Engineering job shortage impacts students needing work experience to graduate

7:46 am today

Work experience can be a requirement for tertiary qualifications

Photo: 123RF

Some engineering students are struggling to find the work experience needed to complete their degrees.

Before they can graduate, they are supposed to chalk up 800 hours in an internship or job - at least half of which must be engineering-related work.

However, engineering firms have less work than in the past and less capacity to take on interns.

One mechanical engineering student told RNZ he spent 12 months looking for a suitable placement and his university was no help.

He said several of his friends had similar experiences.

"I felt like I gave up at certain points," he told us. "It went so long and it was like, 'Well, what's the point? I'm just going to find a different job and work that until I regain the will to start looking again'."

But he eventually succeeded, starting an internship just last week.

Engineering New Zealand chief executive Richard Templer said the economic downturn made it harder for students to meet the work experience requirement of their degrees.

"The challenge at the moment is economic conditions are tough right now," he said. "It's proved very challenging for students to find internships and graduate roles."

Templer said engineering firms had struggled in recent years and many had downsized.

He said around 1350 consulting engineers have lost roles through redundancy and another 600 have gone overseas.

"So in that environment there is basically more people applying for internships and graduate roles than there are available roles."

Engineering NZ chief executive Richard Templer

Photo: Phil Pennington

Templer said Engineering NZ did not know how many students are affected, but it is talking to universities and polytechnics about the problem.

He said universities often did not find out students were not ready to graduate until graduation season arrived - which was about now.

"There's always a percentage of students that this happens to," he said. "What we know anecdotally is significantly more have been unable to reach their number of work hours than previously."

"In the longer term, the key thing we need is for the engineering market to pick up."

Templer said he had advised students to consider working in regional centres.

"One of the things I've said to them is you may need to be flexible with your location," he said. "Right at the moment it isn't necessarily as easy to find a role in Auckland as it is say in Invercargill or Dunedin or Christchurch."

Canterbury and Auckland universities told RNZ they had not seen an increase in the number of engineering students who were not ready to graduate.

But Auckland University's Dean of Engineering and Design, Richard Clarke, said students were having to work harder to get their placements.

"It's something that has been increasing over the last couple of years, in terms of what we're hearing from our students," Clarke said.

"We're certainly hearing this from our graduate employers as well, that the work hasn't been there which has meant they've had to scale back some internship programmes and so I think it is real."

Clarke said students could start their work experience while studying, and Auckland has support for students who are looking for internships and jobs.

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