It's a subject that's troubling everyone from industry leaders in Greater Manchester to the likes of Major Tim Peake and Carol Vorderman.
How does the UK bridge the shortfall of some 170,000 workers in so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) jobs which will be needed in the coming years to tackle some of society's biggest challenges, like climate change?
Though they're approaching it from different directions, Riffat Wall, the principal at Urmston Grammar School in Greater Manchester and Carl Ennis, Chief Executive Officer of technology giant Siemens' Great Britain and Ireland division, are both determined to do something about the problem.
Mr Ennis grew up in Rochdale and started his career in engineering, leaving school at the age of 16 for an apprenticeship before eventually going on to complete an engineering degree with the help of his employer at the time. He is now a senior executive at a global firm which employs more than 300,000 people around the world and has a market value of around £75bn.
Mr Ennis told a special episode of The Northern Agenda podcast - dedicated to the topic of solving the STEM skills shortage - that the challenges of getting young people into engineering remain the same now as they were three decades ago.
Listen to the full episode of the podcast here:
"I was brought up in Rochdale, " he said. "And I am the CEO of Siemens now but when I set off and left from school my aspiration was to be a car mechanic so I think somehow I failed, because that's what I wanted to do.
"But I set off and I left school at 16, education at 16 was not for me, and I took an apprenticeship route, but then was very lucky to have a very supportive employer who helped fund me through my further education ultimately, through my degree, which I took at Manchester Met.
"And then through that point, I was able to balance this real world experience with the education I'd gained to position myself and it only took me 32 years to get to a CEO level.
"So some of our students think they could do it quicker. It's great that they've got that ambition. The reality is it takes time.
"Is it any easier now? I don't think it's probably any easier or more difficult, what still remains the same is the perception of engineering.
"You speak to many in the public and they will see it as hard physical labour and by the way, some of it is, but actually it's also a route into really interesting jobs that are solving today's and tomorrow's challenges that the world faces and are really involved in in social change.
"Siemens got heavily involved with the ventilator challenge when we were at the beginning of the Covid crisis, so we really made a difference using software technology and hardware technology to do that.
"Sometimes we don't paint the real opportunity of engineering and as employers that's my task to do that, and I need to do it better. I think making it an attractive place to come and work remains the challenge. It was a challenge then and it still is now."
Last year a group of over 150 world-leading engineers, scientists and technology giants, led by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, called on the UK government to plug the nation’s growing STEM skills gap, which is estimated to be costing the economy £1.5bn per year.
They appealed to the government to work together with educators and industry to develop practical support for teachers of young children and to embed engineering in their existing STEM learning.
The letter - signed by Major Tim Peake, Carol Vorderman, will.i.am, and industry representatives from Rolls Royce and Vodafone - called on Ministers to help secure the UK’s future as a nation of innovators.
Mr Ennis said hundreds of thousands of engineers were needed in the coming years. "To realistically address the decarbonisation, the net zero challenge, we need a lot of capabilities that are fundamentally underpinned by STEM subjects and the task is large," he told the podcast.
But though he says the young employees arriving at Siemens are of a high quality, not enough young people with the right skills were being produced, or from diverse enough backgrounds.
"This is about making sure that we're able to attract the brightest, the boldest, the most innovative, innovative minds that we can find to solve these challenges that the country faces. And to do that you need that diversity of thought which does come from diversity of gender and ethnicity and socio-economic background."
The challenge of creating a science superpower was on the agenda at Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham last week, where Mr Ennis and Mrs Wall both spoke at a fringe event on the subject.
Mrs Wall, a former head of science at Stockport School and a University of Manchester biochemistry graduate, said many young people have a narrow view of what engineering is and don't appreciate the possibilities in areas like civil, chemical and mechanical engineering.
But she said careers advice was now getting better. Recently, at her school, a work-related learning day with Year 11 pupils had a number of STEM-based employers visit to explain the careers on offer.
"The most popular A-level in our school is A-level maths, the most popular A-level in the country is A-level maths," she said. "So we've got hundreds of thousands of students every year actually doing A-level maths.
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"Some of them are going on to do STEM-based degrees at university, but they are then being siphoned off into the financial markets, they're being lured by much more lucrative careers.
"And we've got to think about why is it that in the 34 years that I've been teaching, the same issues about getting girls into engineering, it was an issue 34 years ago, and it's still an issue today.
"So while schools can do a lot, working with employers is incredibly important, I think we've also got to look at why is that in our society in British society, we don't seem to put the same value on certain types of careers or we try to pigeonhole people too much and say, well actually, that's not for you, I'm going to channel you in that particular direction.
"Again, in schools, what we tend to find is we have lots of students who want to be doctors, dentists because it's subjects and careers that they know about.
"But what they don't know is all the other careers that are out there as well that can be equally rewarding and I don't just mean financially, but rewarding in terms of the challenge that they can actually give to those young people. So I think there's no easy answer because I think we would have solved it by now."
Mr Ennis said his firm was already involved in schemes like SeeMe, which helps young people through decisions about their future career and open their eyes up to new industries they may not have thought of before.
He said it was vital for them to be "aware of your options in order that you can make a choice", but that the variety and the breadth of engineering was "huge".
"Almost everything we engage with on a daily basis, an engineer or a scientist has had a finger in the pie somewhere in that and so the breadth to get involved in is huge," he said.
"And we are fixing today's and tomorrow's social challenges, to fix decarbonisation, to deliver digitisation, to make people live longer. These are all engineers and scientists, actually, that are at the heart of discovering and developing innovative techniques and capabilities in the UK.
"So how can you not want to be part of that? And actually, they're good quality, long term stable, well paid jobs, and there's an opportunity, if you're really really lucky, and you just happen to navigate through that, you can find yourself running a several billion pound, 16,000-people organisation by accident."
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