Talent and Skills Dundee
Dundee has one of the UK’s highest student population ratios providing a steady flow of talented graduates.
Dundee is within an hour’s journey time of 90% of the population of Scotland and the region is home to over 50,000 students. The city offers access to great talent and is pro-actively engaging with the challenges of developing industry ready skills. With strengths in games, digital, design, cyber security, biotech and more, it is above all people who make Dundee a special place to live and work and offer the creative, and tech skills that are enabling the future for almost every sector.
Dundee and the wider region grow and develop talent and skills through three globally recognised universities, Abertay, Dundee and St. Andrews and three colleges all within a 14 mile radius.
Digital Dundee is collaborating with industry, academia and the third sector to address the digital skills gap. We are working with regional and national experts so that initiatives can be designed and delivered to support our education system and empower it to produce the next generation of digital talent.
Key industry players taking a lead on skills include Embark, NCR and Waracle.
Tay Cities Deal is seeing investment of over £20 million in a regional skills and employability development programme including Digital. This will also “focus on closing the opportunity and employment gaps for our most disadvantaged sections of society, as well as those experiencing barriers to training and employment”.
Find our more at Tay Cities Deal.
The most recent UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessed the University of Dundee to be "Excellent" in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and 76% of research rated was `world-leading’ or `internationally renowned’. It incorporates Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, one of the UK’s top art and design schools.
Abertay University is a recognised centre of digital design, cyber security and computer games innovation and launched the world’s first computer games degrees in 1997. It has since become the UK’s first ever Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education and is ranked as Europe’s leading games school by the Princeton Review, offering a range of dedicated degrees.
Dundee & Angus College is one of Scotland’s largest further education providers and is committed to building skills in ‘STEM’ education – science, technology, engineering and maths.
Abertay recently launched a new £5.5m Emergent Technology Centre for video games and cyber security. It includes studios for experimental games design, hacking projects and digital arts research. There is also a Usability Lab kitted with eye-tracking equipment, specialist cameras and an observation room, and an XR (extended reality) Lab for experimentation with room-scale virtual reality, motion tracking and multi-user augmented reality and mixed reality projects.
Led by Abertay, Dundee was chosen as one of only nine creative clusters for InGAME (Innovation in Games and Media Enterprise) as part of the UK Government Industrial Strategy for creative industries. InGAME establishes a creative research and development centre around the experience and expertise held in the Dundee Games Cluster. Its mission is to drive products, service and experience innovation across the Dundee games sector and act as model for UK-wide games sector innovation.