Ensuring excellence in vocational training and higher education as the basis for innovations

Innovations are not possible without creative heads. Education and knowledge are the preliminary stages of the adding value  in countries poor in natural resources. Germany and the EU therefore need more excellently educated people. The lack of engineers is already hindering innovation and growth  and  the global competitiveness of our companies today. In important developing areas, the companies cannot find enough well-educated workers in Germany. We must enhance again the  number of engineers  and ensure education and further education for growth sectors.

• The introduction of Bachelor and Masters courses for electrical engineers at universities and polytechnics in Germany will enable better international networking, faster  training and better permeeability between professional and academic learning.
• To provide more engineers with the necessary qualifications for entrepreneurial activity, broader education must be offered that provides not only scientific and technical but also commercial content and skills and those aimed at practical enterprise.
• The dual system of vocational training must be further strengthened by means of intensifying workflow embedded education and further education as well as closer connecting learning in the company and at vocational school. For the new electrical professions further education offers must be developed..
• Excellence in education and training is obtained only by national and global competition between universities  for students, professors and resources, but not by state regulation. Tuition fees, scholarship systems and better selection procedures must be supplemented to promote quality and a broad mobilisation of talents.
• Education expenditure must be seen as an investment into the future. An improvement in quality and intensity of education in our schools must be achieved by modernising the school management, increasing the public educational expenditure, improved training and further education for teachers, a mor e modern infrastructure of schools, extensive availability of modern media and generally compulsory education standards.
• The demographic development in Germany must be combated by increasing the number of women in technical professions, longer working life and life-long learning. At the same time, we must promote the immigration of talens and get expatriot scientists to come back to our country.
• The ZVEI promotes more receptiveness to and greater interest in natural sciences and technology by young people. At the same time, we need to strengthen the tuition in mathematical sciences in schools.

Concrete ZVEI initiatives

• ZVEI initiative: Bachelor and Masters courses in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
• ZVEI initiative: “New electrical professions“