It is time to choose!

It will soon be 15 April, the application deadline for higher education institutions. For many people, the date means a major choice and an important milestone in plotting a course for the future. 

How should the choice be made and what is important? Of course, we don’t know a lot about the future, but what we do believe we know is that the future will pose major societal challenges such as climate change, migration, floods, water shortages, challenged energy systems and pandemics.

We also see that society needs more engineers, architects and industrial designers. There is an evident demand even now, and considering the societal challenges it is likely that this need will increase in the future. Quite simply, there is a need for more people who can contribute to the technological solutions that will be an important factor in meeting societal challenges and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Agenda 2030.

We also know that there are preconceptions that those involved in engineering and technical jobs are lone wolves and don’t work with people, just things. These preconceptions and other unfortunate myths about engineering programmes and what an engineer does probably scare way many people who don’t feel that they would fit in and that engineering programmes are for “others”.

Even so there are, pleasingly, many people who are interested and apply for our programmes at LTH, but in general not enough women apply (37 percent of the students at LTH are women, and for a couple of our educations the number is as low as 15 percent). This feels disappointing, especially as there are such great opportunities for interesting jobs and an enriching working life. There is the prospect of a working life and professional opportunities that are highly varied, and a considerable range of options for a future career open up for someone who has a degree from LTH.

Engineering programmes and engineering jobs are thus not just for lone wolves, technology nerds or maths geniuses. No, the engineering programmes rather provide knowledge and skills that can be used to meet societal challenges and contribute to a better world. The programmes are for people who want to find solutions to problems together with others, for the benefit of people.

LTH’s vision “Together we explore and create – to benefit the world” clearly shows how important we think it is for people to work together – people with different backgrounds, perspectives, skills and experience. It will be better, as heterogeneous groups often progress further in their efforts to solve complex problems.

At LTH, we know that engineering helps to generate advances in community development – and we must work on sustainable development in many different areas in which technical development, community development and design will have considerable significance.

Thinking in this way perhaps feels more inviting as inspiration for engineering studies and in the run up to the big choice for the future on 15 April.

So, don’t be afraid to choose LTH’s programmes for engineers, architects and industrial designers, in which teaching staff and students make really strong efforts to help with LTH mathematics, in order to support each other and above all contribute to a better world together.

I wish that many people, regardless of gender and background, will dare to take a chance and apply for our programmes in order to gain access to an exciting and rewarding working life

Annika Olsson

Dean of LTH

PS I wrote about this theme – and some myths that I think we may also need to dispel in order to broaden recruitment to technology and engineering programmes – in an opinion piece in Sydsvenskan. And why not take a look at LTH´s short video about mathematics? Most people were not born a maths genius!