The fourth Industrial revolution and the involved disruptive changes will have an impact on the employment landscape, business models in companies and the education systems. There is an emergence of new sector demands, new skills and competences, which calls for agile responses from both the private and public sector. Especially, the modernisation of the education systems are in focus. According to the World Economic Forum report: The future of jobs, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that do not exist yet. The European Commission Communication on a renewed EU agenda for higher education calls for strengthening the capacity and outputs of higher education institutions through more investment in skills and competences. In addition, it also stresses the need for an enhancing collaboration between higher education, research and business to remedy a mismatch between the skills Europe needs and the present skills Europe has. The demand for graduates in science and STEM is still unmet, and transversal skills including high-level digital competences and numeracy should be acquired. In all Nordic countries, the general understanding is that education is a crucial part of the responses to the challenge posed by globalisation, digitalisation and technological advances in general. At the same time, innovation as a driving force is in the heart of the Nordic model. However, the Nordic countries face challenges in educating scientists and engineers. The challenges are both qualitative and quantitative: qualitative in terms of identifying future competence profiles and developing adequate capacity within innovative and sustainable competences across traditional discipline boundaries; and quantitative in terms of attracting young people into science and technology. The Nordic countries have applied different strategies for meeting these challenges, but because the countries share overall welfare values, a strengthened common knowledge base and collaboration between countries will empower the Nordic region. In order to meet this change in the Nordic region, we need to prepare our future generations and to equip them with relevant skills in order to foster the innovation and growth in the Nordic Region. Therefore, we propose to establish a Nordic knowledge hub run by representatives from technical universities from different Nordic countries together with Nordtek and ANE, which has the task of presenting well-founded strategies for tomorrow's education and to conduct studies that compare developments in the Nordic countries. The project's goal is to reach and support decision makers and change agents as authorities, politicians, and other relevant actors in the higher education sector. The exact number of participants is difficult to determine, but the project will host at least two conferences for this target group, where one hundred participants are expected to attend. In addition, the target group will be reached through the construction of reports, articles and work material. Debates will be conducted via social media and through the networks that the consortium has. A structured knowledge base will be obtained by comparative mapping of the various educational practices and good examples. Data will be collected in all Nordic countries. Different levels of the educational system will be included in the analyses (high school, university and the system for continuous training), as the progression throughout the formal and informal learning systems is one of the key factors for an innovative educational strategy. In this project, the Nordic knowledge hub will present a vision of tomorrow's engineering education program, as experts in the Nordic countries would design it. This study will identify the current gaps and propose solutions how to close them. The solutions will be presented in a form of recommendations, which can be used to organise a political debate. As another product, the knowledge hub will present different strategies, practices and trends for universities’ continuous education based on a mapping study of technical universities in the Nordic countries. This will also include a comprehensive overview of the supply of continuous training across the universities, which can be used by different stakeholders, including public and private institutions. The project will present concrete strategies on how to increase the performance and interest in STEM as well as how to enhance the interplay between upper secondary level and university level in order to increase the quantity of young people seeking a career in science and technology. The long-term impact this project contributes to is an increased knowledge base for how the necessary change we are facing will be implemented and an increased awareness of what can and should be done in higher education, especially engineering education.
The project has been built upon three pillars. The project first received initial funding from the Nordic Council of Ministers, which allowed the initiators to contact various partners and also take the time to put together an application to Erasmus+. Once the partners were assembled, the five participating universities decided that each would contribute 50 days of working time per year to get the collaboration off the ground. Once this Erasmus project was approved, the project could start up for real, with four studies on STEM skills and competences needed for future engineers. Nordplus also contributed with extra funds during the project, which enabled the Norwegian partner to participate in all the meetings and studies even though they were not part of the Erasmus application. Four studies was conducted during the project time, studies that will now serve as the base for the next phase of this knowledge hub. The actual hub consisted of about 10-15 representatives from the partner organisations who conducted the studies and established the network. Study 1: A mapping study was conducted aiming at comparing the educational systems for the five different Nordic countries. The result from this study also contains a comparison with the Baltic states. This result is now both a report and a digital version. The digital version has been piloted and will be continuously updated. Study 2: The Nordic knowledge hub is presenting a vision of tomorrow's engineering education program, as experts in the Nordic countries would design it. In the first sub-study professors from five Nordic universities representing four different engineering disciplines were asked about the future, especially when it comes to the integration of digitalization and sustainability in the engineering education programs. In a second sub-study representatives from industry were interviewed on the same topics. The study has identified current gaps and propose solutions how to close them. The results (www.nordenhub.org), for example testify to the desire for future engineers to be able to work interdisciplinary, but with a strong foundation in their own discipline. The results from this rather scientific study has been and will be published in the scientific community before spreading the results as policy documentation. Study 3: As another product, the knowledge hub has looked at different strategies, practices and trends for universities’ continuous education. 10 universities strategies have been scrutinized and the result show that there is not yet a common strategy for this type of activities. Study 4: The project present strategies on how to increase the performance and interest in STEM. By interviewing managers from successful Outreach activities in all Nordic countries, the project has developed a model based on a framework on how to motivate young people. The model can be used when others want to design an activity with the aim of attracting young people to STEM education. Five videos are produced that can be used when describing strategies for developing new initiatives or redeveloping already existing initiatives of increasing STEM interest. The project's goal was to reach and support decision makers and change agents as authorities, politicians. Due to the pandemic this was not done to the same extent as planned. Instead, the project focused on finding a sustainable organisation for further developing its interests. The knowledge hub is now a branch of the network NORDTEK, consisting of about 30 Nordic technical universities, at the moment it is named the NEE focus area. The exact number of participants reached is difficult to determine, but the project have hosted one online conference for its target group, where two hundred participants attended online. This conference where financed by NORDTEK, the host of the knowledge hub. In addition, the target group will be reached through the reports written and the articles as soon as they are published. As part of NORDTEK, the knowledge hub will receive annual funding that will enable it to keep the network alive and update the mapping studies that have been initiated. Of course, new funding will be required to do new studies and also to disseminate what has come out of this study, we hope and believe that it is possible.