$10m focus on engineers

Tertiary education spokesman Steven Joyce. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The National Party wants to double the number of people studying engineering at university in a bid to get more graduates into jobs in the high-tech sector.

The party revealed the last part of its tertiary education and skills policy yesterday - an additional $10 million a year to increase the number of engineers in tertiary institutions. On top of a previous investment of $50 million, the policy would help raise the number of graduates in this field to a level which is close to the OECD average.

Tertiary education spokesman Steven Joyce said: "This new investment of $40 million over four years will support our target of doubling the number of engineering graduates from around 900 a year to 1800 a year."

He said the Government needed "an unrelenting focus" on supplying skilled graduates to the tech and innovation industries, which National hoped would increasingly contribute to economic growth.

Most parties agreed that the country needed to be producing more students in the stem subjects - maths, science, engineering and computer science.

The Greens have promised a similar investment of $50 million and 1000 more tertiary places in these subjects. Labour supports this approach, but notes that innovative ideas also come from humanities and design graduates.

In 2012, just 5570 of New Zealand graduates (4.3 per cent) studied engineering, compared to 67,300 in languages, law or social sciences.

Engineers made up 7 per cent of all graduates in Australia and 12 per cent on average in OECD nations.

In order to create space for the students, the Government has committed to three new ICT graduate schools in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch by mid-2015 at a cost of $26.5 million.