On Thursday, July 2, Henk Pijlman and Binne Visser signed an agreement for this purpose. ’’The Northern Netherlands as a European example of cooperation between education and business.''
The job market is shrinking, and both the health care and engineering sectors will soon require four out of 10 employees each. ’’There aren't any, when you consider that five thousand jobs a year are disappearing in the Northern Netherlands because of demographic trends,'' said Henk Pijlman, chairman of the Executive Board of the Hanze University Groningen. ,,It requires creative solutions to keep our knowledge economy at a high and healthy level. Cooperation with the business community is then the obvious thing to do.’’ The high-tech companies of Innovatiecluster Drachten also see this. They expect a decline in the number of applicants. According to Binne Visser, chairman of the cooperating high-tech companies, the population decline in the Northern Netherlands is underestimated. ,,No one notices it because it is going so slowly, but the downward trend has begun. In the coming years, many employees will retire and the recruitment of new, young people will lag behind the demand from the companies.’’
Working and teaching
The same is true in education, where gaps are emerging as more teachers retire than join. How will there continue to be sufficient recruitment of new employees and how can the influx of technical teaching staff be guaranteed? With rapid technological developments, Visser says it is important for employees to teach alongside their daily work. ’’Companies are hardly working on this yet, but I foresee a time when employees will work three days and teach two days.’’ That is music to the ears of Peta de Vries, Dean of the Institute for Engineering at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. We must move even more towards integrated education in which working, learning and teaching come together. Together or separately is really no longer an issue.'' The first steps have already been taken. The program Associate Degree Mechatronics tastes like more.
Urgency
Money is available in Europe for knowledge development that can give the Northern Netherlands an edge. ’’As industry and education, let's put a face to this together. The opportunities are there with the Smart Industry Hub,’’ said De Vries. The major digital issues facing the region require a joint approach. Visser also feels this urgency. ''As industry, we have an important role to play in moving the North forward. With a clear profile of sensoring, imaging and huge data, for example, we can also distinguish ourselves from other regions, which helps with European visibility.''
Collaboration
In the coming months, the strategic collaboration between Hanze University and Innovatiecluster Drachten will be fleshed out further. Human capital is one of the most important topics with AD mechatronics as one of the opportunities for employees of the high-tech companies to develop further. In addition, the school wants to contribute research to the most important topics that play a role within high-tech companies.