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So an EE degree isn't a dead end? My uncle worked for TRW in California as an electrical engineer and says EE jobs are on the decline because of outsourcing, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics agrees.
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<p>Uh, no it doesn't. The BLS says that the growth of EE jobs in the US will be slow, but it doesn't actually say that the number of jobs will actually decline.</p>
<p>[Engineers[/url</a>]</p>
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I guess it is a sad reality. Americans want to be paid, and when you have other countries whose college classes are 40 percent engineering students and we are only graduating 5 percent, that tells you something.
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<p>Well, to be fair, one major reason for that apparently disparity is that, in other countries, the vast majority of people won't even go to college at all. Of all of the large countries, the US has by far the largest percentage of people who actually go to college. {Look at it this way. According to the UN, 40% of all adults in India don't even possess basic literacy.} </p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India%5DLiteracy">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India]Literacy</a> in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#outlook%5DEngineers%5B/url">http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#outlook)</p>
<p>China is doing better, but the fact remains that the standards of what constitutes 'engineering education' are significantly lower than in the US. A lot of 'engineers' in China possess what is basically the equivalent of an associate's degree in the US. Using comparable educational standards, researchers at Duke found * In terms of degrees awarded per one million citizens, the United States awarded 758 degrees; China, 497 degrees; and India, 199. *</p>
<p>Report</a> Seeks Reality Behind Number of Engineering Graduates</p>
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And these are guys who will get paid less, for arguably better work. Why have one engineer on a project when you can be paying 3 or 4 for the same price to work and do exactly the same thing. You can definatly get more accomplished. I see it everyday. The american engineer is a dying species, we still have the best universities in the world, yet that is going to be very arguable in the near future.
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<p>I don't know if I would go so far as to say that the US engineer is a 'dying' species, but it is certainly a 'changing' species. I certainly agree that if all you know how to do is work on technical specifications in a lab environment alone, with limited contact with other divisions in the company, then sure, your job may well be outsourced. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I would argue that if you can combine good technical abilities along with strong communications skills and cultural savviness such that you know not only how to build technology, but which technologies to build and why those technologies are useful to customers, then I expect you to be highly employable. What that means is that the future US engineer will be highly entrepreneurial, will have a strong rapport with customers regarding what they really want (even when the customers themselves don't really know what they want), and will be strong marketers of their own technologies who can effectively communicate why their technologies are useful. In other words, engineers will learn to be like Steve Jobs: a guy who not only knows technology, but also knows what customers like and how to hype his products. </p>
<p>I am highly optimistic about the US startup environment, as the US is still by far the world's leader when it comes to technological entrepreneurship. For example, while I can't prove this, I would not doubt that a greater amount of successful technology entrepreneurship (however you want to measure it ) has occurred in just Silicon Valley alone than occurs in all foreign countries combined. People all over the world use the Google, YouTube, Yahoo, eBay, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley dotcom firms. They use Cisco routers, Intel or AMD microprocessors, Oracle databases, Adobe pdf files, and Apple Iphones/Ipods. But honestly, how many technical products from foreign companies do you use? Of the ones that you do use, how many were actually produced by foreign entrepreneurial firms (i.e. founded in the last few decades), and not just very old, long-standing foreign firms? {For example, Sony is a young firm by Japanese standards, yet is still more than 60 years old. European firms such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Siemens were founded in literally the 1800's.} Only in the US do you grow new, well-capitalized technology titans in such a short period of time. Google for example, is amazingly only 10 years old and is now worth about $100 billion, or a $10 bn/year rate of wealth generation. </p>
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Education is of high quality, but cheaper, in lots of these emerging nations,
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<p>As I stated above, I think this assertion is overhyped. As I mentioned above, the education system as a whole in India is not very good at all; millions of Indians do not receive even a basic education. China's lower-level education system is better, but China still cannot match the strength of the US higher education system. Certainly, the IIT's of India are of very high quality. But they educate only a tiny tiny fraction of the people: the vast vast majority of Indians can never dream of going to IIT.</p>
<p>The United States is one of the few nations in the world where practically anybody has access to some kind of higher education, even if it's only at a community college. This is simply not the case in many other countries.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, I certainly agree that one area for very quick improvement for the US is the realm of K-12 education. That is where the US is quite mediocre. </p>
<p>Probably an even more acute target for improvement is to change the culture of American kids towards education. Sadly, within the US youth culture, knowledge, especially science/math knowledge, is not considered to be "cool". I remember in my high school how many kids spent more energy on their social lives and in being popular than in learning. To paraphrase Thomas Friedman: in China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears, while in this country, Britney Spears is Britney Spears, and that's the problem.</p>