Saturday, April 29, 2006
The Engineering 'Shortage' Mystery -- Solved
The Engineering 'Shortage' Mystery -- Solved
May 11, 2005
In reaction to the May 4 editorial-page commentary "Our Ph.D. Deficit1" by Norman R. Augustine and Burton Richter: The authors are just restating the obvious Wall Street mantra of risk vs. reward. A similar lament was expressed in these pages by the tech executives from firms such as Intel who were upset that their children were not becoming engineers. Given the time and effort of becoming an engineer, who wants to be unemployed every few years? Too, because engineering salaries barely keep track with inflation, why choose your lifetime salary the day you graduate from college? One college classmate of mine with a master's degree was featured in a New York Times article as making just $45,000 after 20 years. (By the way, he was being laid off.)
When it comes time to reward creativity, most firms behave like the Recording Industry Association disbursing royalties: Engineers are expected to be creative and grateful just to keep a job. Ironically, only the "garage band" firms pay for creativity. Still, this group includes Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, Apple and of course Microsoft. But outside these few firms, most corporations view engineering as just a job that can be eliminated when the bottom line gets tight.
The net result is that "engineering creativity" gets rechanneled into activities that do not yield a revenue stream, such as accounting. The U.S. seems to have forgotten that you make money making things. Yes, selling does generate a revenue stream, but you have to sell something. Companies seem to have forgotten that you should reward the people who make the somethings that get sold.
James Finkel
Engineering Manager
B.E. Wallace Products
Frazer, Pa.
I notice this essay wasn't about "Our Humanities Ph.D. Deficit." Interestingly, though there's not much money in the various fields in the humanities, U.S. universities seem to have no problem finding American graduate students to fill doctoral programs in, say, Critical Feminist Theory or whatever is being taught nowadays. Getting a doctorate in said fields most often will not translate into big bucks, and all but the most senior professors will not get paid very much. And yet . . . there is no crisis there.
So why is there a crisis in science and engineering?
It is true that research in science and engineering is generally more expensive, requiring money for space (labs) and equipment (machines that go ping) that the study of humanities does not require. But that's not part of the equation when a student is deciding to go for a Ph.D. in engineering vs. an M.B.A. That decision has usually been made long before graduate school.
We don't have enough American Ph.D. students in science and engineering because we don't have enough undergraduate students in science and engineering. And the lack of science and engineering majors can be traced back further to substandard math education in primary school. Students know that those with math and science knowledge and skills can get much-higher-paying jobs; a person with a degree in applied math will likely be able to snag a cushy job compared with a person with a degree in education, for example. Yet you'll find many more students in education -- not just because of interest, but also because they would not be able to hack it in a math program.
Mary Pat Campbell
Flushing, N.Y.
The gloomy essay from Messrs. Augustine and Richter ignores facts that suggest a considerably brighter picture of the nation's science enterprise. Far from a "flat-lined" research budget, the Bush administration has increased federal R&D spending 45% since 2001 to a record $132 billion. In that same time, funding for basic research increased 26% to $26.6 billion. The U.S. spends one and a half times more on R&D than all the nations in the European Union and three times more than Japan.
The authors point to patents and graduate education in engineering and science, among other things, as competitiveness indicators, but present only part of the story. It is true that patent applications from China, South Korea and other Asian countries have increased, but not at the expense of the U.S. According to recent NSF studies, U.S. patent applications in 2003 were at an all-time high of 188,941, or 55% of the total -- the same on average for the past 20 years.
According to the National Science Foundation, total S&E graduate enrollments in the U.S. reached a high in 1993 of 435,700, followed by a five-year decline. Since then enrollments have increased, reaching a new peak at 455,355 in 2002. Science and engineering graduate enrollments of U.S. citizens or permanent residents likewise declined steadily since a peak of 330,037 in 1993, reaching a low in 2000 of 290,711. In the two years since 2000, U.S. enrollments have increased 7% to 310,243, indicating a renewed trend toward greater interest in S&E fields.
John H. Marburger III
Washington
(The author is science adviser to President George W. Bush and director, Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.)
URL for this article:
May 11, 2005
In reaction to the May 4 editorial-page commentary "Our Ph.D. Deficit1" by Norman R. Augustine and Burton Richter: The authors are just restating the obvious Wall Street mantra of risk vs. reward. A similar lament was expressed in these pages by the tech executives from firms such as Intel who were upset that their children were not becoming engineers. Given the time and effort of becoming an engineer, who wants to be unemployed every few years? Too, because engineering salaries barely keep track with inflation, why choose your lifetime salary the day you graduate from college? One college classmate of mine with a master's degree was featured in a New York Times article as making just $45,000 after 20 years. (By the way, he was being laid off.)
When it comes time to reward creativity, most firms behave like the Recording Industry Association disbursing royalties: Engineers are expected to be creative and grateful just to keep a job. Ironically, only the "garage band" firms pay for creativity. Still, this group includes Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, Apple and of course Microsoft. But outside these few firms, most corporations view engineering as just a job that can be eliminated when the bottom line gets tight.
The net result is that "engineering creativity" gets rechanneled into activities that do not yield a revenue stream, such as accounting. The U.S. seems to have forgotten that you make money making things. Yes, selling does generate a revenue stream, but you have to sell something. Companies seem to have forgotten that you should reward the people who make the somethings that get sold.
James Finkel
Engineering Manager
B.E. Wallace Products
Frazer, Pa.
I notice this essay wasn't about "Our Humanities Ph.D. Deficit." Interestingly, though there's not much money in the various fields in the humanities, U.S. universities seem to have no problem finding American graduate students to fill doctoral programs in, say, Critical Feminist Theory or whatever is being taught nowadays. Getting a doctorate in said fields most often will not translate into big bucks, and all but the most senior professors will not get paid very much. And yet . . . there is no crisis there.
So why is there a crisis in science and engineering?
It is true that research in science and engineering is generally more expensive, requiring money for space (labs) and equipment (machines that go ping) that the study of humanities does not require. But that's not part of the equation when a student is deciding to go for a Ph.D. in engineering vs. an M.B.A. That decision has usually been made long before graduate school.
We don't have enough American Ph.D. students in science and engineering because we don't have enough undergraduate students in science and engineering. And the lack of science and engineering majors can be traced back further to substandard math education in primary school. Students know that those with math and science knowledge and skills can get much-higher-paying jobs; a person with a degree in applied math will likely be able to snag a cushy job compared with a person with a degree in education, for example. Yet you'll find many more students in education -- not just because of interest, but also because they would not be able to hack it in a math program.
Mary Pat Campbell
Flushing, N.Y.
The gloomy essay from Messrs. Augustine and Richter ignores facts that suggest a considerably brighter picture of the nation's science enterprise. Far from a "flat-lined" research budget, the Bush administration has increased federal R&D spending 45% since 2001 to a record $132 billion. In that same time, funding for basic research increased 26% to $26.6 billion. The U.S. spends one and a half times more on R&D than all the nations in the European Union and three times more than Japan.
The authors point to patents and graduate education in engineering and science, among other things, as competitiveness indicators, but present only part of the story. It is true that patent applications from China, South Korea and other Asian countries have increased, but not at the expense of the U.S. According to recent NSF studies, U.S. patent applications in 2003 were at an all-time high of 188,941, or 55% of the total -- the same on average for the past 20 years.
According to the National Science Foundation, total S&E graduate enrollments in the U.S. reached a high in 1993 of 435,700, followed by a five-year decline. Since then enrollments have increased, reaching a new peak at 455,355 in 2002. Science and engineering graduate enrollments of U.S. citizens or permanent residents likewise declined steadily since a peak of 330,037 in 1993, reaching a low in 2000 of 290,711. In the two years since 2000, U.S. enrollments have increased 7% to 310,243, indicating a renewed trend toward greater interest in S&E fields.
John H. Marburger III
Washington
(The author is science adviser to President George W. Bush and director, Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President.)
URL for this article:
# posted by reckoner @ 12:59 PM 
