<p>Hey</p>
<p>I have concerns on if engineering is as a profession homophobic.
I have read a variety of things on engineering which have convinced me that engineering is as a profession homophobic
So is engineering anti-gay and homophobic?
or is it more tolerent than i thought?</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>This is a very good question I am interested in and cant answer</p>
<p>I would say that there are less gays in engineering than in liberal arts for sure. I have noticed the lack of liberals and since you cant really tell if people are gay, I'll rely on that (also not very good but it is a better tolerance monitor than most other things [more liberal frats are more likely to have gays, minorities than conservative frats]).</p>
<p>It is a highly rich, white, conservative profession. There are many organizations trying to change this but gays along with other minorities are in very low numbers in engineering. This will hopefully change as I am tired of being the only Hispanic in my class (although I may not know your situation, I know what it is like being a minority).</p>
<p>In my chemE class I couldn't tell you anyone who was gay. I would have to say I don't really know off-hand any engineers that are gay but that just might be the social situations I put myself in. I may not run across them b/c I don't try.</p>
<p>actually in my java class, we had 3 gays. You could tell they were gay and 2 of them were seeing each other.</p>
<p>Both did great in the class, so i cant say they were bad.</p>
<p>
Wow. Just, wow. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>this is you think that asians aren't a minority</p>
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It is a highly rich, white, conservative profession
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<p>I don't know that I can agree with that. </p>
<p>I grant that the profession may be white, but no more so than the general population, and certainly not the engineering student population. I don't know about UIUC, but I can assure you that Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech, and MIT engineering students can attest to the fact that engineering classes are often times majority-Asian, and there are entire engineering classes where almost everybody is Asian (either Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Pakistani, etc.) and there might not even be a single white person in the whole class. Hence, people in Cambridge often times joke that MIT actually stands for "Made in Taiwan". </p>
<p>I would also especially point to the graduate engineering schools. It has been shown that in many engineering disciplines and the top engineering schools, the majority of doctorates conferred are given to foreign nationals, mostly to Asian foreign nationals. And of those American citizens who do earn such doctorates, a highly disproportionate number of them are earned by Asian-Americans. </p>
<p>I would also point out that even in the engineering working world, the presence of Asian-Americans makes itself felt far and wide. There are entire swaths of Silicon Valley in which you could live and work without having to speak a single word of English, but instead speaking Mandarin, Cantonese, and maybe some Hindi/Urdu, Korean, and Vietnamese. The same thing is true at many places of the Highway 128 Tech corridor near Boston and many of the other tech/engineering enclaves in the country. White engineers who work in these areas actually report feeling like the minority because of the presence of so many Asians.</p>
<p>I also don't particularly buy the notion that the engineering profession is rich or somehow attracts rich people. I think that is far far more true of fields like financial services, law, consulting, and the like. Engineering will get you a nice solid middle-class lifestyle and in fact is probably the marketable undergraduate degree you can get, but unless you make it big in a tech startup company, engineering is probably not going to make you rich. If you want to be rich, you gotta get into investment banking, venture capital, hedge funds, private equity firms, and the like. </p>
<p>Besides, think of it this way. Engineering is a difficult major. If you come from a rich background and you know that Daddy is going to hook you up, then why study something hard like engineering? Why study hard if you don't have to? Take a look at George Bush and John Kerry - 2 guys who came from rich backgrounds and consequently didn't give a damn about studying hard in college, and both of them consequently had mediocre college grades. They didn't care, and it was obvious why they didn't care - they knew they were going to get ahead on their connections so they knew they didn't have to study hard. </p>
<p>sakky, I believe a 'C' was more respectable then, what with the lesser grade inflation then. I think your comparison is a little unfair.</p>
<p>As a counterpoint, engineers may earn the highest incomes, though this requires a great deal of entrepenuership. Most often the entrepeneurs are the richest. Look at Bill gates, mark cuban, sam walton and others. Many of the richest became so by self employment.</p>
<p>Obviously a 'C' was more respectable back in the old days and that there has been tremendous grade inflation since those days. Nevertheless, the truth is, both Bush and Kerry have freely admitted that they weren't exactly the most dedicated of students while in college. Bush admitted that he spent too much of his college days partying and drinking. Kerry admitted that he was more interested in learning how to fly planes than in studying. </p>
<p>I believe their attitudes (and that of Al Gore, who, contrary to popular belief, was also not a particularly strong college student either when he was at Harvard), demonstrates their motivations. Basically, they all knew that they had rich connections backing them up so all they had to do was pass their classes. They all knew that they were going to get hooked up, so they didn't bother to study hard because they knew they didn't have to study hard to get ahead. </p>
<p>You can see it even today. How many scions of rich families are studying difficult subjects today? I would say not many. Heck, if I came from wealth and privilege, I'd major in the easiest subject I could find. Why work hard when you don't have to? </p>
<p>It is clearly true that the path to riches is through ownership of some kind, whether it's through having your own business, or investments, or something like that. However, I maintain that an engineering undergraduate degree is still one of the most marketable undergraduate degrees you can get for, if nothing else, it can deliver to you a solid middle-class income, something that many other undergrad degrees cannot deliver. I believe this is one of the reasons why engineering is so attractive to Asians - because many Asians come to the US poor (at least, relative to the standards of the US), and so they see an engineering degree as a way to solidify their economic lot.</p>
<p>I was talking about minorities that are thought to be minorities (URMs) like blacks or hispanics, women, or gays. And yes engineering does make you rich in my sense of the word. Maybe not the riches you know Saaky since you know how to make the most money ever. But Asians are just the second white at college. No big deal. Sorry if that offends you but I don't mean it in any offensive way. (I do like white people. My family is white.)</p>
<p>What I am saying there are more diverse majors than engineering. I'm not saying it's only white, rich, conservative but I'm saying it's like that than most other majors you'll run into. That will change as engineering is understood by more and more people.</p>
<p>I mean look at what our future engineers' backgrounds are: a relative or parent in engineering, that grew up in the suburbs. They know it's a good lifestyle (saaky middle class to you is upper class to me. I must be way further down but believe me they definitely live in the nice suburbs in IL.) I'm not talking rich rich Bill Gates and the millionaires club. I'm saying rich enough to pick a good school in the northern suburbs of Chicago. That's rich enough for me.</p>
<p>So are there majors that are more diverse. Yes chemical engineering is very diverse with gender being almost if not more than half women. Blacks & Hispanics are becoming more and more prevalent. Asians have ruled the classroom and business world with Caucasians for many years now. Are we coming into an age where diversity is more accepted.</p>
<p>I was basing my descision purely on numbers and comparision with other majors (which are much more diverse, not even Saaky can deny that). I think it shouldn't matter if you are gay and want to engineering but I am saying is don't be surprised when you see an journalism class or music class (nothing against the majors but again) with more people you would like to be with than an engineering class.</p>
<p>PS: Out of pure interest, I did a quick search on facebook for each major engineering major for undergrad gay engineers. So I found that there are 20 openly gay guys in engineering. Over 40 are bi. I didn't account for faking it for humorous purposes (which does happen more than you'd think at my school). By the time I got to the girls I knew there was little chance but I search the majors most common for girls and found 6 out lesbians and about 10-15 more bisexuals. So it surprised me a little (that many bi's?) but overall what I expected. The most gay majors were chemE for girls. CompE, CS, mechE for guys. Overall again what I expected. And many of them were freshmen or seniors at a quick glance so again not surprised. Each class seems more open than the last a normal trend.</p>
<p>"Are we coming into an age where diversity is more accepted."
Implied in this statement is that minorities were previously oppressed in the pursuit engineering, ie they were not 'accepted.' Has that really been the case for the last decade, score, century? There have been female engineers for over 100 years, and only that because engineering schools are not too old either.</p>
<p>It's quite specious to reject engineering or any other study because it lacks 'diversity.' Every discipline is skewed towards some demographic. Should engineering be looked down upon simply because its some groups tend toward it more than others, for being guilty of statistical variance?</p>
<p>I love how meaningless the term minority has become.</p>
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Maybe not the riches you know Saaky since you know how to make the most money ever.
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<p>What's with the sarcasm? Have I attacked you? Are you looking to get banned? </p>
<p>My point is that if engineering as a profession was so well-paying, then why is it that so many engineering students would rather run off to McKinsey or Goldman Sachs? Note - they're not running off to McKinsey because of anything I said. They made that decision all by themselves. So the question is, why are they doing that? It's a legitimate question that deserves a legitimate answer. </p>
<p>I would also argue that the background of the typical engineering student, at least at many top engineering schools, is not a suburban white family. I would argue that a more common background would be an Asian family, either from the suburbs, or perhaps from the streets of Chinatown or Koreatown or Vietnamtown. Or perhaps they were themselves born in Asia and immigrated over. I think back to my engineering upper-division classes, and I would say that in those classes, there were probably more students who were immigrants from Vietnam fleeing poverty and persecution than there were native-born suburban white students and that's not even counting all the immigrants from China, Taiwan, Korea, India, etc. Plenty of these students come from family backgrounds of extremely limited formal education. I happen to know a number of MIT engineering students (all Asian) whose parents could barely read or write. </p>
<p>The real point is that I'm afraid I just don't see all that many suburban whites entering engineering, at least at the top engineering schools. From what I can tell, suburban whites strongly tend to enter other majors instead. The top engineering programs are actually largely, and in many cases predominantly populated by Asians. </p>
<p>Now does engineering probably have fewer gays than other majors? Of course! I don't want to engage in stereotyping, but I think nobody would find it at all surprising to find many more gays majoring in music, dance, theater, art, architecture, and majors like that. That should not be any more surprising than finding lots of Asians in engineering. On the other hand, I am sure that you will find certain professions that are far far less accomodating to gays than the engineering profession is - like the military.</p>
<p>"Implied in this statement is that minorities were previously oppressed in the pursuit engineering, ie they were not 'accepted.' Has that really been the case for the last decade, score, century?"</p>
<p>sure. blacks & hispanics got bad education for the greater part of the century. separate but equal anyone?</p>
<p>well actually most of my friends who are asian are either majoring in engineering or medicine, but their parents are usually educated. most asian immigrants arrived here (at least in the last 20 years) because they already had good technical backgrounds in their respective home countries. hell that's probably the whole reason they got into the country to begin with. </p>
<p>but yes i think the reason why so many asian immigrants are in engineering is that it provides a solid middle class income and it doesn't require a lot of communication to be successful (somethin they woudl obviously not be good at).</p>
<p>hdotchar, blacks and hispanics still do on average get a bad education. Is a school "discriminating" or opposed to "diversity" if it has less or no blacks or hispanics than their general proportion among the population would indicate? Or is the shortage because of other lurking factors like decrepit schooling and to put it lightly, broken homes? </p>
<p>That is not a refutation. Were blacks and hispanics actively discriminated against since say Brown vs. Board (I qualify it as such because illini said what I quoted was recent, ie. "are we coming into an age")? I agree that there was du jour discrimination, in the south and definitely before Brown v. Board and possibly afterwards. Was there truly much discrimination outside the south to support your statements? To say that engineering does not accept diversity because it is not diverse is ridiculous. </p>
<p>There were many unskilled japanese who came over in the 18 and 1900s and were actively discriminated against in CA. But, Asians, at least the Chinese, Korean, Japanese variety, outperform other groups in mathematics and science. In fact, the nationals supposedly perform better than the asian americans.</p>
<p>I love how you, are so quick to attack the most harmless of statements regarding blacks, hispanics, and native americans, and yet are content with making glib generalizations about asians, at least the immigrants. </p>
<p>So, those asian immigrants cannot even converse in their own lanuage? Because asian nationals regardless of whether they study in China or US, pursue engineering in high numbers.</p>
<p>You also lack precision in what you say. Philosophy does not require much 'communication,' as it's quite solitary, but by your logic asian immigrants should just be swelling the ranks of that, right?</p>
<p>i made my statements brief because i didn't feel like typing a lot. first of all, i am asian american and almost every person my parents know are engineering. i would say that yes engineering does nont require as much verbal communication to do fairly well in. (i have been proofreading and editing my dad's medical research papers since freshman year in h.s. and he has relatively good english) in fact my parents feel that verbal communication is a major hindrance in terms of job advancement. </p>
<p>most of the foreign nationals (asian mainly) that study engineering or medicine come here already skilled in a field. in addition i believe that asian culture and the state of asian countries is somewhat more conducive to fields like engineering. </p>
<p>i didn't attack any of your statements. " Implied in this statement is that minorities were previously oppressed in the pursuit engineering, ie they were not 'accepted.'" engineering probably did not selectively single out minorities any more than any other educational pursuit in discrimination, but there have definitely been barriersr to entry into engineering for the aforementioned groups. you made it sound like there hasn't been anything preventing them for the last "decade, score, century". there have definitely been such barriers within the last century.</p>
<p>in addition you state that there have been women engineers for the past 100 years, but this is relatively moot fact since this was a very select few. i never bashed engineering simply due to statistical evidence based upon race or gender. hell i am an engineer and i don't think that racial or gender equity will have any real positive effects on the impact of engineering on society. </p>
<p>"Philosophy does not require much 'communication,' as it's quite solitary, but by your logic asian immigrants should just be swelling the ranks of that, right?"</p>
<p>obviously not because immigrant asians are not going to have outstanding ENGLISH. besides philosophy is much less of a guaranteed future and does not pay well. it would not make economic sense.</p>
<p>nationals generally outperform u.s. studnets on the average in math and science because of the educational system in asian countries. only the best and the brightest even MAKE it college. hell only the best and brightest even make it to high school in china. my cousin is going to be attending xinghua univ (best univ in china) for telecomm. engineering and his studies in h.s. consisted primarily of math and science and that's it. he's been doing more homework in middle school than i did in h.s..</p>
<p>There are certainly people in engineering and other technical professions who could be racist, sexist and/or homophobic. But most major companies are actively recruiting a diverse employee base. Can an openly gay engineer (or any other gay person) become CEO of Intel, Hewlett Packard, Bechtel, McKesson, Chevron, etc.? Probably not.</p>
<p>hdotchar, you said communication. I was making a point about your lack of precision.</p>
<p>The barrier to a more 'diverse' workforce is a lack of talent (and possibly attraction).</p>
<p>"racial or gender equity will have any real positive effects on the impact of engineering on society."
I agree.</p>
<p>It's not truly fair to compare chinese students to american students, because the Chinese take only the top X%, in HS and college. Although, even accounting for that asians still probably outperform americans.</p>
<p>GSP, being 'openly gay' connotes a display of homosexuality, and a lack of professionalism and propriety. That alone is enough to prevent you from a high rank. </p>
<p>Discrimination with regards to factors irrelevant to productivity is always costly. Except, when the discriminatees are in the absolute not more productive than the alternatives (a near impossibility), or when demand for a company's service will respond adversely to a company hiring and promoting certain groups. For instance, if you decide not to hire asians, there is a huge pool of talent that you are losing out on. Other companies will take advantage of your weakness and will have added ammunition to destroy you in a free market.</p>
<p>well i thought this was assumed. we are talking about the engineering workforce in america, where the primary form of communication is english . in any case i typed it at 2:30 in the morning and was tired so whatever.</p>
<p>well the reason i gave that example is because this was beginning to sound like the following: "asians were discriminated against just like blacks and latinos, yet as a minority group they have gone on to outperform whites (if only slightly) in many areas, whereas the former (on the average) is still lagging behind."</p>
<p>and like i said, i dont really believe that this is the true picture. a lot of of the foreign nationals that came here didn't come here only performing menial labor. the fact is a lot of them were top students with degrees already that left due to economic or political problems with their respective countries. almost all of my parents friends came here ALREADY having med degrees/ multiple bachelor's degrees/phD's. in turn, asian parents i believe cultivate grounds for their children to be better. asian parents tend to be less accepting of their children's weaknesses than caucasian parents (generallyl speaking). if your not good at something, that meant you stayed up later and woke up earlier. a lot of asian parents give their kids homework and send them to all sorts of academic related things (i know i've been there). taking all of this into account i'm saying it just doesn't really surprise me all that much that asians as a minority tend to outscore a lot of other nationalities when i comes to academic things. in fact i even read in a psych book that asians tend to "act" (this is inaccurate word) about 15-20 IQ pts higher than their actual IQ. lastly i think that asians tend to major in science/engineering related fields because their parents were, and a lot of the people they knew growing up were. asians dont really have too many role models in the media or sports, and the environment cultivated by a lot of asian parents doesn't really encourage them into going into these fields. i don't believe that a lack of talent is the barrier of entry into engineering, but rather beliefs and general attitude of students entering into college. </p>
<p>lastly about openly gay individuals. i dont believe that these people make it to, say CEO, CFO positions, becuase these positions are not really handed out solely based upon merit or accomplishment. there are a lot of image issues etc... and fear that perhaps the business will not bring as much business if the leader was gay. the fear of discrimination i believe is what really keeps them from moving up. i don't really think this is discrimination however, because i think this is fully justifiable from a business standpoint, and no one is going to appoint a leade r if that means its going to be bad for business.</p>
<p>"a lot of of the foreign nationals that came here didn't come here only performing menial labor."
Depends when.</p>
<p>"i don't believe that a lack of talent is the barrier of entry into engineering"
If certain groups vastly underperform in comparison to others, there will be an underrepresentation of those groups. Engineering entails rigorous instruction. Without the proper prepatory background, you will (likely) be unable to enter, underperform, or even fail out.</p>
<p>PS: If you mention IQ too liberally, you may have people calling you racist.</p>
<p>If you mention IQ too liberally, you may have people calling you racist.</p>
<p>well they're just retarded and i could give two damns about how politically correct that was.</p>