Birmingham City University to invest £10m in STEM education
Imminent skills shortage will be addressed with new facilities
Birmingham City University has committed £10 million to expanding its capacity in science, technology, engineering and maths.
The money, £5 million of which is a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), will be used to build new facilities to support research and practice in STEM subjects.
"This investment shows our University's determination to take serious action to ensure we are delivering exactly the education our young people, as well as the regional and national economy, needs," said Professor Cliff Allen, vice chancellor of Birmingham City University, in a statement.
"We very much appreciate this £5 million HEFCE grant, investment that will allow us to deepen what we do now and develop new areas of expertise, delivering in turn a real boost to the education and training needs of our economy."
Allen was specifically responding to a report from SEMTA, the skills council for science, engineering and manufacturing technologies, which warned that the UK will be short some 80,000 workers across the sector by 2016.