In my previous letter, I talked about engineers and how students, industry, academics and society at large view success post-graduation. I also explained that I had to sift through a thousand CVs to appoint eight interns. Then recently, I had the opportunity to attend the graduation ceremony of a more vocational targeted learning institution. The students here were mostly already employed in some capacity, but enrolled as they needed a qualification to advance in their careers. Others were students who did not get university acceptance and grants, and as such, had to fund their studies privately.
Attending the ceremony and talking to the dean, instructors and students gave me the chance to reflect on my own biases and actions during my CV-sifting process over the past two years. In evaluating the 1000 CVs, I immediately excluded anyone not qualifying from one of the (six in my opinion) leading universities in the country as a first pass. This means that I did not even look at the CVs of graduates from the more vocational institutions. I am now struggling with a moral dilemma: do I include vocational institutions and double my workload, or do I continue in my old way as it takes less work and less time?
The national challenge
South Africa’s control and instrumentation industry sits at the centre of the country’s industrial future. It supports mining, manufacturing, utilities, water, energy, food processing, logistics, and increasingly digitalised production environments. The sector faces a contradiction that should concern every employer, professional body, educator and policymaker. While industry continues to speak about skills shortages, thousands of young South Africans remain unemployed, under-employed or excluded from meaningful technical career pathways.
The tragedy is that young people cannot find work, and many are trying to build employable technical capability through alternative and vocational engineering institutions, often while working and paying their own way, only to discover that the qualification they earned through sacrifice is not always recognised, trusted or valued by industry. In a country where youth unemployment remains persistently high, this is an education problem and a national productivity problem.
The unemployment crisis is also a skills-recognition crisis
South Africa’s labour market data continues to show a deeply worrying picture. Recent public labour market reporting places the official unemployment rate above 30%, with youth unemployment far higher, especially among those aged 15 to 24. Statistics South Africa has also highlighted that young people with some form of work experience transition into employment at substantially higher rates than those without experience, reinforcing what industry already knows: practical exposure is important.
This is particularly relevant to automation, control and instrumentation. Our field cannot be mastered through theory alone. A young person may understand measurement principles, control loops, signals, calibration theory, basic electronics or PLC concepts in a classroom, but competence develops when that knowledge is tested against real plant conditions such as noisy signals, faulty transmitters, poor earthing, instrument drift, incorrect scaling, process instability, safety constraints and production pressure.
For this reason, vocational and practically focused engineering institutions should not automatically be treated as second-class contributors to the skills pipeline. In many cases, they provide what employers repeatedly ask for, which is hands-on exposure, applied learning and a pathway for students who cannot afford, access or complete a traditional university route.
The cost of a narrow definition of engineering education
Mainstream universities play an essential role in producing engineers, technologists and researchers. Their contribution must not be diminished. However, South Africa also needs a broader and more flexible technical education ecosystem. Not every capable young person receives a bursary. Not every student can study full-time. Not every future engineer, technician, technologist, instrument artisan, automation specialist or support engineer follows a conventional academic route.
Many young people, the lucky ones, work during the day and study at night. Some support families. Some pay their own fees in instalments. Some choose vocational institutions because those institutions are more accessible, more practical, or more closely aligned with the type of technical work they want to do. When these students graduate and are then told that their qualifications are not recognised by the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), or are viewed by companies as inferior, the country sends the damaging message that practical effort is welcome, but not always respected.
ECSA’s role in protecting public safety, maintaining professional standards and regulating recognised engineering titles is vital. Lowering standards is not the solution. The real question is whether South Africa has done enough to create credible bridging routes, assessment mechanisms, articulation pathways and industry partnerships so that practically trained people can progress toward recognised professional competence without being permanently excluded at the starting line.
Industry cannot demand skills while dismissing alternative pathways
Companies often complain that graduates are not work-ready. They argue that young people lack site discipline, practical troubleshooting ability, communication skills, documentation habits, safety awareness and commercial understanding. Many of these criticisms are valid, but they also reveal an uncomfortable truth that employability is not created by education institutions alone. It is created through an ecosystem in which educators, employers, professional bodies and government share responsibility.
If industry refuses to engage with vocational institutions because their qualifications are not yet recognised, those institutions remain disconnected from real workplace expectations. If companies do not offer structured internships, mentorship or workplace exposure, young people remain trapped by the familiar experience paradox: they cannot get a job without experience, and they cannot get experience without a job.
In the control and instrumentation sector, this is especially damaging. Plants need people who can configure, calibrate, diagnose, document, maintain and improve systems. These are applied competencies. They develop through guided practice as well as formal lectures. A young person who has spent time wiring panels, configuring devices, working with test equipment, interpreting P&IDs, understanding loop sheets or supporting commissioning work may have valuable capability, even if their qualification does not fit neatly into traditional recognition structures.
Recognition must be earned, but pathways must be visible
The solution is not to recognise every qualification automatically. That would undermine public trust and professional standards. The solution is to make recognition more transparent, more developmental and more responsive to South Africa’s realities.
Several practical steps deserve serious attention:
• Clear articulation routes: Students from vocational engineering institutions should be able to see exactly what additional academic, practical or workplace evidence is required to progress toward recognised engineering accreditation.
• Independent competency assessment: Where qualifications are not accredited, candidates should have access to fair, rigorous assessment of their experiential learning, actual knowledge and applied competence as substitute for accredited qualifications.
• Industry advisory boards: Employers in industry should help shape curricula so that training reflects real plant needs.
• Structured workplace learning: Companies should provide supervised practical exposure, not informal observation. Young people need logbooks, mentors, measurable outcomes and feedback.
• Bridging programmes: Institutions, professional bodies and industry associations should collaborate on short, targeted modules that close gaps in mathematics, engineering science, safety, standards, documentation and professional practice.
• Respect for multiple pathways: Employers should evaluate candidates on evidence of competence, learning discipline, practical exposure and growth potential, not only on institutional prestige.
A call to industry leaders
The control and instrumentation profession has always understood systems thinking. We know that poor performance is seldom caused by one component alone. A failing control loop may involve the sensor, wiring, controller tuning, actuator response, process conditions, maintenance history or operator intervention. South Africa’s skills pipeline should be viewed in the same way. Youth unemployment is not only a labour-market failure. Graduate unemployment is not only a university problem. The undervaluing of vocational qualifications is not only an ECSA issue. It is a system problem.
Local industry can either wait for perfect candidates from a strained education system, or it can help build the candidates it needs. That means opening doors to young people who have chosen practical technical pathways. It means engaging constructively with vocational institutions instead of dismissing them from a distance. It means supporting professional standards while also creating realistic routes toward those standards.
Most importantly, it means recognising that talent is not always found where tradition tells us to look. Some of South Africa’s future instrumentation technicians, automation specialists, control engineers, system integrators and plant support leaders may currently be studying after hours, paying their own fees, travelling long distances and fighting for a chance to prove themselves. If the sector ignores them because their route was unconventional, we waste both human potential and industrial capacity.
Build bridges, not barriers
South Africa does not have the luxury of wasting capable young people. The country needs more practical skills, not fewer. It needs stronger professional standards, not weaker ones. But standards and inclusion should not be treated as opposites. A mature engineering ecosystem can protect the public, uphold professional competence and still create fair pathways for those who start outside the traditional university system.
For the control and instrumentation sector, the message is that the future workforce will not be built by recognition alone, nor by training alone, nor by industry demand alone. It will be built when recognition, training and workplace opportunity are deliberately connected. If we can do that, we will not only help address unemployment, we will strengthen the technical backbone of South African industry.
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