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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.
The problem now is not U.S. Engineers being undercounted, it's about them being underwaged by rising countries like China and India.
And let's not be fooled by this per-million figures.
The friendly article stated:
USA: 225,925
India: 215,000
China: 644,106
How's that making USA produced more engineering graduates? And more importantly, what's the point of producing more of a product when nobody buys from you? This kind of self-comforting is poisonous!
If anything, this huge amount of graduating engineers every year is what caused the problems in the first place.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Well, I hope this ISN'T true. My son is entering an engineering school next fall, and a glut of engineers can only make him less marketable. This basically says his chances of repaying his student loans just got 3 times worse!
TFA also says, The report's findings are meant to clear up misinformation about U.S. engineers and the U.S. education system, Mr. Wadhwa said. It's also intended to inspire more young Americans to take up engineering as a profession, he added.
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.
John
This is what happens when you let MBAs do the counting...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
If only they counted by weight, U.S. Engineers will be properly represented.
Technology Specialists, not engineers. I am not an engineer, but have been in the tech field for 25 years. I think the US probably has more tech-adept per capita than the other countries.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Most everyone of my friends is a studying to be an engineer. I think the reality is that we are graduating its just taking longer then 4 years these days. I know its taking some people up to 6-7 years in a 4 year program to actually graduate. Most of this has to do with horrible advisors in my opinion. They don't give or offer much direction in 4 year state schools. Instead students are left to figure it out on their own and that means they don't always pick exactly what gets them out of there the fastest. Keep in mind people are switching majors a lot more these days too.
However I have noticed that the graduate times for students at private universities in the US is less then state schools. My honest opinion is that the state governments have underfunded certain parts of our public universities but not everything. Its understandable cause they needed money for something else right now that we can't afford. Thats one of the reasons why I transfered to a private university, I feel the education I am getting right now is a more expensive but the quality is a lot higher.
If you don't believe me, ask at any McDonald's.
As a caucasian American in my major (EE), I have always been in a minority. I'd estimate that between 60-75% of the students in my classes are students from outside the country: India, China, Indonesia, etc. Does this study even consider taking that into account? Glancing it over briefly, it sure doesn't seem so.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
thats not even real engineering!@
/B.S. in E.E.
//M.S. in Comp Sci
///yep, I'm a S.W. Eng, baby!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Crow T. Trollbot
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.
Really, does this matter? IMHO, society puts too much focus on education level and not enough on freedom and independent thinking.
For example, is used to be that people could run successfull businesses without a high school degree, but then the government took away some economic freedoms, and when people had troubble making it - they said that's because you should have a highschool education.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said both you and your spouse should work.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should go into debt to buy a home and a car.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should put your retirement money into tax free IRA's and sighn up for tax free employer sponsered health plans.
Then they took away some more economic freedoms and people had troubble making it, so they said well you should get a college education and go into debt to pay for it.
So, IMHO, while education is important, society is pushing it as an end in itself when all it really is - is a hoop that distracts us from what really matters. Freedom is an end in itself, rationality is an end in itself, education is a consequence of these not an ends.
I graduated with a an engineering and computer science degree. Since then I've been a salesman, writer, mechanic, a music producer, a volunteer counseller for homeless vets, and now I am considering retraining as a plumber. There's a reason for this and it's simple psychology really, IT jobs are the most thankless and stressful in existence. Reading the ealier post on Top 10 Admin Truths made me sweat with bad memories. Almost all the time you are working for dumbasses who don't understand anything, don't know what they want, but want you to fix it right now. They think that because you are a techie you must be some kind of minion who sorts out all their problems while they make all the money and treat you like shit. So called 'managers' who fail to manage, PHBs with disgusting attitute problems, dotcom maniacs who think they can just throw up a server and it will print money for them, there seems no end to the fakes and blaggers occupying the top ranks of IT. My my own admission I have an 'attitude problem'. The problem is that I'm happy with my attitude not to be taken for granted by idiots. It's a shame because computing could be such a challenging, stress free and worthwhile occupation, but I've had to look elsewhere for job satisfaction. The problem is not a shortage of skilled engineers, it's a shortage of decent employers.
The Red Herring article fails to link to its source. Ironically the actual study criticizes articles like these for failing to identify their sources. So here is the study itself. Enjoy.
If you want a big salary, in today's market driven world, you need to think big. You're not an engineer, you're a technical plan implementor --or some other such balderdash. That's the problem with job titles where I work. If you want better pay, you have to stop calling yourself an Engineer, even if that's what you do. So they have engineering managers, control system specialists, Antenna site managers, and so forth. These are all jobs which require an engineering background.
So, when someone goes to our company to count the number of Engineering positions, we don't have many. But we do have lots of people with engineering educations and engineering backgrounds. Now the managers want to know how many engineers they have. They have already recast most of us in to different titles. So the count the few who still work under the old titles, and GASP! they don't know where all the engineers have gone.
This is why they write idiots guides to management, but not idiots guides to electrical engineering.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
On the other hand, as an aerospace engineering graduate who finished last year after only four years and had a blast doing newspaper, student government, and a wealth of other activities, it depends on where you go - go to a tech school, and it's four years easy (plus a minor in Materials Engineering for my Tech Elecs). Two semesters at 15 hours, two at 18, and the rest 16-17. If you want to be an engineer, go to a school with an engineering curriculum, not a general curriculum with engineering tacked on top. Most of my friends finished in four, or took 4+ or 5 to get two degrees. It's not impossible, you just have to choose the right school.
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
Another question: Who cares?
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It turns out all you need to do to fool the media (and Congress, which gets its information from the media) is turn out a scientific-looking study showing a large gap between the number of graduates and the projected need. The vast majority of reporters and editors have no math skills whatsoever (remember, these guys are the journalism majors for college), so they don't have any way to evaluate the garbage churned out in advocacy research.
So they raise the H1 cap. That way the high-tech companies in the US have a way to exert downward pressure on engineering wages. And all for the price of a couple of bogus "studies".
So am I surprised US schools are turning out lots more engineers than we've been led to believe? Nah, not really.
somebody is dragging a red herring across the trail here. both times I was in college, there were a tubload of foreign nationals studying for bachelors and advanced degrees in the US.
don't go counting total grads and equating that to all-US grads. red herring, indeed, masking the scent.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Second, the IT degrees from many universities are offered by the business college rather than the engineering college.
I suspect that if you only counted four year comp-sci and engineering degrees that the numbers would be far closer to the 70k number provided by the National Acadamies. IMO, the study ought to have done a better breakdown. I'm also curious as to why postgraduate work wasn't included.
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
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
So does it make any difference if an American engineer who made many contributions to the success of the company is put out of a job so that the profitable American company can replace him/her with a cheaper and less experienced Chinese engineer and thereby redirect even more profit into the CEOs compensation? That is what it is about. There are little or no cost savings being passed on to the customers. The cost goes down while the price remains the same. The added profit goes somewhere, and it is not benefitting the long-term health of industry in this country or the country in general.
In America an engineer has to be 80% politician!
I'm I the only engineer here who finds working for their company is 80% political and 20% engineering? I've learned so much about lying and trickery I'm considering running for office.
Why do you think that's exclusive to engineering? Every job is like that. Politics (as in lying and trickery, not as in political philosophy) is the natural result of human relationships. You need to know how to wield it to do anything.
As an EE engineer with graduate degrees in Physics and CS, let me tell you this - you can apply science anywhere.
You can apply science and engineering principles in any domain. Just how hard is it to diversify into another related area? What's keeping people away is not the difficulty but the ineptitude to be creative and explore other domains.
Work for the humanities, write a graphics program for archaeologists (someone I know does this for a living after he lost a graphics programming job at a game company). Hell, go back to school and get yourself a graduate degree. Do research. Start your own company.
If all you want is to do your engineering job, then you deserve what you get. Sometimes, you need to be able to do things you weren't taught to do. Improvise and move ahead, or die out - I do not mean to sound callous, but it is the truth. It always has been, and just because folks here aren't ready to admit it does not make it not so.