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Obama: 'We Don't Have Enough Engineers'
dcblogs writes "President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. In 2009, the US produced 126,194 engineering graduates for bachelor's and master's degrees and for Ph.D.s. The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%. 'We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still don't have enough engineers,' said Obama. He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates."
REGULATE WALLSTREET. You'll get JFK'd in the process but that's where they're all going...
Make it so Law and Finance is not the easiest place to make money and you will see more engineers.
Why would you want to be an engineer? Seriously why, when you could do manual labour, be an electrician, cementer, crane driver, or work in a number of other trades? The other trades pay more, give you better conditions, and you don't need to go work for some mining company in the middle of no where to earn a wage.
I know electricians who did their trade after their EE degree for this reason. Sure you can make a mint as an engineer but is it worth it having to live in a remote country town in order to do so?
Or why not become a "financial engineer". You get to use your brain, you get paid massive bonuses for creating zero wealth, and you don't get treated as a second class citizen.
China or Germany don't have this problem. They raise their engineers onto pedestals bigger than those the Americans would reserve for bankers.
Why would you want to be an engineer?
Overexploited, unrespected, underpaid and with the constant threat of offshoring? Moved on.
Given about half of them work for the defense, and their work is hidden from society, ... all you have to do is get rid of half of them and your sold. ...
Next problem
Every politician just seems to be quoting from some giant bumper book of political myopic facts. I still think we should vote on policies not politicians
"President Obama wants to boost engineering graduation rates by 10,000 a year. (...) The US had just over 1.9 million engineers in 2010. The unemployment rate in 2010 for all engineers was 4.5%." In other words, the US has a total of 85,500 unemployed engineers, but needs to produce an additional 10,000 per year?
Don't worry. Obama can probably arrange to have 10,000 engineering degrees printed faster than Ben Bernanke can get a billion delivered from the Treasury.
...and really doesn't have a clue what anybody actually needs.
noone is a moron to work their asses over their entire life studying hard and delicate things to whore their lives off to fat asses sucking off the profits on top of their heads.
you either start paying percentages to engineers, or fat asses will have to descend from their high throne in directors' executives' rooms and start doing the engineering themselves.
Read radical news here
Well that's the comments I've heard from a lot of prospective Enginners. so, they take the easy way out and do Media or Business Studies.
Yes the Science stuff can be hard. So? Life can be hard!
Some points:-
-Schools are more concerned with getting everone to pass regardless of quality.
-Teaching Engineering at all costs a heck of a lot more than Accountancy or Law or some other 'soft' subject.
To be a successful Engineer takes a lot of dedication. It took me 7 years after leaving school to get my BS in Control Engineering.
If the unemployment rate for US engineers is 4.5%, and Obama says the US needs more engineers, does this mean 4.5% of US engineers are not employable? 4.5% of 1.9 million is 85,500... that's over 8 years of his desired number of graduates...
Ok, I suppose the alternative suggestion is that most of them are the wrong type of engineer and they need retraining... but still made me smile...
In the old days you would set the standards high so that not too many entered per year and diluted the earning pool.
At some point something happened to the good wages and nothing happened to the graduation numbers.
Now the trick seems to be make more cheap engineers. They know "responsibility" is very personal in their field.
Why would anyone want to be an engineer in the US? The infrastructure is a mess and every project you sign off on legally risky long term for a lower wage.
If the US wants more very skilled people, start paying them again. But that would show the cracks in the currency.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
den obama can call on me to clean up all this shit he be doin all over da place
That'll solve it.
(Idiots).
I'm an engineer, not in the US, why I'm not doing engineering work is that there are few career prospects and the pay sucks.
Ain't no future in it. No future in western economies either - but I'm not feather bedding the whole economy any more at least.
FTFA... "...the U.S. graduates more visual arts and performing arts majors than engineers. It also noted that the U.S. ranks 27th among developed nations in the proportion of college students receiving undergraduate degrees in science and engineering." It strikes me that this stems from the philosophy that children in the US are encouraged to pursue 'whatever you enjoy most' under the misconception that is the career they will be best suited to and thus make them happiest. In other countries this doesn't happen. Parents push their kids towards the careers that pay well and are likely to ensure them a happy future. Later in life the kids thank their parent for this. How many penniless actors are there in the US that wish they'd chosen another career? Sure, this philosophy works fine if you actually have won the lottery or have rich parents, but what do kids really know about making these decisions? You can say that an 18 yr old is perfectly mature enough to make up their own mind, but in reality the decision made much earlier in life. It doesn't happen often that a teenager, who has spent their whole childhood indulging in the arts, suddenly realizes he/she has made a mistake and then switches to a career in engineering.
One reason many people avoid that field. Difficult to study, difficult to get good at and then some nil-whit of a manager with an MBA tells you what to do and to add insult to injury earns more than you do. No surprise at all there are too few. And we will get fewer.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
First is that unemployment is higher now for everyone than normal. Planning ahead one would expect it to come back down, which would mean far less unemployment than what we have now. Total unemployment (measured in terms of U3) in the US is about 8.7% currently. If you look back on things somewhere around 5% is more normal (4.5-6.5% ish range). That means that if it returns to normal, which it likely will you can expect unemployment of engineers to be down to 1-2%, maybe less, hence the need for more.
Also you have to understand that unemployment as normally measured, using the U3 number, will basically never be zero. Reason is it includes anyone who isn't actively working right now, but has made some active effort to look for a job in the last 4 weeks. So that means someone gets tired of their job and quits, but is out looking for one they like better, they are unemployed according to U3. That happens even in great times with lots of employment. Same deal with someone who was working on a contract and that is up, and is now looking for another one. Doesn't matter if the economy is great and they'll get work in a hurry, they are still unemployed by the U3 definition. The only unemployment measure you can ever see at or near zero is U1 (people with no job for longer than 15 weeks) and even that is rare. Some unemployment is just how things tend to work. Doesn't mean it is the same people, forever unemployable, just that there is turnover and movement.
Finally you have to understand that in some technical fields, like engineering, there will be people who are or become unemployable because they lack the skills needed, even if they have the desire. That someone went to school and managed to cram their way through an engineering degree doesn't mean they necessarily have the real world skills to be a good engineer. Likewise, the field evolves and someone who was once good, but refuses to adapt, could be unemployable as an engineer.
So you can't look at it in the simplistic sense of "Until no engineers are unemployed we don't need more engineers." Instead you need to consider current conditions, future demand, changes to future conditions and so on and decide if more will be needed. Goes double since an engineer is not made in a day. Even if you assume all that is needed is a undergraduate degree that is 4 years right there. Means if you think you'll need more engineers in 4 years, you'd better start on it now.
At this point, the only thing that can subvert the endless homo sapien stagnant circle-jerk is the singularity. More engineers would make it more likely to happen, ergo the status quo has no interest in such an occurrence...
I had something like a 2,000 word reply for this article, but on second thought I decided better. Shorter: Hahahahahahahahaha of course not, asshole, and if you don't know why then you shouldn't be the fucking president.
Nobody else would be any better as President IMO, and that in large part is why America is doomed.
nc
"The other thing that happened," the president claimed in an NBC "Today Show" interview Tuesday, "is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM. You don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."
This appears to be a simplistic approach to economics, ignoring the IT staff supporting the ATM, the software programmers that program the ATM, the manufacturing that creates the ATM, etc.
The 'do whatever you enjoy most' philosophy isn't at fault, what makes it ineffective is that sciences are often badly taught and so aren't enjoyed. If the sciences and engineering were better taught then they would be what more people enjoy the most and it would work much better.
I've been holding onto my hope all this time with regards to Obama. Obama made grand promises. When he started, it looked like he was going to make some serious changes. From the outside, it looked like he was faced with massive resistance to making serious change. But now with this "we need more engineers" crap? I'm sold that he just doesn't understand what has been happening.
The rewards are going too far to the top for anything to "trickle down" and there is no incentive to not send work, technology or just about everything overseas. The nation's wealth is running away because there is less being done to "generate wealth" in the nation.
Let's do another "car analogy!" Obama's approach is like saying "we need to sell more cars! Let's get more people into the car manufacturing field of work and then we will have more cars to sell!" That's just not how it works!
why would he regulate those who make up his staff? We don't have President Main Street, we have President Wall Street. For all the wearing of sackcloth and anguish over GWB about his corporate ties people totally ignore the President Goldman Sachs. Oh sure he loves to lash out at "Big Business" but they make so many back door deals they do a good job of protecting those who support their campaign coffers.
You want engineers, fine, make it cool then. We spend less on NASA than we lose to the deficit in a week (okay, it might be a few days more). We have schools built around the best interest of teachers and administrators. Any attempt to hold them accountable comes back with claims of lack of money; not true; or teaching to the test. If test scores of students at a school do not give a clear indication of problems then what would? Take back education from the politicians and their supporters and then you might have more kids doing well enough in school and seeing a chance of success.
Wall Street does not stop us from having engineers. Having a society based on laziness and celebrating reality TV stars does. We have shows about knocked up teen agers, fake tan trolls, sleazy housewives, and hate spewing misogynistic rappers. The only serious shows are the countless CSI ripoffs where they solve the crime in the last ten minutes. I am not saying we need a reality TV show about engineers; after all we want new ones; but we don't even portray them in television so kids rarely have exposure to what those skills are. Even subtle things like having a TV dad being an engineer; we never have to see his job he just has to be cool; would go a long way.
So, you want more Engineers Mr. President
I suggest
1) Get your Congressmen hacks off the backs of for profit colleges, many are very good
2) Get the deficit under control, stop the spending, it will change the outlook of the country
3) Fund areas of science which will make people want to be engineers. We need something real, not rail. That means a Manhattan/Apollo scale project (just don't go damn the costs like they did) that will suck up these engineers and better the country. Can I suggest safe nuclear power combined with some renewable sources? We certainly have the tech for the former and need to develop the later else hand the country over to China
4) Make the focus of schools be the students, then the parents, then teachers, and finally anyone else. Hold teachers accountable, the good ones want it.
5) Did I mention the deficit? The doom and gloom hanging over people's heads when they see such staggering numbers and what happens in the world makes them lose focus. Be a President for once, stop being a politician.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Most of them quit after a spy saps their hard work for the thousandth time.
It's as though tanking the economy, giving all the government's money to corporations and letting public education go to shit somehow causes less people to afford college, and acts as a disincentive to study anything but business for those who do. Who'd have thought it.
Translation: we, the financial oligarchs who pull the strings of this great nation, need more plumbers to ensure that our toilets don't clog up. Toilets have become very complex, and the Chinese are producing 10 times as many plumbers as we are. We simply must have more plumbers!
I disagree.
What makes you think that sciences are any more badly taught than say English or Art?
And who's to say it is the biggest factor in effecting career choices?
I say you parents have a much bigger influence.
We have enough engineers. Programmers, too. Really good ones.
The problem is that US companies tend not to hire (or retain) them if they aren't entry level; they'll outsource or hire fresh-from-the-classroom types in order to keep costs down, because the US corporate outlook rarely goes further than the upcoming quarterly report. If they can outsource the majority of the process, they will. For instance, (just one example of many) Apple manufactures in China. That's a *lot* of engineering jobs, tech jobs, assembly jobs, procurement jobs, etc. Looking at it one way, they have to -- because otherwise they wouldn't be competitive. But if anything sold here had to be made here, then the playing field is level again.
Older engineers cost too much: Healthcare, experience, it all comes together for a higher cost, and no one wants that on the quarterly report. Younger types, speaking generally, can't cut the tough jobs, though, and that's why we have very little high end engineering and programming capacity in use within our borders. And a rush of newly minted engineers and/or programmers won't help -- we'll just get more half-baked ideas like Apple's recent "full screen feature", basically an idiotic and functionally bereft return to the modal operations of 25 years ago. (Apple user here, see things through Apple flavored eyes.)
I think we need a period where products sold in the USA have to be 100% made in the USA, from the first stroke of the pen to the last decal on the front panel. Otherwise, this illusory period of "production" of IP will collapse with the illusion of protection our IP laws are (just barely) shoring up; other countries don't give the south end of a northbound rat for our IP laws. By pulling the entire product process within our borders, we create a level playing field for our manufacturing economy to restart. Then we could see the large, competent pool of engineers and programmers we already *have* rehired.
And we have to make damn sure that unions don't get a toehold again; they were another large factor in destroying our manufacturing economy: If the worker is not being paid enough, then they need to up their skill set and change their worth, either at their current job or at a new job. Instead of trying to blackmail their employer. The economy and cost of living changes; consequently the worker needs to change too. Their job doesn't magically become worth more because bread costs more. If they don't change, that's not the employer's fault.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm actually having the opposite problem, was encouraged and went into a well paying technical field where I am excelling professionally, but am dreadfully bored every hour of the work day. I'd love to transition to a career where my passion is (Illustration), but I am suffering form the golden handcuffs my employer has placed on me...Some day...
I'm shocked! Only 1 engineer per 150 people? How great the world would be if there would only be 10% more engineers. It would be star trek all over the place...
Shitty pay and you'll be sued over some bullshit patent..
The only way to succeed in america is to be a lawyer or financial guy. Dont listen to this asshole, he wants every american to fail.
I disagree.
good parents encourage kids to do a variety of things in their life, and over time it becomes much more clear what really makes a person happy. Good parents encourage kids to pursue careers that fit their personal interests best.
pushing kids into certain careers is actually happening in every country on this planet and very often ends quite bad for the person. pushing him however to finish certain degrees of school is really helpful.
You are only thankful, if your parents saw what really fitted your personality. Going after "what pays good" is the stupidest pursue of career. Also such parents cause a lot of misery in our world.
Work is about fullfillment.Not about money.
Do we really need to listen to this kind of dribble? Look at all the recent break-ins at Citigroup, Sony, etc. No one gives a flying crap about proper engineering or the end result - and the Obama and previous administrations have enabled this by not throwing the justice department at these overstuffed elephants. So we have a culture which continually rewards profit-seeking behavior and never enforces voters, or consumers, rights. All anyone cares about is lawsuits and they have already those down pat - argue in court for 20 years and by then your net loss is deflated to nothing.
If Obama administration wants change his team needs to start enforcing good engineering and proper thought instead of allowing this country to fall to the bottomless pit of wealth-seeking stupidity and irresponsibility.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
(btw. most pennyless actors who just wanted attention have quite big parents issues)
more people would be scientists and engineers if they didn't have to worry about whether they had a job next week
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_income
solution (applies to USA only, don't know situations in other countries):
1. end all income, sales and payroll taxes -- no matter how they are structured they end up being regressive
2. tax all money leaving the country at a rate of about 20-30% (this will eliminate all offshore tax loopholes)
3. institute a national property and wealth tax on all real property and other holdings
reasons this solution works:
1. the tax burden is shifted from labor to capital
2. politicians have less power because the wealth itself is taxed rather than specific activities
3. it is fundamentally more fair because the people who benefit the most are the ones funding government
4. size of government would be tied to the size of the economy rather than the pie in the sky whims of the political class
and the reason it will never be implemented is because there is too much power and privilege defending the status quo
It's a free market. The simple solution to the "engineering shortage" is to pay more. When graduates can look forward to $250k/year salaries instead of $100/year salaries, you'd be surprised how many people would choose engineering. Right now, you have to become a doctor or lawyer to make that kind of money, so many people do.
Of course, government can't directly regulate what companies pay... but indirectly, it can: after all, the reason doctors and lawyers make so much money is because of the laws that govern their profession.
I think Obama is referring to TeamFortress 2.
High school juniors are more likely to be rewarded with scholarships with strong verbal skills and moderate math skills and not vice versa. Double the verbal, add the math for your score. 80 math + 40 verbal = 40 math + 60 verbal. Hmmm.
If your chances to get sued when actually *creating* something are so much higher than when just redistributing wealth (or even better: sueing someone else), you get what you asked for: A nation of bankers and lawyers.
It's no coincidence that most famous engineers of the 19th century (like Brunell) were opposed to patents; so start by abolishing those.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates.
Because of course that is exactly what a hard-core fascist socialist dictator liberal atheist muslim anarchist monarch would do! Go President Lawnchair!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Vox Day is something of a libertarian heretic in noting that the fundamental case for "free trade" is based on a very bad economic model. In fact, when Ricardo made his case for free trade he had to exclude a whole large swath of possible outcomes to make the case positively. Some of those have come true. For example, Ricardo glossed over the issue that if capital were to become mobile between countries, comparative advantage would cease. That is precisely what is happening with NAFTA and our relationship with China; American capital has moved overseas so that "American production" is actually done overseas, giving at least a partial "comparative advantage" to China and Mexico in products that we used to have over them.
The simple solution is to repeal NAFTA and restore our tariffs. "Protectionism" is only an ugly word until you realize that protectionism was actually one of the two pillars of the US economy in the 19th century (the gold standard being the other) and the growth we saw in the 19th century was substantially higher than what we saw in the 20th century. Even the value of the dollar itself went up 50% between 1800 and 1900.
Until we take away the ability of American companies to do production for our domestic markets overseas, none of this will change. Libertarians may find that "immoral," but then there a whole lot of things about doctrinaire libertarianism such as the radical individualism that eschews innate responsibilities that plenty of others (left and right alike) find immoral.
We don't have jobs for the Engineers we already have, many myself included can not find a job in our fields.
Why go to school to be come an Engineer when you will not have a job waiting for you?
We need to create Job's for the Engineers, stop importing Engineer for jobs or having them move over seas.
Fix out trade agreements so we are not competing against slave labor.....
Fix the hole in our borders....
'We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations, but we still don't have enough engineers,' said Obama.
What a load of crap.
What's the point of producing more engineers if we don't develop a well-trained blue-colllar workforce and a manufacturing industry for them to work on it? How's the economy going to absorb them if it cannot absorb its unemployed blue collar guys?
We are losing the engineering battle not for lack of engineers, but for lack of competitive manufacturing capabilities (and incentives to have a manufacturing industry) in American soil.
He's counting on the private sector to help expand the number of graduates.
The same companies that are willing to move jobs overseas (or are pushed to do so because their competitors do)? The US government must provide incentives to companies to retain engineering and manufacturing jobs here (and penalties for those that do not.) China, Japan and India have measures to protect their local economies. We do not. And in fact, the MBA mantra is to not do it at all.
Worry about producing more engineers without tackling the lack of manufacturing competitiveness is like worrying about putting deodorant to smell clean without wiping one's ass crack after taking a dump. Seriously, it is that bad.
I think this has been mentioned here, but wanted to point out from first hand experience... I have a BS in EECE, an MS in Physics, and I took all those
damn courses to get a Ph.D. in EECE (yet to finish dissertation)... as I was going through the Ph.D. program, I witnessed a number of my classmates getting interns at Intel/AMD/etc. Not to be racial (cultural?) but I am a native born anglo-saxon american. All of my classmates are Indian/Asian. I note that I could not get an intern/etc with big companies. My grades were comparable (better), and I had some experience having worked a little between degrees.
A few points. I know a number of these classmates that went on to get jobs at Intel/AMD/Motorola/etc. These are Ph.D.s in EE/EECE/CS. They are paying these guys $37000-$47000 to start, but they give them an H1B visa (or extension), so they are totally happy to take that pay. I am sorry to say it, but a "normal" american who just spent a good deal of cash on this degree just can not get by on this. No offense to any Indian guys (in fact, this is where you have an advantage) but 20 of them can live in a single apartment due to their culture/lifestyle. They have no problems getting $40,000 to start as a Ph.D, where most americans (for better or worse) would balk at that. I was told by one classmate who went on to work at Intel that they practically don't even look at americans for work anymore at that level as they want more to start. /rant
Interestingly, since we americans are no longer going into Ph.D.s in EE/EECE, this creates a catch 22 for the CEOs to go to the govt with. "look, no one is going into the Ph.D. program, give us more H1Bs!"... go look at (for example) Intels job pages. They want Ph.D.s in EE/EECE in mostly other countries now. We will eventually no longer manufacture or design anything here, but for the time being if it helps big companies bottom lines, they will never care if they are destroying us. We will wake up and no one will know how to build or design things here, and then all will be lost.
rant/
td;dl, Companies don't pay as they know H1Bs are cheap, no one goes in due to low wages, a manager at McDonalds can make more. Obama/Congress can not fix that, as they are paid by the same companies saying we need more H1Bs. Hey, I could go be a professor when it is done, but I could make more money asking if you want fries with that at the drive through.
I make good money. I like what I do. I can find a job easily in this area. I work inside. I have decent benefits.
There is a lot I don't like about work - yes engineering gets shit on - but that is life.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The Americans are the world leaders in "Goldberg Machine"-type engineering approaches to the simplest of tasks. The question is what the effects on the world as a whole will be if the worker market is dilluted even more with this particular caliber. And, no, I am not trolling. This is an actual, real problem, and my thoughts and concerns are genuine and honest. Do spend a minute thinking about it instead of firing your filthy moderator buttons instantly.
.
human engineer = politician and/ort spin-doctor
financial engineer = banker and/or fraudster
medical engineer = pharmacist or doctor
and will have their personal engineer slave who programs the TV and the Internet for him/her.
...says the headlines just today. I guess that means we only need 8800 more engineers this year!
I don't think I would have got an BSME if I had known that after 16 years, I would only now be on the brink of earning $50k. The American dream of owning a house is indeed only a dream. Every year my alma mater calls me for donations; they should be donating to me instead. I should have pursued microbiology instead.
Clearly, there are too many spies SAPPIN' MA SENTRIES.
It's like the prisoners dilemma on a society scale: If there are more engineers (or people who actually make thinks) society as a whole wins - but for the individual it pays to be one of the non-producers (lawyers, MBAs or others we like to rant about here).
The problem then is that americans are generally more individualistic and make the choice that benefit them individually, which unfortunately leads to a situation where everybody looses because there are too many non-producers trying to live off of the producers.
The overall solution so far seems to be importing an ever increasing supply of cheap labor for the ever increasing class of coorporate fat cats so richly represented in Obama's group. A better solution would be to make it more attractive to choose to be a "mouse" and much much less attractive to choose becoming a "cat" - but that's not a likely answer from a group consisting solely of "cats".
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
No Engineers, Why? Job Killing Regulations that our "neighbor" countries encourage in our corrupt political system. Regulations that his party ( But all are culpable)is mostly responsible for. Fix the EPA, FTC,FDA, etc first. Then change the tax rate to something that lets you keep about 80% not 50% as it is now and the mid size companies that were the backbone of the US will come around. Its the economic policy stupid!
We don't have enough engineers?!? How about the ones that NASA and the aerospace industry is shedding because the space program has been cut? We don
t need more engineers. We need more jobs. Wake up!
I've come to realise over the years that when a politician or industry figure says "We don't have enough X" what they actually mean is that "X is a very sought after talent, and because of that they're expecting reasonable wages for that talent, can we please do something to flood the market to make their skillset dirty cheap?".
The US probably does have enough engineers, I mean, you've got like 20million unemployed or something, let's be realistic- there's sure as hell going to be lots of engineers in there, just by sheer virtue of the size of the figure. The real issue is companies don't want to pay them a fair wage, they want the talent, but they want it dirt cheap, so they make up a myth about lack of candidates.
Take Mathematics, for years I've heard about how the UK has a severe shortage, but I'm a maths graduate and having been job hunting myself for a new role this last week and having spoken to 39 agencies it seems to confirm my suspicion, that there's not actually really many companies looking for maths skills, it's my programming skills they're all seeking. If math skills were in such short supply shouldn't I have plenty of offers for interviews for more mathematical roles? I wont complain as I'm riding the .NET gravy train which seems to be having a real boom right now in terms of pay, but certainly what politicians and businesses say about skill shortages, doesn't actually tally up with reality whatsoever.
So we have a math shortage, what do they want the government to do, train more mathematicians so that there'll be hundreds of us fighting over the one largely mathematics based job that comes along once in a blue moon, willing to undercut each other rather than just me going for it and asking a fair wage? Yeah, I thought so.
um...engineers build things. That's what they do. When you have a country with no factories, you have no real need for engineers. It'd be like saying "we need more water treatment specialists" when you are in the middle of a desert. First you need more water, then more water plants/transport facilities, and then "magically" you suddenly have more water treatment specialists appear. Why? BECAUSE THERE IS AN ACTUAL DEMAND FOR THEM.
Obama's statement about needing more engineering degrees is akin to his saying that "every child deserves a degree". What this leads to is watering down courses so that those on the far left of the performance-ethic bell curve can still look like they passed. The result is the issuing of paper degrees by worthless schools. In my personal experience teaching graduate and undergraduate courses for six years is that only 25% of the students have the performance ethic needed to pass through a rigorous study program. 50% will do the bare minimum to get by, and only that minimum. The remaining 25% will not even do the minimum but they still expect to get a passing grade. If they do not get a passing grade they complain to the school's administration. The professor has to either change the grade or lose his contract. In one school I know about, local companies call the professors personally and ask them for a list of their best students. If a graduate is not on that list they do not get hired, regardless of their grades.
Engineers make too much money and I want to dilute their job market. I don't have anything better to do than dream of ways to micromanage every goddamn human endeavor while I golf on your dime. Let them eat stimulus!
Also remember, that the American Civil War broke out, because northern workers couldn't compete with slave. The only difference is that the slaves now live in other countries, like China.
We deny immigration to thousands of smart engineers a year, with the extra insult being that many of those even graduated here but we still won't let them stay. So we're losing them to smarter countries. The legal immigration rates for skilled professionals are set absurdly low to compensate for the wink wink nudge nudge levels of illegal immigration. Those illegal immigrants are usually hard working, but they're mostly not highly qualified technically.
If you want more techies (and you should, they drive your /real/ growth in the long term), then make room for them. Keep the real immigration levels the same, even raise them, but make sure all the skilled get in even if you keep out some of the leafblowers. But this is a third rail, so Obama likely wouldn't have the spine to touch that (phrased alternatively, he's too smart to touch it given his base).
I didn't RTFA. So, maybe my comment is completely out of touch....
Why should anyone become an Engineer (the kind that develops new technologies) in the United States when Patent Trolls and mega-corps will sue you out of existence? The U.S. Patent system has pretty much been reshaped to be weapon of mass destruction pointed at any company that even dreams of developing anything new and cutting edge. God forbid you invent anything that remotely competes with any inferior mega-corp product or solution.
If you don't have millions of dollars of reserve cash on hand (few small tech companies do), there's no way to defend yourself against these trolls.
This whole topic drive me fucking crazy. Maybe I'm bias? I don't know. I hear stories like this all the time. Note: My company is among a few dozen right now being sued by a Texas-based patent troll. We'll be out of business in a few weeks due to the cost of just having to prove we're *not* violating a patent that *should not have been given*. Oh well. 10 years wasted and 30+ federal gov't organizations will no longer be able to buy our warez.
"Land of opportunity" ha! The joke is on us.
In many companies, if you were in the lowest x percent, you would be automatically fired!!!!
If the president is leaning on the private sector to do this, he might want to consider passing along a little advice. Students will major in subjects that can get them stable, good-paying jobs. Yes, engineering is one of those fields that pays well, but there are some huge problems with the field:
That said, I also don't know if shoveling more engineering grads into the fire is a good idea either. Our group is in the process of hiring IT systems engineers for an integration role (think a little bit lab monkey, a little bit project coordinator, a little bit documentation writer, some passing familiarity with SW development, and someone who can learn something new that a customer wants incredibly fast.) It's a good solid job with an established company. We're willing to pay market rates for the position (we're not an IT bodyshop.) We can't find anyone ready to fill it, and have only found a couple people who are trainable. What have we seen so far?
So, maybe the problem has something to do with the education itself. Or, IT has just become that pigeonholed that everyone is reduced to button-pushers in large companies, so they don't get the experience needed. I'm all for making more smart people, since that's where the world is heading, but I think we need to make sure we're actually giving these students some useful skills to sell to future employers.
It's definitely a two-way street. Employers need to play ball too...there are still a fair number of us who want a long term, stable job with real benefits and without the need to move every 3 years. But being on the inside trying to help hire a co-worker, I kind of see their points as well.
They're referring to in-shoring. Bringing in people from poorer countries with similar skills and paying them much less than what is expected for that position. It's happening in America as well. Employers claim they can't find enough people to do the job in the US and conveniently find all the qualified people they need from poor countries. Obama's speech sounds good on the service, but he's ignoring the elephant in the room. I suspect they hope people outside the field fall for it, appearing as if he's addressing the high unemployment, when in reality this won't change much, if anything.
or job security, or a path to management, or equity ownership, or... Welcome to capitalism. It's pay to play. You want USA engineers? Better be ready to pony up some bucks at the very least.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Yet fails to talk about the fact that corporate world has tried like hell to supress engineer wages so now it's near impossible for a Masters Degree holding engineer in electronics to get a job that will pay his student loans.
Want more engineers? triple taxes on corporations that outsource it so the outsourced price is the same ans hiring a guy here int he states.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'll believe the sincerity in this statement when his kids become engineers, and not lawyer-politicians.
I'm an Aerospace Engineer who left aerospace (worked for NASA contractors for 8 yrs) to the private sector for more money. I'm hardly rich, but I'm not stupid. Call it an IQ test.
Within 3 yrs of leaving NASA contracting I more than doubled my salary from $40K/yr to $110K/yr. The following 8 yrs, I earned over $120K/yr (paid hourly as a consultant). I was low paid in that consulting role and had peers who earned $90/hr to $120/hr. That's $180K/yr min.
I'd love to return to engineering, but the pay needs to be similar. My wife wouldn't understand taking a pay cut to $90K/yr and low annual-18 month raises and the 8-5 workday requirements. We can take time off as I like now, so why would we want to go back to engineering?
Great!! wat a news! http://the-linux-tablet.blogspot.com/
...and you just MIGHT get what you're asking for. What's the point in someone spending 4 years of their life on a very expensive BS or MS EE degree when it seems the move to outsource more and more of America (or the mass issuing of H1B visas to people willing to work for half the normal pay rate) is becoming even more prevalent these days.
Either discount EE degrees "half-off", or stop the outsourcing. You choose Obama, because as it stands today, an EE degree isn't worth the pain anymore. People need to know they have some ROI on a $150,000 investment, especially when it is their livelihood at stake.
Meanwhile the engineers work as PC wranglers or web site designers because the companies or government bodies they could be working for don't want to do anything new so don't need engineers to design things for them. It's not just engineers, I know a phd in Chemistry that went immediately into patent law upon getting the doctorate, and a phd in materials science who was published in a leading journal that couldn't get a job doing anything other than putting websites together.
It was certainly annoying after a decade of practising as an engineer to end up as a PC wrangler and be confronted by weenies that call themselves "engineer" without either experience and training in anything to do with any sort of complex systems eg. a 19 year old that had done a multi-choice test and has never written a line of code. I know that software developers can be recognised as professional engineers but I'm sure you've met many that could not but still call themselves by that title - I suppose I've given up on being annoyed by them and just bait them every now and again.
Seriously, all the engineers are turning to other industries like software development because companies farm out work for pennies on the dollar to India.
The president is playing too much Team Fortress 2.
We have a subsidiary in a large se asian country. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn't.
Time zone difference can work both ways. You can't always contact them, but work can proceed
almost around the clock. We work with the customer all day long, then they work on fixes overnight.
What has worked well is giving them entire projects to do, with a clear spec. What hasn't worked
well has been splitting the project in two -- too many interfaces to work out.
Communications isn't as big an issue as the time zone. We routinely set up remote login (i.e. pc anywhere)
on a machine connected to the target equipment. Chat sometimes works better than the telephone.
There cultural differences too. They don't like to tell us about problems until it is too late.
What the country really needs is more people willing to take risks in search of bigger rewards. Wall St has brought the promise of riskless reward to the country, and that, IMO, has sapped the life out of what used to be one of our largest drivers of economic and social growth.
Whether an entrepreneur is an engineer who sets out to start a new tech company or a highschool diploma holder starting a small dry cleaning operation or restaurant, his potential for adding jobs, creating social growth in the region, and generating real wealth is greater than any other way (possibly except finance).
Why on earth aren't we trying to encourage more entrepreneurs?
manufacturing gives engineers gives hard sciences gives soft sciences. When you outsource the manufacturing you lose all that follows. Also the purpose of the H1B program isn't to fill an urgent shortage of engineers it's to push down the cost of them. If they actually wanted more they would pay them more. The USA is investing heavily in fair weather industries (copyright, banking) to the detriment of fundamental industries (manufacturing, engineering). This means in a recession you lose a bigger part of your economy.
Exactly. Engineers come from a limited pool of people. You need to be smart and hard working. I'd hazard a guess and say that below IQ 125 or so just isn't going to cut it. So basically only about 5% of the population could even be an engineer.
If you are smart enough to be an engineer, especially a good engineer, you are also smart enough to be able to choose business, accounting, law, pharmacy, dentistry, medicine, etc. You are also smart enough to google pay scales and such while still in high school, and pick a career that is going to maximize the reward for the risk and the effort. If you want to rob those other well remunerated fields to create more engineers (since the game is zero-sum), you need to show the prospective students the money.
The other alternative is of course to create some sort of selective breeding program to create a society of engineers, but it would be politically impossible to implement and certainly not see any results over one presidential term. So yeah, show us the money.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Everything I've been told seems to indicate that as soon as you get any good at being an engineer, they want you to be managing others. Project management. Program Management. Product Management. Maybe the prestige (and pay) of engineers should be increased, so that they can keep doing what they are best at, actual engineering.
If the engineers had more power than the accountants, marketing, sales, and management, they wouldn't be tempted to try to cross over to those areas.
We don't have enough engineers... in office. We don't have enough scientists... in office. Our office holders are lawyers and bankers. When the lawyers and bankers run the country, they treat engineers the same as they do as CEO... low pay basement treatment.
I8-D
The US is a country where people with an interest in STEM disciplines are mocked as nerds, geeks, and losers.
The US is a country where American engineers and programmers not only have to compete with offshoring, but with H-1B visa holders.
The US is a country where engineers and programmers get a crappy salary unless they work in finance.
With these facts in mind, I find it surprising that Barack Obama has the temerity to go on record as saying "we don't have enough engineers", while saying that "private sector companies will promote science, technology, engineering and math education, offer students incentives to finish degrees, and help universities fund their programs. The participating companies intend to double their internship hiring." It's going to take more than that to get more engineers, and we have to start in grammar school.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I've recently had openings for well-paid EE/CS interns at a top-tier company. These are INTERN positions that pay in the "$37000-$47000" range and frequently lead to permanent positions that start at twice that and rise rapidly from there. I rarely see a single candidate who is, as you classify, a "native born anglo-saxon american". When I do, I rarely see one who can follow basic logic and apply algebra to a simple problem. The interview is usually essentially over in the first 20 minutes.
Of the last 2 interns I hired, one happens to be a product of the US education system and the other falls in the "Indian/Asian" category. I can give one a permanent position. The pay is the same regardless of which one I choose. If I choose the non-citizen, I am in for a whole pile of extra paperwork to get his labor certification done.
There is no comparison on the performance level. (The hours are identical -- interns work exactly 40 hours per week) Even though I will wind up with a whole pile of paperwork, I am hiring the non-citizen. I'd rather have to do the paperwork than have to teach the kid who grew up here all of the things that his parents and teachers should have taught him over the years.
Face it. I need to hire people who know how to do stuff. In the last 20 years or so, we started to produce kids that don't know how to do anything. Personally, I think it was around the time that parents started to buy kids nice cars rather than helping them get a heap of junk out of the classifieds and lending them a set of tools.
There is a part of me that would rather hire my fellow Americans. Too bad I can very rarely find qualified ones. That pains me.
Engineering is a terrible career choice these days. The Dilbert principle is very real; career-wise, competence is the first step on the road to ruin.
Why? Why are people with honest to god skills who work hard given such short shrift in the workplace? Because sometime between the amazing accomplishments of the greatest generation (no exaggeration - look around) and ours, there was a fundamental shift in workplace organization: the idea of 'Management' as it's own specialized discipline. Instead of working your way up through the ranks, being gradually promoted on account of proven accomplishments, gradually assuming supervisory responsibility over younger less experienced people coming up behind you, if you'd like to be a supervisor today, you have to come in from the top. It's a horrible model, fraught with nasty class distinctions (class mobility in the US has almost completely stalled). We have no end of parables about this - the military officer who gets in over his head in real combat, it's a common theme in movies, books, etc. But in real life, that's the way things work now. The world is being run by people who, quite literally, don't know what they are doing. It's a great way for the children of the upper class to retain their status without getting their hands dirty. It's no wonder this philosophy is sold by colleges and universities - that's how they get their hands on Daddy Warbuck's money. We need to motivate smart people to go to trade schools instead of business school. If we're going to fight a war, we must institute the draft so that the kids of the rich and powerful face the same consequences as the kids from Detroit. The rich complain all the time about "class warfare", but they are the ones keeping everyone down. They've been in charge for a while now, and they suck. Class war? I'm all for it.
then why are we paying them as if they just graduated from janitor school?
think i'm joking? I recently left my career as a structural engineer to do software QA because the pay and benefits were SO much better....
To quote Obama in TFA
"We've made incredible progress on education, helping students to finance their college educations"
What progress? I'm still paying huge amounts of money for college. Why can't it be free like it is in Finland or other European countries? Oh right, that's socialism. Didn't mean to rock the boat too much.
"What's the point of producing more engineers if we don't develop a well-trained blue-colllar workforce and a manufacturing industry for them to work on it? How's the economy going to absorb them if it cannot absorb its unemployed blue collar guys? We are losing the engineering battle not for lack of engineers, but for lack of competitive manufacturing capabilities (and incentives to have a manufacturing industry) in American soil.The same companies that are willing to move jobs overseas (or are pushed to do so because their competitors do)? The US government must provide incentives to companies to retain engineering and manufacturing jobs here (and penalties for those that do not.) China, Japan and India have measures to protect their local economies. We do not. And in fact, the MBA mantra is to not do it at all." - by luis_a_espinal (1810296) on Wednesday June 15, @07:06AM (#36448012) Homepage
Excellent luis. You hit the nail on the head. They keep shipping jobs overseas, bailing out the crooks on wallstreet & the banks instead and blowing it on wars or police actions overseas (that the gov't.'s cronies (or rather, their MASTERS) in the military-industrial complex profit by.
That does NOT make for a "solid econonmy" if only the "1%-ers" have disposable income.
You can't have a good economy without folks having decently paying jobs (instead of "hand-to-mouth" Mickie-D's overnite shift ones types), and money to spend to pay for goods & services above and beyond food, utilities, taxes or rents. If you give folks decent cash, they will spend it, and in turn Mr. business Peter can pay Paul his supplier and the wheel keeps turning.
Otherwise? You have what we have, now (30% unemployment & probably more) and worse.
APK
Teach Art badly and you end up with a bunch of "primitivist" and "modern" artists, drawing stick figures, creating poorly formed sculptures, and splashing paint on a canvas thinking they are the next Pollock. And, the students still get credit and often a good grade.
Teach English badly and you end up with a bunch of people who can't spell, put together a coherent sentence, have poor reading comprehension, make signs that say "10 items or less", and use text slang to write basic sentences. And, the students will get partial credit for trying.
Teach Science badly and you end up with failed experiments in lab courses which in turns lowers the students grades and makes science seem harder than other courses. You end up with a population of vaccine opponents, (un)intelligent design supporters, and people who mistakenly think they know what the scientific method is, how it operates, and what is and is not scientific when, in fact, they do not know. This is why we end up with people saying things like "It is just a theory" for, say, the Theory of Evolution and then not understanding when one points out that the Theory of Gravity is also "just a theory".
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
analytical engineering mind gives great opportunity to the individual, because it makes the individual capable of analytical thinking. you can be successful in other fields with that, and i had friends who did as such.
Read radical news here
I live in the Silicon Valley and I've seen more large high tech companies leave here due to the high costs of living then I'd care to remember. HP gone. IBM gone. The cities around here have to pretty much give away the farm (SanJose I'm looking at you with regards to keeping eBay around).
Why should high tech companies hire engineers in the US if they're just going to ask them to relocate to a cheaper geography (India). I don't see these companies relocating to Oklahoma, Nebraska or North Dakota.
These companies can look at a top US graduate of Indian nationality and say, "Hey, we'll pay for you to move back to Bangalore..." and they'll gladly move back home to their family. They US citizen won't take the same offer.
Employees... you're a resource just like servers, storage, carpeting and office supplies.
Why hasn't someone started a Engineers Union?
I think what he meant was "we don't have enough engineers who will work for minimum wage."
Those 85,000 are all over 40 years of age so they don't count. In the old days, they were taken out back and shot if they didn't get their asses into management, but now they're left to wither away .....
When pushing a youth into a field they do not want / enjoy you could end up with this http://news.oneindia.in/2011/02/02/1styr-it-girl-student-commitssuicide-aid0126.html
I think we should instead look at why do so many students not enjoy math / science or any other "hard" subject when many of them enjoy other hard tasks such as master sports activities, games, musical instruments and other "fun" activities?
If 4.5% of all engineers in the US are unemployed, then you don't need any more engineers. You have too many engineers. Get the 4.5% working and say 'we have run out of engineers, we need more engineers', but saying you need more when there are some running around unemployed, and you are wasting peoples time, talent and energy. You have too many engineers now, and there are likely a lot of engineers who are underemployed. Waste not, want not! Fully employ all the engineers first!
The shortage of engineers is a symptom of the problems you create when you export poverty, which is what offshoring is. You drive down the market wage for that profession which naturally decreases the supply of people willing to work in that profession. If you want more people to go to school for engineering the solution is so simple that it'll never be done - make it pay more.
Would it not be a good idea to out unemployed engineers back to work instead of worry about how many new engineers you are educating?
1) Get your Congressmen hacks off the backs of for profit colleges, many are very good
Which for profit has a good engineering school?
2) Get the deficit under control, stop the spending, it will change the outlook of the country
Okay, that includes cutting things like funding for state schools, perhaps blocking those non-profit loopholes.
3) Fund areas of science which will make people want to be engineers. We need something real, not rail. That means a Manhattan/Apollo scale project (just don't go damn the costs like they did) that will suck up these engineers and better the country. Can I suggest safe nuclear power combined with some renewable sources? We certainly have the tech for the former and need to develop the later else hand the country over to China
I thought you wanted to stop the spending money?
4) Make the focus of schools be the students, then the parents, then teachers, and finally anyone else. Hold teachers accountable, the good ones want it.
Okay, you finally have a valid point.
5) Did I mention the deficit? The doom and gloom hanging over people's heads when they see such staggering numbers and what happens in the world makes them lose focus. Be a President for once, stop being a politician.
Schools and education all cost money.
And actually you sound like a teabagger, don't you know teabaggers are against spending any money on somebody else's education. Its part of the Libratard manifesto: This country wasn't founded on pubublic schools, so we should have them either; and there's no provision in the Constitution mandating it or the regulation of it.
US have a unique advantage here they could simply expand upon.
US Corp of Engineers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Corps_of_Engineers
Simply boost incentives and expand the service. Bam, more enrollment in schools. In 5-6 years problem solved.
this is slashdot you know. if you are truly hard up for applicants, just post a link.
i mean, why should Oklahoma be importing "foreign oil" from texas when they have plenty of their own?
You treat teachers like shit? Given the Union Busting (they don't call it that, still might upset the voters) going on in places like Wisconsin and Idaho (probably more that I don't know about) and the general 'teachers are the ones costing us all the money' attitude root of the current propaganda going out from every mouth, the chances of eventually having more engineers seem very slim indeed. Even in the bad old days of one school house for all grades per section, we respected the ones doing the 'hard' work. Might have begrudged the lack of an additional hand or two, but that wasn't the teachers fault. And at harvest time everyone was on call anyway. Now? Now we have idiots who complain about 3 month vacations and having easy jobs, and...and... The ignorance of the public would be no problem if it weren't for the ignorance of the politicians (who are not only ignorant, but stupid enough to think what they are doing will somehow make thing better) Think about this (for those old enough) at one point the typical grade school had two people whose job was not full time teaching. The Principle and his secretary. And in most cases the Principle taught a class or two. These days even a grade school has an enormous pyramid of time and money wasting 'Administrators' at the top. Are they at risk? Of course not---they are busy bad-mouthing the teachers and supporting the politicians who are the real problem. More engineers? Pigs will fly bearing ice-water before that happens again in this country.
Yup, and this has been going on for a while, at least:
(Page 2): http://news.cnet.com/Johnny-can-so-program/2010-1007_3-5700858.html?tag=mncol;txt
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-august-magazine-contents/america2019s-other-immigration-crisis
There is a limit to the number of engineers prepared to work for peanuts in insecure jobs.
need a dispenser here!
I'm currently finishing up my undergraduate career with a double major in Computer Engineering & Computer Science. I'd love to pursue a graduate degree in ECE or EECS, however the cost of tuition is too high. I've had experience with two prior internships with companies who offered to pay ~$5,000 a year for tuition to offset the cost of grad school. However, after looking at the prices for in-state tuition for grad school at the nearby state school it is not enough. In-state tuition at the university for graduate students is ~$13,000 per year whereas out-of-state is ~$30,000 per year. If the Obama administration could offer more financial support for people who will be going to grad school part-time and working full-time then the U.S. would see an increase in engineers with an advanced degree.
P.S. I had a much longer and well-written response, but then my Windows 7 box BSOD'd me so I'll take a poke at M$ and call it a POS.
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
thats always worked in the past to...oh wait....
Good people go to bed earlier.
I am not even sure if anyone here even believes what the government says any more.
According to the government everything is hunky dory, and the economy is in full recovery.
Meanwhile we have tent cities, large numbers of peoples homes being outright stolen from them because there is so much criminal activity in our government and wall street banking they actually think they can just sieze any property they want.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp_oDXvU_Ak
So much of the money has been looted in this country by politicians and wall street that I wouldn't even want to start a company in the USA because of all the corruption, let alone get to the point to hire any engineers.
Which, by the way there are vast numbers of engineers in the united states with no future and no way of ever finding a decent job here.
Newly graduating engineers at the UW Madison Wisconsin where I go are already making plans to live over seas, because that is the only way they are going to find a job.
Meanwhile our countries cities, bridges, roads and digital communications infrastructure lies in ruin because wall street stole all of the money that would have been used to repair it all.
I mean in Wisconsin you have the governor holding a bunch of teachers hostage to squeeze out even more money for his Kotch bankster buddies who put him into office to accomplish the job and make sure everyone thinks about democrats and republican BS drivel line of thinking when the banks stole all the money in Wisconsin's benefit funds for the educational system.
If this sort of thing continues, the country is going to break up, and we are going to have civil war.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Of course we have plenty of Engineers. It's just that they keep getting picked off by those damn snipers while trying to build forward base Sentry Guns.
It simply isn't worth pursuing a career in engineering in the United States or Britain.
Engineers in these countries gain little respect, and little financial reward.
Most good people with an engineering degree, go and work in different areas (eg. finance), where they ARE rewarded for their skills.
The current trend of offshoring, and immigration for cheap labour has just made the situation worse. Now nobody, not even anyone with a keen interest in the subject area, and little regard for a decent compensation package, would want to work in this sector.
One of my best friends came to a similar conclusion recently. After spending all of his working years supporting computers and writing code for people, he got involved in wood-working. Now he has a small wood shop in his basement, and is trying to make a living building furniture for people. At first, I really didn't get what made him do such a drastic switch. I figured maybe it would be a passing "fad" for him, and he'd wind up regretting investing all his money in those tools.
But he made a few great points:
1. Wood-working embraces and extends concepts that work. In I.T., working concepts are regularly thrown out and replaced with brand new, relatively untested ones. You learn a whole development language today, and tomorrow, the vendor who made it decides they're not going to use that one anymore. When you look at the "latest and greatest" innovations in wood-working tools, they're all built upon several hundred year old concepts that are PROVEN to work well, and the changes are usually very sound, incremental improvements on those basics.
2. Software has such a short shelf-life. You can put years of time and effort into making the best software application you can make, but will your KIDS be able to use it when they grow up? Not a chance! They'll just be laughing at whatever "ancient" machine was last able to actually run that code. If you build a good dining room table or bed though? They very well might use it as an adult, or even pass it on to THEIR kids!
3. America has spent something like 2 decades now convincing people that it's somehow "better" to create intangibles, or "intellectual property" than anything concrete. Most kids today would be far more motivated to learn to write the next video game than to rebuild a lawnmower or car engine. But *everyone* has a huge need for the tangibles, even if all they devote their life to is creating the intangibles. So if we don't get at least SOME focus back on building concrete, physical products -- we're doomed to keep importing them from other countries. Not a good scenario.
Problem. Not enough engineers
Solution. Subsidize engineering degrees
We can't regulate what companies pay, that's true. We can regulate federal student loans, and offer refunds and scholarships for people who graduate from engineering. Pay people to get masters, jus like phds
you're probably one of them goddamned freedom-hating greedy teachers with your gold-plated Celicas!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
People need to know they have some ROI on a $150,000 investment, especially when it is their livelihood at stake.
Who the hell pays $150k for an EE degree? If that's what you did, you did it wrong!
You always had engineers .. Wall Street just ruined them, and you never realized it. :)
How many engineers born here in this country do you know that can't get a job? There's too much competition from the H1B's they bring over from India/Pakistan.
I had a revelation the other day. I was in my carpool, driving our daily 100mile commute with the two other guys (who are both from India. I'm white and born here) and we were talking shop about different companies we used to work for. I mentioned how surprised I had been that a certain consulting company from India had so many Indians at one of my prior companies I worked for.
Much to my surprise, both of my carpool buddies had nothing nice to say about This Crappy Solution company (TCS, aka Tata) and both told me that TCS holds down wages even for them (they're direct hires, not H1B's) here in this country. They estimated that if TCS was forced out and H1B allotments were cut, they could make at least 30-50% more. They're both from India, over 40yrs old, been in this country for about 10-12 years.
Hell, when you've got the people from over there telling me how TCS pays it's consultant about half of what they would make here, it's time to really start checking to see where the politician is getting his kickbacks from and dig those skeletons out of their closets.
I'm good with numbers -
When most states are cutting freaking education funding!
Prime example is PA.
Another good example was Iowa (or somewhere out that way IIRC). The superintendent of one school district asked the Governor if he could reclassify his schools as Prisons, since on average they were getting around $7,000 a year per student in funding, where as prisoners get 3-square meals a day, cable, internet, etc, etc.
Over 40 years old. But you don't want to pay them what they are worth, or even keep them in a job.
Young people see how you throw the old engineers, old scientists, and old programmers away and refuse to go into these professions.
I have read a lot comments hear that lament the plight of the engineer with regards to what companies are willing to pay, work conditions, etc. I have experienced many of the same issues in my career and have come to the conclusion that the best way for me to deal with it is to start my own company. Before the flaming begins, I am not advocating that everyone try it; it isn't the best choice for everyone. However, if you have come to a point in your career that you feel that trapped and not being paid what you are worth, it might be viable. There are a lot of potential clients that view engineering of all stripes as magic, they don't understand it and they don't want to. They just want it design/improved/fixed, etc. Granted for certain types of engineering, a start up can be difficult (e.g. mechanical, bio-medical, electrical), but if you can find one niche you are really good at, you can make a huge amount of money. In software engineering currently, if you have some experience with healthcare (clinical and business) there is a lot of opportunity. Also, if you are an American citizen, you will have one huge advantage - citizenship. H1Bs and others on different types of visas have restrictions on what they e allowed to do - starting companies is usually one of them if they have been sponsored. You might even take advantage of the current climate by doing what your company is doing, hire them at a much cheaper rate than other Americans. Or you can be purist and insist that you want to employ American citizens only. Even with the financial meltdown, there is still a lot of money on the table institutions are willing to lend for start ups, especially if you are a minority or female. Again, this is NOT a good choice for everyone, but for some it might be worth looking into. As Americans, it is unfortunate we are living in these times because we are in a huge transition that leaves a lot of uncertainty. I don't necessarily agree with the tenant that America is in decline, but rather the world is changing and other countries are rapidly catching up with the prosperity the US once was known for. And these countries will rapidly hit the same problems we have now. Eventually equilibrium will probably be reached; whether that occurs in our lifetime or not is anyone's guess. If you are an engineer of any type or considering engineering as a career, don't discount it yet. I think this is a rough patch, but it will pass. We might all have to be willing to work in places we wouldn't expect on projects that we wouldn't have chosen of our own free will. If you are really an engineer to the core though, it won't matter because you have to build things, its in your nature.
Only one thing is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet. --Mark Twain
but he makes more of a positive contribution to the world every day of his adult life than a flea like you could possibly comprehend--and on top of it I am 100% certain that he is smarter and better looking.
Who are you? Answer: Nobody.
Normally I hate TV but my girlfriend got me into The Big Bang Theory. It's your standard laugh track filled prime time sitcom (which annoys me) but there's a physicist, theoretical physicist, areospace engineer, astrophysicist and a waitress struggling to be an actress as the main characters. The group do random expirements, have geeky to the point of being cool pastimes and some aspect of science is brought up in every episode.
We need more shows/films/games like this. Something that makes it culturally cool to be smart, productive and educated members of society. You know... instead of having TV dad's that are borderline retarded and have to be chastised every 5 minutes by their superficial bitchy wife.
The government spends too much time making sure everyone gets a trophy and a gold star and not enough time drilling math and science. The education gap starts in Kindergarten, not college. More money for education is not the solution. The solution is to set schools free of most senseless federal regulation and allow schools to focus students on things they like rather than enforcing a uniform education on everyone.
There is huge incentive to move work out of the Western countries into other places, and it's not all about just the salaries of the employees.
Salaries are just a cherry on top of the cake, and the cake is this:
there are no business regulations to have to abide by, there are no insane taxes. Except for that, the investment into another place diversifies your portfolio and it's also good, if the currency is not weak, but strong in that other place, so while the salaries maybe smaller, than in the West, the purchasing power is actually greater for the employees, which also means that there will be more competition among the potential employees.
It's not wonderful from technical POV, but from POV of generating revenue, it makes perfect sense, and those who don't do it will be eventually driven out of the market.
You can't handle the truth.
I get interviews. I don't get job. Big Hint: I'm over 50 :/
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Full loans for anyone majoring in engineering (or hard science or whatever) with complete (tax deductible) loan forgiveness if the person graduates with a 3.5 GPA, and a partial forgiveness on down to, say, 3.0. Maybe near-full for a 3.5 and full if you graduate top 10% of your class or something. Or maybe near-full for all that, and the final part is forgiven if you work as an engineer for two years or something.
Politicians talk a lot of crap about "we need more engineers," but the only way to get more is to make being one more attractive financially.
If I had been offered a full ride to do engineering, I probably wouldn't have bailed on it for math and then law.
People need to know they have some ROI on a $150,000 investment, especially when it is their livelihood at stake.
Who the hell pays $150k for an EE degree? If that's what you did, you did it wrong!
Uh, I don't mean to assume, but when was the last time you stepped foot into the bursars office at a University? Or into the school bookstore? Prices are considerably higher from even three years ago, much less a decade or more back.
Tax, tag, title, OTD, that's probably what most people pay for a four-year degree, when you also consider the lack of employment (or "real" employment) during that timeframe as well.
Obama outlined his goals Monday, outlining a push that he developed with the help of his Jobs and Competitiveness Council. That presidential commission has 26 members, including CEOs at several tech firms: Paul Otellini, the CEO of Intel; Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox; John Doerr, the venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook. The chairman of the Jobs and Competitiveness Council is Jeffrey Immelt, who is chairman and CEO of GE.
Ursula Burns is, at this very moment, preparing to outsource most of her company's Engineering to an Indian company, HCL, to leverage the scale of their talent pool whilst cutting the Engineering budget.
America has plenty of Engineers, just not the kind who would be delighted to work for only $10k a year.
When all that expertise has gone to India, you can bet your bottom dollar that costs will be cut again and the Americans will be let go.
Word.
Yandelvayasna grldenwi stravenka
Mr. Obama,
While it's nice of you to recognize the need for more engineers, it's hugely disingenuous of you to suggest that someone else needs to do something about it. Your policies have a huge impact on such things, and you've missed opportunity after opportunity to make changes that would help this issue. Instead of promoting technical innovation, you have participated in the largest giveaways in history to the financial and insurance sectors. Why would bright minds go into engineering, when you've continued to dump heaps of welfare into the laps of bankers, traders, and insurance salesman who simply leech wealth from those of us who actually invent and innovate?
Engineers don't magically appear out of thin air because you passed the largest and most irresponsible tax breaks in history. You need to actually enact major programs to foster things like IT development and green technology, instead of just paying lip service to them during primary campaign stops.
Now do I go to your place of work and laugh at you while your pulling the weeds in one of the various gardens owned by the Koch brothers?
"Real" Engineering:
* Get shat upon by management
* Make -- at best -- low six figures.
"Financial Engineering"
* Destroy the country's economy
* Get bailed out by Congress
* Receive million dollar bonus.
Hmmmm.... Which one looks more attractive to a student?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If you want more engineers at the master's/PhD level, look at the funding. Many of these students are being funded by NSF or DARPA grants. The simple change would be to require that anyone receiving money from these programs be a US citizen. We don't have any problem with requiring federal employees to be US citizens, so we shouldn't have any problem with these grants only going to fund research by US citizens.
TV dad engineer: Medium
Even shows his struggles with a startup, getting a patient, and creating some vague solar device. Just saying it exists.
80% of America's employment problems will be solved if US Visa system and Outsourcing is linked to the Caste system in India and Human Rights in China
Govt must constitute a panel to rewrite US Constitution and Quran
I am a highly experienced software engineer willing to work my fingers to the bone for an honest opportunity to create and support hardware and software solutions. Never before have we had so much technology at our fingertips to use for the betterment of mankind. After the Y2K fiasco, outsourcing was responsible for the disenfranchisement of a generation of American engineers. Many of us are not shown in the unemployment figures because we have "left the job market". When I couldn't find engineering work, I turned as many have to whatever could bring in money to support the family. A 45+ year old competing with the 20 somethings installing satellite dishes barely paid for my gas. I broke my back carrying 50 pound fully loaded dishes up ladders. I crawled under floors, and held my breath as I stepped from rafter to rafter in insulation filled attics at 110 plus degrees (F). and could barely convince customers I should be paid extra for that. I took the time to get certified in commissioning satellite uplinks, but had to pay for all my own wire and connectors and tools and gas and insurance. My body was not up to this kind of struggle and now I am disabled. I am facing the reality that my lifetime of study and mastership of systems software and communications technology hasn't enough value to support even my meager needs. I am depressed because I thought for sure there would be work for good people, and I believe I was good people. I cared about the quality of my work, To a great extent I blame Bill Gates for stratifying computer science into two levels, writing visual basic and calling that programming, and struggling with the half baked technology that Microsoft pushes on the developers. I think in all honesty I am one of the 200 most valuable contributors to the microprocessor revolution. But I was quietly working away in the back rooms creating the software that went into the box. Or fixing the broken drivers so a hundred thousand widgets could start shipping. And it would be one thing if I felt I had been left behind by a new generation of amazingly qualified new engineers that could do a much better job than I, but the plethora of pseudo-engineers that have displaced me are short-term lifetime surrogates loaded up with a batch of current Microsoft programming trivia that will be discarded by the time they finish their second project. Self respect is hard to maintain when you feel so un-needed. Mine is in shambles. My wife committed suicide when I could no longer support us. Home was foreclosed. Part of this tragic story is that I am just one of many people discarded by corporate idiots looking only at the share prices and caring nothing about the people that put the value in the day to day operation of their companies. I don't know where all this leads, and I worry for my grand-children.
We need fewer engineering graduates, not more. Engineering is easy. It doesn't require expert guidance to pick it up. If someone wants to learn engineering, they can do it on their own time. What universities need to focus on is the humanities and liberal arts. These are much more difficult and rigorous disciplines that require expert guidance--and they teach what really matters, which is the essence of what it means to be a human being. Engineering produces cool gadgets and all, but those gadgets are only a means to an end. The end is a better understanding of the human condition and a capacity for appreciating the full range of human emotions, in oneself and in others. This requires a liberal arts education. Furthermore, a good liberal arts education enables you to pick up literally any other field on your own, especially one as comparatively simple as engineering.
4 years into your career. you are yet a youth, who is excited to 'be something' and be 'doing something'. and earning money. over time you will see that what you are making is not even a drop in the pond that you are helping accumulate. and you will find that job security matters, and its not that easy to hop jobs or find jobs if you are not 4-5 years into your career.
Read radical news here
Obama is a literal moron. At the same time he wants to use the federal government to push for more engineers he also is blaming automation and machines for why the recession is not getting better. Obama's example was a simple ATM. He noted that if there were not ATMs then tellers would be employed, but a machine does it instead.
Obama is as close as you can get to a hypocritical Luddite. He wants to fund the training of more engineers while demonizing all the machines they create. It's the same with healthcare. Obama says he wants Obamacare to help everyone, but instead it is causing doctors to resin in droves and 30,000 businesses to prepare to drop employer based coverage.
Obama is here to take our money and give it to his friends. Once you come to grips with that you will be better off.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
I imagine some engineers have been pondering whether they should "go Galt".
Obama says that we need more engineers yet the good ol' gubmint imposes high costs to hire domestically, resulting in the cheaper outsourcing. What's wrong with this?
But definitely unnecessary for computer science, but certainly for construction, and industries requiring design of physical components. Anyone going into CS must be prepared to suffer patent lawsuits, until you learn to switch professions. And engineering for construction means the jobs cant be off-shored.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
First part is that wall street keeps scooping up all the engineers to solidify its hold on the economy. By doing this, they have all the smartest people working for them.
Second part is because we have gotten in the habit of outsourcing all our stuff, all the engineers need to go overseas for those contracts....why they are not at home, I guess we could blame Obama for letting companies outsource all the time....maybe have a new law that charges big taxes on companies that outsource their work to other countries, atleast make back some of the money lost during crisis, and maybe even set up university programs for engineers to have a discount(50%) if they sign a 5 year contract stating they have to stay and work within the US....
I'm pretty amazed at all of the negative responses here saying that we should just hire our unemployed engineers. I've worked several big-name tech companies including, Microsoft, Apple, and Google, and we couldn't find enough qualified engineers at any of them—US citizens or H1Bs. You'd think that these top companies would be able to easily hire good engineers, but it's really tough to find good people, even when we were in the depths of the recession.
At Apple we would go months without filling some critical positions because we couldn't find anyone qualified. After interviewing 10 or 15 people on site, none of them made the cut. I'm constantly amazed at how poorly the people I interview do—and they're the top 1–5% that make it past the resume screeners.
Maybe we don't need more engineers, but from what I've seen, we definitely need more good engineers.
--Bruce
PS—I've never seen any evidence that the companies I've worked for preferentially hire H1B employees. It's a lot of red tape for the company, and they get paid the same as US-born employees. The fact is that they're often simply more qualified than Americans.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Could you please write this in British English For The World.