Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Engineers Undercounted
mcho writes "Red Herring reports that 'The United States graduates far more engineers annually than typically reported in the press, a study said Monday, while the number of engineering graduates in India and China, long considered threats to the U.S.' status as a technological superpower, may be overstated ... the data implies that per every 1 million citizens, the United States is producing more technology specialists than China and India.' Are U.S. Engineers undercounted?" We've reported on the trend of U.S. students leaving the field previously.
I don't see how telling someone that he or she's got three times the expected competition is supposed to be an incentive or an inspiration.
I've never understood this "number counting" either. Who cares how many people of X profession we have? As long as the government doesn't over-regulate the production of a profession (as is evident with doctors), there will be enough people to do the job.
It is important for young people to know how much profession X pays, and what the unemployment rate is. For example, electrical engineering seems to have been going through a time of less employment recently (probably brought on by increasing ease of automated design of digital circuits, use of FPGAs and programmable DSP chips, killing the analog design field).
I think every high school student should have to designate a desired career, and then do some role-playing based on their likely financial outcomes. "You want to be an actor. Roll a die. Only 1% of actors can live on acting, you rolled a 23, so now you are a waiter barely making the poverty line, growing older and sadder every day..."
This is my little anecdotal story.
Having 2 engineering roomates, I was friends with a qute few engineers in college. We all graduated around 1997, give or take a year or two.
Out of 20 that I'm still in contact with, I'd say that 6 are still engineers today. Some have moved up to management or higher and, by their own admission, don't do any engineering work. The rest have moved on to other jobs completely.
Per capita:
USA: 725 per million
India: 199 per million
China: 493 per million
In other words: fun with statistics!
built out? I know it's pulling at obvious strings, but does New Orleans mean anything to you? Built-out == old and crumbling in a great many cases. how about today's apartment building collapse in new jersey? civil engineers are needed in droves to keep people alive (that's totally conjecture, but you know what i mean)
my housemate, for example, is a CE who's field is earthquake engineering... here in CA that's a pretty important field! and as for chemical engineers? i don't know about you, but i'm not going to buy a car until it runs on something other than petrolium products. our future as a society is entirely in the hands of next year's civil, mechanical, and engineering graduates
Industry trade groups periodically whine about shortages of engineers, scientists and programmers. I graduated from engineering school 25 years ago and every few years they trot out the same old dog-earred dire projections. And yet, those of us who work as engineers, programmers and scientists never see these shortages materialize. Their magazine articles are plants used by their lobbyists to justify the need for increases in work visa quotas to the politicians they court.
The majority of those who graduate from engineering schools do very little or no actual engineering work. That's because there ain't enough engineering work to go around. It's been like that since I got out of school and older engineers told me that was their experience as well. Engineering schools seem to still be fighting the cold war. The old timers told me engineering schools went into high gear after the Russians launched Sputnik and only now are enrollments beginning to decline. Only after a 5+ year tight engineering job market are some of the prospective engineering students reevaluating their choice.
It's been a real challenge to stay employed in technically stimulating work. Somehow I've done it but my circumstances have been better than those of many engineers burdened with more intense family obligations. I've worked hard and I've been lucky. I'll stick with it because I'm pushing 50 and it's the best option I have. But through no fault of my own, I may be forced out of technical work before I reach 65. If and when that happens, I will no longer be counted as an unemployed engineer in the statistics should I accept a job doing something else. Instead, I will be counted as an employed hardware store stock clerk or whatever. One more engineer will have disappeared into the employment statistics to be counted no more and the industry trade groups will continue to whine about shortages.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor