Gero believes that electrical engineers repair machines. Ida, on the other hand, thinks they are responsible for installing wall sockets or smoke detectors. And Marlene imagines they might be the people who put up the city’s Christmas lights.
The results of the study series “The image of electrical engineering”, published last year by the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television (IZI) in cooperation with the VDE, are alarming. “Even if young people often have a distorted image of what our work is actually about, we shouldn’t be surprised if no one wants to become an electrical engineer any more,” says Dr. Michael Schanz, Head of VDE’s Technical Committee for Study, Work and Society. However, this misunderstanding, the negative image and the associated dramatic decline in student numbers have had devastating consequences in two respects:
firstly, they mean the shortage of skilled workers will get worse. However, in order to master all the upcoming challenges – from the energy transition to the digital transformation and artificial intelligence – we need significantly more electrical engineers, not fewer. You could put it a little more bluntly: who is going to save the world if not those young people who decide to study electrical engineering and information technology today?
Secondly, these issues also have consequences for every single one of the young people who choose not to study this subject due to their misconceptions. Because they don’t know what they are missing out on! “Electrical engineers are more in demand now than ever before,” says Schanz. In addition, a huge variety of different, often very meaningful – and usually well-paid – jobs await them, according to the VDE expert. The only problem with this is that there are so many great jobs that we simply don’t know where to start and where to stop when trying to present them all. So here and on the following pages, we’ve provided just a few examples – far beyond smoke alarms and Christmas tree lights.
