Birmingham Uni invests £10m in STEM skills

Birmingham City University has pledged to invest £10m in STEM education, focusing on the skills that are crucial to the games and other technological and creative industries.

Science, technology, engineering and maths are vital to plugging the growing skills gap that studios around the UK have been reporting for a while now, and the Birmingham institute is determined to do what it can to help both its students and the industries that would employ them.

Half of the £10m is a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England, according to GamesIndustry, and all of the money will be used to create new facilities that support practice and research in the four STEM areas.

The university’s vice chancellor Professor Cliff Allen said: "This investments shows our University’s determination to take serious action to ensure we are delivering exactly the education our young people, as well as the regional and national economy, needs.

"We very much appreciate this £5m HEFCE grant, investment that will allow us to deepen what we do now and develop new areas of expertise, delivering in turn a real boost to the education and training needs of our economy."