Engineering (esp. electronic) is out of fashion with the current generation coming through higher education, and I think most of it is down to the industry being seen as magic in the high school period.

At the time I came through, to use high technology you needed to understand it to some level. Now, you don’t need to know anything. Interviewing students for internships now, you find that people are only getting exposed to the basics of digital electronics at university and suddenly this whole world of opportunities appears in front of them. This is after they are already on the course though. We’re missing out on so many potential engineers who go do different things because they have zero concept of how anything works, and what they might be able to do in the industry.

There’s no reason a 12yo can’t build simple digital logic circuits except that they’re not exposed to it.