical. Free schools, GP commissioning, payment-by-results public services, the ‘Big Society’, whatever your views on such policies it is hard to argue that they do not suggest a government committed to wholesale, rather than incremental change. There is much to be said for radical ideas and extensive change, however in the economic sphere the Government could do with a good dose of old fashioned Tory incrementalism.
Cool Britannia™
Posted by David Merlin-Jones in Economics, Family, Marriage and the Culture on 30/09/2010
As abstract concepts go, ‘coolness’ has to be one of the hardest to define. The uncool Oxford English Dictionary has had a go, suggesting: ‘informal, fashionably attractive or impressive’. While this is rather ambiguous, suffice it to say that the idea that being cool is a state of mind, a quality based on a person having a touch of je ne sais quoi, has been replaced by a focus on shiny things. The company CoolBrands has drawn up a materialistic list of, unsurprisingly, the coolest brands in Britain. And what a lot it says about us. Read the rest of this entry »