How to overcome challenges for preparing engineers for future and introduce strategies for g-STEM skills

While the industry is eager to understand customer needs and design products which can be fit for purpose, safe and environmentally compliant, it has been identified that there is a gap in the requirements of employers and engineering education providers. In general engineering educational institutions set up training curricula in the areas they know without receiving inputs from industries and businesses. With the new industrial environment, it will be necessary to create new areas. Some old areas, now redundant, will have to be thrown out and some areas will have to be redeveloped. Also, lack of understanding and poor perceptions of, and attitude towards, engineering amongst young people and their influencers, including parents and school teachers causing the Scientific, Technological, Engineering and Mathematical (STEM) skills challenge. This is further aggravated by outdated, 'teacher-centred' and post-industrial-revolution teaching strategies within primary and secondary schools. Skills mismatch has been identified as a global issue and it is expected to worsen in the future. Today, Asia lacks 200 million engineers as emerging economies such as Indonesia, South Korea, China and India are becoming 'Talent Magnets'. World experience reveals that the key resource of any nation is the human resource. Harnessing brain power of human beings to raise STEM capability is the only strategy which works better in building a nation. Business success depends on the quality of people, human centred creativity, interdisciplinary approaches, global mobility (diversity in the labour force), and length and breadth of knowledge model. The rapid changes on national and international levels poses a great challenge to businesses, schools and engineering institutions. The paper investigates networked efforts of these organisations through the following areas to identify challenges and strategies to prepare engineers for future. - Life Long Learning - Quality and Design thinking - Entrepreneurship - greater-STEM