Discussions about the implementation of predictive simulations very often end up with the same problem: There are no people who can work with them. “In the last three to four years, we have observed that companies cannot find simulation experts. And it’s not just a problem for the Czech Republic, but for the whole of Europe,” states Petr Jalůvka, Company Representative of DYNAMIC FUTURE. This time, we conducted a holiday interview on the topic of Czech education, and preparing pupils and students for the future.
In your experience: is the problem that few specialists come out of schools, or there is no interest in working with simulation tools, or companies do not allocate sufficiently attractive positions for it?
This is quite a philosophical question. I myself do not understand where university graduates go. After all, the number of people who obtain a university degree each year is enormous. However, they are still missing from the labour market. Maybe they go abroad, maybe they do something else. The last possibility is also real, namely that they don’t find positions in companies with appropriate remuneration and interesting work content.
Is the ball not in the universities’ court?
I think….. not quite. Today, WITNESS is taught at most universities in the Czech and Slovak Republics. We meet with their graduates who, as managers of various companies, approach us saying that they want to buy a simulation tool because they know it from school.
And if such people are missing in the company…
… then projects that could work beautifully and bring benefits and profits are unnecessarily hindered. Honestly, they are often in the company, but in real life they get a lot of other tasks besides working with the simulation. Then it happens that they don’t simulate anything new for a year, and that’s bad. They lose their expertise, they lose touch with reality, and the company loses the money it invested in acquiring digital twins. It’s like they bought a luxury car, and then only went to the garage to dust it off.
Let’s return to education. DYNAMIC FUTURE is in close contact with schools. How do you collaborate?
We have been co-operating for a really long time, and closely, with the University of Mining and Technology – Technical University, specifically with two departments. These are joint projects or lectures. It is similar with several schools in Slovakia. We always offer to share our practical experience, plus, of course, we assign theses topics, and supervise their oppositions.
Can you be more specific?
For example, we start from the project that we implemented with DYNAMIC FUTURE, we guide the students through the issues of a specific assignment, and their task is then to create a simulation model, design optimization experiments, and so on.
Has higher education changed in recent years?
University is such a personal topic for me. I’m old fashioned, when it comes to education. I consider the school I graduated from, VŠB – TUO, extremely important in my life. I was fortunate to be taught by professors whom I respected. Personalities who were true icons in their fields. When I returned to the school to give lectures, I saw a completely different atmosphere.
The wild nineties?
Rather, sadness in education. Clever and capable experts either went to start businesses for themselves, or to foreign companies, where so-called “things” were happening, and other people appeared in the pedagogic corps… The level of students then logically corresponded to the level of teachers. When I lectured them, there were a hundred students in the hall at the beginning, five at the end. I learned from a colleague that they only came there for the so-called “attendance mark”, so that their attendance quota would be met. It was almost impossible to somehow motivate them.
Is it really possible to generalize like that?
Of course not. Even then, there were departments where teachers, and therefore students, were interested in making progress. After the lectures, I often received feedback such as “today we learned more in those four hours than in the entire period of study”. I am very happy that times are changing, and now it is a pleasure to work with students and teachers.
What has changed?
Almost everything! In my opinion, partnerships with companies that belong among European and world leaders bring enormous progress to schools. Students thereby have access to truly progressive technologies, they can touch them, develop them, use them. In addition, grant money can be obtained for projects. Universities are finally getting a different dimension. I think the wheels are turning in the right direction now.
When do you think there will be enough dynamic simulation experts on the market?
I believe that in maybe five or six years there will be enough skilled university graduates so that those companies that need specialists to work with predictive simulations will have somewhere to go. It’s high time to pay attention to digital twins. Those who want to survive in these fast times don’t have many other options.