Graduates are not screwed if they study engineering: James Dyson in response to Economist article

Straits Times

16 hours ago

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British inventor and billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson, 78, said design and science students will hold up well in the age of artificial intelligence.
SINGAPORE - Today's graduates are not doomed if they study engineering, despite a poor job market.
This belief has long been held by British inventor James Dyson, 78, who has been thinking of bringing to Singapore his company's degree apprenticeship programme in engineering, where undergraduates earn a salary and pay no fees.
'A country's wealth is established by engineers and scientists,' the British inventor and billionaire entrepreneur told The Straits Times in a rare one-on-one interview on June 30 at the former St James Power Station, now
the global headquarters of Dyson , the consumer electronics company he founded.
In response to a June 16 article in The Economist titled
'Why today's graduates are screwed' , he said: 'I don't think that applies to engineers and scientists.'
Citing the US Bureau of Labour Statistics and employment data in the European Union and Britain, the article said that employers have trimmed jobs in graduate-friendly industries, and that graduates are losing their wage premiums.
Mr Dyson is stubbornly optimistic that engineering, design and science students will hold up well, saying that artificial intelligence (AI) can never replace the human brain for creativity.
'AI can pretend to be creative by combining things, but I don't think it can ever truly be creative and do something different and unexpected,' he said.
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Gesturing towards the Dyson PencilVac, its latest slim cordless vacuum cleaner, and the firm's range of slim hairdryers in the interview room, Mr Dyson said that AI did not create these products.
British inventor and billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson, 78, with the latest Dyson PencilVac vacuum cleaner's motor - its smallest and fastest with a diameter of just 28mm or the size of a 50 cent Singapore coin.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
During the hour-long interview, he also spoke passionately about original ideas, experimentation and creativity, as well as changes that need to be made to what and how students study.
These concepts are key to survival in a world disrupted by AI, experts say.
AI will undoubtedly do away with routine jobs as automation has with typists, said Mr Dyson, confronting the topic of layoffs, which have been seen in the past year at tech firms including Dyson, TikTok, Google, Microsoft, Intel, Amazon and Meta.
And the bar continues to be raised, as knowledge workers, who were once thought to be safe, are also now at risk of being replaced. Those at risk include paralegals, tutors, writers, graphic designers, software coders and stock traders.
Mr Dyson said matter-of-factly: 'Creativity will become harder because you have got to be better than a machine, better than AI, right?'
Declining to go into the specifics of
Dyson's surprise 2024 global job cuts , he said that organisations have to change with the times.
'The world is changing where things are made, how they are made, how you can move quickly and where the areas of expertise are. You can't go on with the old set-up. You have to adapt to the new set-up. And unfortunately, along the way, that creates different jobs, and some of the old jobs go,' he said.
In late 2024, Dyson cut an undisclosed number of jobs in Singapore following a global restructuring move that involved about 1,000 job cuts in Britain. Staff here were reportedly shocked, given that the firm had announced it was stepping up investments in Singapore.
Mr Dyson did not want to specify what roles were made redundant, but acknowledged that it is not always possible to reskill staff for new roles.
In 2022, Dyson said it would invest $1.5 billion in its Singapore operations over the subsequent four years, and committed to hire more than 250 engineers and scientists across robotics and machine learning. The firm confirmed on June 30 that it is still committed to the plan.
In 2023, it recorded a 9 per cent year-on-year increase in profit to £1.4 billion (S$2.4 billion), on a 9 per cent rise in global revenue of £7.1 billion. Despite global headwinds, it also increased its research and development expenses by more than 40 per cent in 2023, bringing total expenses to more than £2 billion since 2021, putting what it preaches into practice.
Today, the company still hires some 2,000 employees in Singapore, half of whom are engineers key to the development of its latest PencilVac, which will go on sale here on July 14.
The product's patented digital motors are made in Singapore, with one motor rolling off its Jurong manufacturing line every two seconds. These motors power its vacuum cleaners, air purifiers and hair dryers.
Dyson had also said in 2023 that by the end of 2025, next-generation batteries would be produced in
a new 247,000 sq ft plant located in Tuas . It had called the plant the most significant investment in advanced manufacturing in the company's history.
The next-generation batteries would be smaller, lighter, more sustainable and more energy-dense than the ones available today, according to the company.
Mr Dyson, who travels to Singapore almost every month from Gloucestershire in the UK, where he lives, did not want to confirm if the battery plant is on track to open.
During one of his visits in February, he gave Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong a preview of the PencilVac's motor, the firm's smallest and fastest vacuum motor with a diameter of just 28mm, the size of a 50-cent Singapore coin.
Singapore is where Dyson's patented digital motors are made, with one motor rolling off its Jurong manufacturing line every two seconds.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
'He was very excited,' said Mr Dyson. 'I can't emphasise more that the ability to put the new, pioneering technology into production is a great skill for a country to have.'
Speaking broadly on education, a topic he is highly critical about, he said that some reverse engineering might be necessary to inspire students to study engineering.
'The academic nature of university teaching may suit some people, but it doesn't suit everybody. And when you have gone through it, are you still able to be creative? And the dryness of academic work, where you are just learning a theory all day long for three years, or whatever it is, is that the best way to learn?'
Drawing on his experience pioneering a degree apprenticeship programme in the UK, he said: 'Would it be better to do what we are doing with our own university, where people work for three days with the best scientists and engineers in the world, and then have two days of academic teaching where they are inspired to do the academic side of things because they realise they can then answer the questions on the practical side.'
Founded in 2017, the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology in the UK runs a four-year engineering programme offering real-world working experience on the site of Dyson's design centre in Malmesbury, Wiltshire.
The institute initially awarded degrees validated by the University of Warwick.
But in 2021, it was given the authority to award its own degrees – a first in Britain, and also possibly in the world. Today, its 168 undergraduate engineers earn a salary and pay no tuition fees to create real products.
Dyson has been actively engaging the Singapore authorities for a number of years to do more to inspire students here to be interested in science and engineering designs. It is mulling over several options to intensify these efforts, including bringing to Singapore its degree apprenticeship programme.
'We are looking at it,' he said, adding that 'the model for Singapore might be slightly different' because Dyson has existing internship programmes with local universities.
Every year since 2019, up to 50 interns from the four local universities go through Dyson's doors doing stints between three and 12 months, providing a pipeline for its manpower needs.
The proportion of people in Singapore taking engineering and science at university is also higher than in the UK, he noted.
Born in Norfolk, Mr Dyson spent a year at the Byam Shaw School of Art before reading furniture and interior design at the Royal College of Art. There, he made the switch to industrial design.
'My chief engineer studied engineering and then studied design, and then came to me to practise as a designer engineer. We have quite a few of those. That is a very good combination, right?' he said.
'But we also feel that we can teach design by osmosis.'