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Japan "Running Out of Engineers"
bfwebster writes "A story in the New York Times reports that Japan, a country that rebuilt itself as a technological power after World War II, now faces an increasing shortage of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. Says the article: 'By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short almost half a million engineers.' The article goes on to point out that the overall trend of waning interest in science and technology has been going on for 'almost two decades' and that the shortage is made worse by the traditional reluctance of Japanese companies to hire and use foreign workers. The US has had a similar trend for quite some time: 'Undergraduate engineering enrollment declined through most of the 1980s and 1990s, rose from 2000 through 2003, and declined slightly in recent years.'"
I heard about the "lack of engineers" a lot in the late 1980's. I went to engineering school and found out schools were turning out engineers like a puppy mill. We graduated in a recession. Looking back, the shortage hype appears to have been "engineered" by educational institutions and sponsoring companies heavily advertising in the media. Don't fall for it, unless you make plans to settle for low paying jobs just to find something interesting.
Funny because the last I heard, Japanese universities were going to have to start enrolling foreign students otherwise they would stop certain classes due to lack of students. On top of that with the aging population, Japan is on its way to being a first world country to have a higher death rate than birth rate. Overcrowding won't be an issue. http://www.kairos-inc.com/Investing/IB%20on%20Japan.7.16.pdf (projected information) http://www.worldpress.org/profiles/japan.cfm (current since 2001) To suggest that the natives will starve as well is an over exaggeration, there is plenty of food and as with anything in life, people will adapt.
Jonathanjk.com
The process of getting an engineering visa in Japan is absurdly complex. I've personally gone through the interview process and gotten 3 different job offers as a network engineer at Japanese companies earlier this year, only to be turned down flat at the visa office because my current visa wasn't of the correct variety. To get the requisite engineering visa:
1)You need to have graduated in engineering from a 4-year university somewhere, preferably somewhere famous
2)You need no less than 10 years of experience in the field.
3)You have to pass some funky test that the visa office administers.
4)The guy in the visa office who approves all the visas is subject to mood swings, and will approve or reject a given application based on a) the position of the moon the previous night and b) whether there was any Pocari Sweat left in the vending machine at lunch time, among other things.
You won't even get close to 4) unless you clear 1~3).
This "shortage of foreign workers" is artificially imposed at a far-higher level than what is implied in the article.
http://www.slideshare.net/linhares/outline-of-globalization-course-at-fgvebape Check out slide 9, which compares the explosion of engineering degrees in China, India (& to a certain extent the EU) to the US and Japan. I use it on my classes, and people think it must be bogus. Data from Morgan Stanley, by the way.
I work as an outsourcer. Only thing why my company employs 20 people with university degree is bad management at our clients. They don't want to design things, they don't want even to define meaningful specs. That way, we have to have highly trained people, just in order to make everything extremely fast, since our people have to do everything by trial and mistake, hoping that it would be something that will please the client. With good management, we could have 1/4 of people with university education, other people could be less trained people guided by educated ones.
But that would require: someone technically educated in our client company to really do the analysis (i.e. "system analyst") and willingness to pay that person some real money. It is much more simple to hire dozen of engineers in Serbia, to feed them with minimal amount of information and to wait if something will eventually appear as a usable product.
No sig today.
Every college that has a business program has a course offered call "Management" or "Management of Organizations" or something to that effect.
Honestly, I'm not convinced you ever even went to college if you have never heard of a course in management.
University of Washington: school of business administration
http://www.washington.edu/students/crscat/ba.html
Binghamton University: School of Management
http://som.binghamton.edu/
University of GA: Department of Management
http://www.terry.uga.edu/management/
University of Virginia: McIntire School of Commerce Managent Program
http://www.commerce.virginia.edu/academic_programs/undergraduate/management.html
University of Florida: Management Depratment
http://www.cba.ufl.edu/mang/
UNC Charlotte: BS in Business Administration
http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/bachelor-science-business-administration-bsba-degree-courses-major.shtml
The list can go on and on. I would say nearly every college in the US has at least one course in management. Nearly every 4 year public college in the US has an undergraduate degree in management or business administration.
On a degree, you find that you have to pay for very expensive text books (you never thought books could be that expensive)
Is that really a major expense? I did a 4-year engineering degree and only bought textbooks for the courses where I didn't go to enough of the lectures, otherwise all you needed was the lecture notes.
Convert it to Romaji: furii-taimaazu ... furiitaimaazu ... furiita-imazu ... furiita
Got it?
By the way, your description is neither satire nor exaggeration. The security side of it is no longer reality, but other than that, you're better than 90% accurate.
I'm one of those who have bailed.
I've seen some companies that have tried to do the right thing by their engineers, but they just get eaten by the next wave of college grads at the next startup willing to burn themselves out for the mirage of a permanent posh position. Only to get their company killed by the wave after next, two years down the road, about the time they've all hit the wall and simply can't compete any more. Those who stay in the industry go into management or go back after taking a break as free-timers to recuperate (never getting married), or do something equally self-destructive.
I place the blame squarely on Microsfot for setting the role model: selling broken dreams.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
New Labour didn't help things either - parents of children with behavour problems demanded that their children be sent to mainstream schools in order to avoid the stigma of being sent to "special schools". Teachers have to deal with students who will constantly hit other students or hide under their desk the minute there is a loud noise. Teaching Assistants were introduced, but that was seen as a tn attempt to recruit teachers on a reduced salary.
Then there was also the attempt to stop schools from telling off, expelling or suspending disruptive students as this would be a violation of their fundamental human rights. Then there was the requirement that schools should provide breakfast to students who don't have time to have breakfast in the morning.
Exam systems have been tinkered with. Previous governments introduced the concept of Foundation, Standard and Credit 'O' Grades so that everyone could say that they got an 'A' in their subject. Then there was switch to using coursework for assessment rather than exams, and the merger of Biology/Chemistry/Physics into General Science or the removal of various topics from Mathematics (permnutations and combinations, trigonometric equations and Physics.
As the same time, providing sanctuary to large numbers of asylum seekers who couldn't speak English as a first language, overloaded schools in London, which forced the government to "share the burden" across cities all across the UK. The side-effect of this was that the local parents pulled their children out of the popular state schools and send them to private schools instead. Now, the state schools are being forced to close due to lack of demand.
Then if there is a fight between students, the teachers can't intervene for fear of being injured, or being accused of being a pedophile for touching one of the students.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads