Dyson creator worried games development sucking up too many graduates
Tech-trained tempted by "glamour" of video games, he reckons.
Vacuum cleaner revolutionary Sir James Dyson is worried that too many British technology graduates are being swept up by the prospect of success in the video games industry.
Tech-minded students are increasingly abandoning traditional engineering roles, Dyson told the Radio Times (thanks, GamesIndustry), instead wanting to clean up creating games instead.
"The glamour of web fads and video gaming" was now more attractive than "tangible technology that we can export," he argued. "The government must do more to attract the brightest and best into engineering and science so that we can compete internationally.
"26 per cent of engineering graduates do not go into engineering or technical professions," he continued. "More worrying is that 85 per cent of all engineering and science postgraduates in our universities come from outside the UK."
Dyson made his name developing a new generation of vacuum cleaners, but also invented the Ballbarrow (a wheelbarrow with a ball instead of a wheel), and the Dyson Airblade (a posh hand dryer).
He's also funded the annual James Dyson Award for students who "design something that solves a problem". The winner gets a £10,000 prize, plus £10,000 for their university.