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APPRENTICESHIP CLUSTER FOR INDUSTRY READY ENGINEERS OF TOMORROW

Hagen Hochrinner

Abstract

Industry 4.0 demands new skill-intensive jobs, which mostly affects engineers? the driving force of innovation. However, it turns out that EU is not all well prepared to face that challenge. The situation varies ? countries like AT and DE have already introduced WBL (=Work based Learning) at tertiary level to produce industry-ready engineers while others suffer a high level of youth unemployment due to skills mismatch caused often by industry-irrelevant traditional academic education. Within e.g. the regions of Gabrovo/BG and Gdansk/PL where the sector of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics is a priority in the development strategies, the enterprises find difficulty filling their engineering positions due to a lack of industry-relevant skills of young engineers. WBL practices in HE (=Higher Education) are not well known and universities do not possess the required competence to exploit their potential. As a result, the graduates often become unemployed or do low-skill jobs. Therefore, is an obvious need of stronger cooperation between universities and enterprises in the introduction of WBL and apprenticeship at tertiary level so as to produce industry-ready engineers to best meet the challenges of Industry 4.0. The conducted project (Erasmus+ K3) aCIRET established Apprenticeship Clusters in technical industries and developed curricula for dual study programs fitting in the local legal framework

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