Spotlights on the Aeronautics Industry
The aeronautics industry is one of the most important high-tech sectors of the European Union and a key driver of European cohesion and competitiveness, playing a fundamental role in facilitating economic growth and social inclusion. Recent economic data suggests the aeronautics industry will continue to grow strongly over the next 20 years. To achieve this sustained growth, this sector depends on the availability of a highly skilled labor force.
By Fred Verboon
What is the Fly Higher project?
The aeronautics industry is one of the most important high-tech sectors of the European Union (EU), representing 220 billions of Euros and providing 4,5 million of jobs in Europe, a figure that should double by 2020. Although the economic outlook is very promising, this industry deals with decreased recruitment rates of young people due to lower proportions of qualified young people who are embracing mathematics, physics and engineering studies. This is a major concern for the aeronautic industry.
The project “FLY HIGHER - Shaping the new evolving generation of aeronautic professionals”is funded with the support of the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programmeand it plans to give a relevant contribution to raising the interest of young Europeans for engineering activities in the field of aeronautics with the aim of attracting them at a later stage to scientific and technical careers in the aeronautical sector. The programme of activities is focused on establishing a closer dialogue between the Aeronautics industry, leading universities and the scholar communities. The activities include hands-on experiments, visits, open labs, workshops, exhibitions, competitions, science cafes, training for teachers and career advisors, etc..
The number of jobs in aeronautics will double by 2020
Labor Force and Skills
From its early days at the beginning of the 20th century till today the aerospace sector has required a highlyeducated and innovative work force. According to Aerospace and Defence Industries Association ofEurope (ASD), 35% of jobs in aeronautics are highlyskilled jobs.
In the ongoing demographic trend,the sector is competing with other sectors and requires a quantitativeand qualitative employment preparation and forecast. Europe’s demographic developmentis characterised by an aging population and a decline of younger age groups. In the aeronautics industry, there is a relatively large population of employees between 35-50 years old. Decreased recruitment rates of young persons, in part also related tolonger education periods and more frequent use of early retirement schemes, has enlarged the weight of thesemiddle age employees. The main concern is, of course, that when these middle-age employees reach the ageof retirement, replacement rates will increase. The aging of the baby boomer generation indicates that anincreasing percentage of the workforce will be eligible to retire in coming years. This demographic change inassociation with lower proportions of qualified young people who are embracing for mathematics, physics andengineering studies and careers is a major concern for the aeronautic industry.
Another concern is gender distribution. This sector is characterised by an underrepresentation ofwomen. The activities performed by women concentrate mainly in administrative and marketing tasks. Theusual rule is: The higher the portion of manufacturing, the lower the quota of women. Initiatives to make working inthis field more attractive to female students and trainees can contribute to overcome the shortage of qualifiedstaff on the long term.In this context, shortage of qualified personnel may affect this sector in the future, unless there is a joint effortto attract, motivate and encourage young Europeans to embrace future careers in the field of Aeronautics.This implies that the scholar community, academia and industry need to think and work more tightly to engagechildren and youth in this field and to reverse this trend.
An increasing percentage of the aeronautics
workforce will retire in coming years
With the FLY HIGHER activities, with focus on raising the interest of young Europeans for engineering
activities in the field of aeronautics, the program intends to reverse this trend of aging of professionals in this field andalso motivate students to learn more and acquire the relevant skills and knowledge to be excellent futureaeronautic researcher or/and industry professionals.
Sciences and Engineering Education
Statistics show a declining interest for natural sciences and engineering. In all European countries, scienceeducation starts with one general integrated subject and is taught in this way throughout the entire primaryeducation. In several countries the same approach is continuous for one or two years into lower secondaryeducation; and by the end of lower secondary education, science teaching has usually been split into theseparate subjects of biology, chemistry and physics.
At general upper secondary level, the large majority ofEuropean countries adopts a 'separate subject' approach and organises science teaching differently dependingon streams and educational pathways chosen by students. In terms of higher education, the diversity is evenhigher with a pretty large variety of systems and programmes structures in each national system.Consequently, not all students are taught science at the same level of difficulty and/or throughout all grades.Over the last six years, there have been general curriculum reforms at different levels of education in morethan half of the European countries. These reforms have also affected science curricula; the maindriver for reform in many countries has been a desire to embrace the European key competences approach.In this context, countries have made efforts to integrate more context-based issues and hands-on activitiesinto science curricula. The reforms in various countries where science skills were re-focused in line with keycompetences illustrate the desire of policy makers to raise the importance of science.
Your involvement
The Fly Higher project will deliver ready-to-use counselor career kits, training for teachers,interactive curriculum content, open labs, workshops, exhibitions, competitions and science cafes. Would you (or your school) like to take part in the project, please send a mail to .
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be
held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein