TIME magazine's cover article "Is America flunking science?"

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
41

<p>
[quote]
But what matters most is not the sheer NUMBER of engineers/scientists but the quality. Yes, yes I understand, quality can be fished out of any big enough tank but it's not like the scientists/engineers of America today are going broke and hungry. I have no fears about being able to support myself upon graduation so the 'career-path' that I choose is one that I love. Incentives such as higher pay and more benefits could attract more workers to the field but are those the kinds of workers we WANT to be attracting? If we're after sheer man-power, sure, but if we're after innovation and advancement, it takes a dedication far beyond the desire for money.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's not the sheer number of engineers that I am worried about, it's the quality of them. Right now, many of the best and most brilliant minds in America are not getting engineering/science degrees, and even of those that are, many of them don't pursue careers in engineering/science, but rather are pursuing careers in business, specifically consulting and banking. I would argue that if the US wants to be the best science nation in the world, you have to do something to lure your very best human capital to science, and not to other fields.</p>

<p>What I am basically asking is why can't there be a company that pays 6-figures to start, and 7 or 8 figure, or even 9-figure packages to highly experienced top scientists and engineers? Why not? That's the sort of pay scales that the investment banks use. Is it any wonder that many of the very best science students leave science for banking? By paying that kind of money, you would ensure yourself of getting an all-star cast of engineers who I am quite certain would produce something that would be more than worth its while. After all, the top investment banks get paid millions, but they generate hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Big movie stars may get $25 million a film, but their presence draws in hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket revenues and DVD sales. I'm quite certain that the superstar engineers who created the Internet created many billions of dollars in wealth, but they didn't get no 8 or 9 figure salaries. Why not? </p>

<p>
[quote]
I still don't get why the company would want to pay more for the US employee. Maybe it's my inexperience in labor economics, but I don't seem to completely grasp your point as to why they aren't increasing outsourcing. Instead, you're pointing back to the companies splurging on various other financial aspects (like consulting) and thus concluding that they aren't really concerned with saving money. If you could elaborate on this specific point, it would be great.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>My point about outsourcing is that it only works in specific instances. Specifically, it works quite poorly when you are dealing with positions that require a lot of intuitive knowledge and tight social circles, where innovation is created by interaction within various parties. This is precisely why outsourcing works quite poorly when it comes to management consulting and banking. Both of these professions derive their value-add off of large amounts of social knowledge and intuition that is not easily outsourced. That's why McKinsey doesn't just load up on lots and lots of low-priced Indians and send them flying around the world on consulting gigs. </p>

<p>Engineering, too, however, derives its value from a tremendous amount of social knowledge and personal interaction. For example, this is why companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple haven't simply fired all of their American engineers and relocated their entire companies to India. In fact, they are actually EXPANDING their American engineering staff. Ask yourself - why are they doing that? Are they being stupid? I don't think so. I think, rather, that they see the value of having engineers who are deeply intertwined with American pop culture. For example, the IPod has been successful precisely because it was designed to cater to the tastes of the American teenager. Moreover, much of those companies star engineers are already well-established in their US locations and the innovation happens only when you put a bunch of star engineers together so that they can bounce ideas off each other. Those star engineers aren't going to move to India. So if you want to continue to utilize their talents effectively, you are going to have to surround those guys with other American engineers. </p>

<p>Lest that sound 'squishy' to you, I would point out that the exact same philosophy is followed by businesses when they have to determine where they should locate their headquarters. Have you ever asked yourself why is it that so many companies have located their headquarters in some of the most expensive and glamorous cities in the world, like NYC, San Francisco, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sydney, etc. Why do they do that? It's extremely expensive to rent offices in these cities. Why don't all these companies simply relocate their headquarters to some cheap village in the boonies? Why is it that all of the world's investment banks have offices in super-expensive Manhattan - why don't they simply just relocate their offices to cheap Wyoming or Missisippi instead? The answer is simple - it's far easier to do business in a big city, rather than in some village in the middle of nowhere. You can do business deals in a big city because all of your partners and competitors are there. There are lots of highly talented people you can hire in the big city, as opposed to off in the boonies. If you need to get lawyers, accountants, advertisers, consultants, bankers - basically any business service you need, they are all right there, as opposed to if you are in the boonies, you may not have any of those services readily available. </p>

<p>Or forget about even the big city. Why is it that so many of the hedge funds of the world have offices around Greenwich, Connecticut? Greenwich is a small town - but it is one of the richest and most expensive towns in the world. So why don't all of these hedge funds simply relocate themselves to the cheap boonies? Why are so many venture capital firms located around Menlo Park, another extremely expensive place to do business? Why do all of these VC's just all move to Mississippi to save money on office space? </p>

<p>The point is that sheer proximity to the action is extremely valuable. People are willing to pay thousands of dollars to get courtside basketball tickets. Proximity is valuable. These companies aren't stupid about wanting to run offices in these extremely expensive locations. They are willing to pay it because they want the benefits of proximity. </p>

<p>Similarly, I think that certain engineering jobs can also benefit tremendously from proximity. Sales-engineers, which are engineers who are charismatic and well-spoken who accompany a salesman to discuss the technical benefits of buying a particular product, immediately come to mind. So do technical consultants. </p>

<p>What I am saying is that just like there is benefit for companies to pay huge amounts of money to run a Manhattan office and pay tens of millions of dollars for a hotshot banker, there are clearly some engineering jobs that are also worth paying a lot of money for. Not all engineers, of course, but some. Yet from what I can tell, no engineers are getting paid true superstar money, unless they start their own company. I think this needs to change.</p>

42

<p>
[quote]
Sure there aren't many INCENTIVES to study science right now but there aren't any major DETERRENTS, either. People with intense interests in science and engineering aren't being turned away from the field right now due to financial implausibility, most everyone I know here loves what they study and haven't given much thought to future salaries. I mean sure, if you want to offer us heaps of money upon graduation we'll stick out our hands and gladly take it, but we are and we would be here regardless.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Actually, yeah, there is a major deterrant to studying science and engineering. It's not financial. It's the simple sheer difficulty of science/engineering, particularly the GRADING of it. </p>

<p>The truth is, science/engineering courses tend to assign more work and grade harder than do other courses. People see that and they are confronted with a choice - do they really want to work harder than their peers will work, or not? Which then leads to the natural question of what benefit they will get out of doing that extra work. If the answer is "not much benefit", then rational players will simply conclude that they shouldn't major in science/engineering because the benefit is not worth the extra work. The fall of Communism has taught us that people don't just work hard just to work hard, they have to be given incentives to work hard. If those incentives are weak, then less people are going to work hard. </p>

<p>Hence, I would say that one of the major ways to get more people to major in science/engineering is to simply lighten up on the grading, or make the grading of nonscience courses harder. I have always been a proponent of 'grading reform' - that is, equalizing the grading schemes used by science and non-science departments.</p>

43

<p>Yeah I wrote that before I started my physics pset. I dont feel so good about science and engineering right now.</p>

44

<p>And to extend sakky's argument, science and engineering aren't just difficult during the undergraduate years, they're always difficult -- both in terms of subject matter and in terms of the sheer number of hours you have to put in to succeed. </p>

<p>For example, I've been talking to biology graduate students during my interviews, and most of them are putting in 50-60 hour weeks in the lab. Then they get their PhDs and move to postdoctoral positions, at which they're putting in 50-60 hour weeks as well (according to a recent survey in the journal Nature). There's obviously a pretty serious burnout problem in academic science -- it's fine to work that hard for a few months, or a few years, but many people just lose the desire to put up with it after a few years.</p>

<p>Of course, changing grading in undergraduate courses is something which can actually be done. I'm not sure that anything can be done about the attrition rate in higher levels of the science/engineering career path.</p>

45

<p>Molliebatmit, to that I would say that much of the blame probably lies with the academic science culture itself. What I have found is that a lot of professors and departments sniff at the notion that any of their students would ever want to take jobs outside of the ivory tower. Many highly impressionable graduate students then internalize that attitude and begin thinking that it's either tenure-track at a big-name school, or bust. </p>

<p>So take these guys who work 50-60 hours a week in the lab, and then 50-60 hours a week in a low-paid postdoc. The honest truth is that a lot of these people don't really have to work that hard, if all they want is to just get finish their PhD and get a regular job. Yes, if they worked less hard, they'd probably get worse results and their papers wouldn't be as impressive and powerful. But so what? You'd still graduate. No, the reason why they work that hard is because they want to get the amazing results and compile the amazing record to maximize their shot at getting that tenure-track position at a major university. In short, they're going for the brass ring.</p>

<p>What I would say is that it's not that bad to get your PhD and then go into industry. It's not that bad to get your PhD and then become a high school teacher, or to become a prof at a no-name school. There are plenty of small colleges and universities out there where most of the profs have only master's degrees. </p>

<p>For example, one guy I used to work with is now a prof at the University of Southern Missisippi, and he says that in his department, he is one of the few profs with a PhD. Most of them have just master's. Sure, USM isn't MIT, but it's not that bad. He says that he has lots of research freedom and funding and he can pursue whatever he likes. Because he has a PhD and most of the other profs don't, he's considered to be a major authority and bigshot at USM, and he's only been there for a few years. </p>

<p>So what I am saying is that a lot of these graduate students are working far far beyond what they need to do to just finish their degree at a minimal level. They don't really HAVE to work that hard. And that's what causes the burnout. It's not really that the PhD itself is so demanding that it is causing the burnout. Rather it's the chase for those coveted tenure-track jobs at the top 10 departments. That is what is really causing the burnout. Just getting a PhD means getting some decent results and writing a decent paper. While that's obviously no cakewalk, it's clearly a lot easier than trying to get superstar results and writing a superstar paper. </p>

<p>So what I think we really need is a change in the cultural mindset. Not every doctoral student out there is going to become a Full Professor at a major department and be gunning for the Nobel Prize. In fact, most won't. Hence, I think a change in mindset needs to occur where people are told that it's OK if you end up in industry, or in a small college, or end up teaching high school. These are perfectly respectable and honorable things to do. </p>

<p>And in fact, I think schools and the government should help their students find these kinds of opportunities. For example, Bush has talked about about high schools need more qualified science teachers. I agree. So why not offer an integrated program in which science doctoral students can complete their teaching certificates? Clearly anybody who gets a PhD in a science knows the stuff far far beyond what most current science teachers know. And most doctoral students have to work as TA's at some point. So why not integrate that TA work with a formal teaching certification program? These are the sorts of things that will expand the opportunity available for grad students. </p>

<p>So even those grad students who don't make it and have to take a consolation master's, at least they will have a valuable teaching certification and can go teach in high school. So at least they leave school with something highly marketable.</p>

46

<p>" Is it any wonder that many of the very best science students leave science for banking"
exactly the point i was trying to make....that the low pay forces even passionate engineers from colleges like MIT to leave engineering and join ibanking and all.</p>

<p>"The fall of Communism has taught us that people don't just work hard just to work hard, they have to be given incentives to work hard."
exactly. I mean ok I for one love science and its sort of very important to me thats why i took it up in high school in the first place...but if i work hard i would also like to have a big house, an expensive car, cash to spend on holidays, money to send my kids to expensive school and money to provide my family with the very best...
it kinda S ucks to know that an expert mechanical engineer who designs the coolest and state of the arts cars is not paid enough so that he can buy his own creation...Is this fair? No it isn't</p>

47

<p>sakky:</p>

<p>Sorry for the latency in my response. </p>

<p>Thanks for the clarification, I now better understand your assertions. Your points about social circles, intuition and strategic positioning seem to make sense. These certainly make intuitive sense, but don't explain why outsourcing is INCREASING. The IT industry, for example, is relatively new in India and is expanding rapidly. </p>

<p>Also, I don't get why traditional supply and demand wouldn't explain science/engineering vocation salaries. I agree with you that the laws might not hold for high supply, as you explained in the investment banking scenario, but I don't get how low supply (in terms of engineers) and an evident demand, wouldn't increase salary. </p>

<p>Lastly, thanks for all the informative responses.</p>

48

<p>" but I don't get how low supply (in terms of engineers) and an evident demand, wouldn't increase salary. "
yeah this part also has me confused..</p>

49

<p>
[quote]
Thanks for the clarification, I now better understand your assertions. Your points about social circles, intuition and strategic positioning seem to make sense. These certainly make intuitive sense, but don't explain why outsourcing is INCREASING. The IT industry, for example, is relatively new in India and is expanding rapidly.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Obviously outsourcing is increasing in certain fields. The reasons for this basically have to do with political/economic reforms and technology. China and India are far more advanced today in terms of legal and political reforms than they were in the past. That is why both countries have been such large beneficiaries of FDI (foreign direct investment) recently. Technology too has greatly benefitted both countries, particularly in the case of the Indian IT outsourcing industry. Experience from Y2k debugging coupled with supercheap bandwidth and global networks has allowed India to become a major player in IT outsourcing.</p>

<p>However, just because India is growing its IT industry doesn't mean that other countries have to lose. A perennial fallacy of people's understanding of economics is that all markets are a zero-sum game where I win only if somebody else loses. Healthy markets are rarely zero-sum games. Just because one country gains a job doesn't mean that another country has to lose one. Both sides usually gain. And in fact, that is exactly what has happened. In fact, the latest study, as profiled by the NYTimes, states that US Information Technology employment is actually HIGHER today than it was during the boom.</p>

<p>"...employment in the information technology industry was higher today than it was at the peak of the dot-com bubble, despite the growth of offshore outsourcing in the last few years."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/technology/23outsource.html?_r=1&oref=slogin%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/technology/23outsource.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>So you might ask how is that possible? Why wouldn't companies just simply outsource their entire IT staff to India to take advantage of cheap labor there? And my response is that they won't do that for the same reason that the Wall Street banks don't all relocate their offices to some cheap village in rural Mississippi. The fact is, many jobs out there, even in IT, require close proximity among workers to be useful. Those IT and engineering jobs that require close interaction with marketing, with sales, with finance, with procurement, and with other business functions are better performed locally using local engineers. Those IT and engineering jobs that require a close intuitive feel for pop culture will obviously be performed best by people who understand that culture. That's why many of the Internet sites that are so popular with the US youth movement, like MySpace or Xanga or Facebook.com were created by Americans. </p>

<p>However, I think the biggest factor that outsourcing brings to the table is that it allows for different types of jobs to emerge. I'll give you an example. IT outsourcing allows for easier entrepreneurship. For example, MyYearbook.com was largely coded in India. Keep in mind that this Internet site was founded by 2 high school kids on a shoestring budget. If Indian outsourcing was unavailable, and expensive American developers had to have been hired instead, MyYearbook would probably have never even gotten off the ground. Hence, Indian outsourcing allows for more people who have interesting and innovative ideas to bring them to market, without being deterred from either having to learn how to do heavy coding themselves, or bringing on expensive coders-for-hire. So in this case, you can't really say that outsourcing didn't really 'destroy' any IT jobs at Myyearbook. Myyearbook wouldn't exist at all without outsourcing. </p>

<p>There are also jobs available in managing the outsourcing process. For example, I know a guy who is graduating from MIT who is taking a job in Apple in which he will manage the sourcing of Ipod components and parts from Asia, especially China. So basically, he will serve as the liaison between the Ipod designers in California and the 3rd party parts-makers in China. The job will entail a lot of travelling to China. In fact, that travel was a big reason why he took the job - he wanted the opportunity to travel to China. These are the kinds of middleman jobs that will be expected to grow because of outsourcing. </p>

<p>{In case you're wondering, he's not a Chinese-American. He's white and cannot speak any Chinese.}</p>

<p>Finally, outsourcing allows companies to save money, which companies will inevitably use to invest into other functions. Again, using the Ipod as an example. When Apple was developing the Ipod in the early 2000's, Apple made the decision to outsource most of the manufacturing of the Ipod. That allowed Apple to pour more money into Ipod development and design. Apple hired and continue to hire hundreds of design and development engineers to come up with the next version of the Ipod. If Apple had never outsourced Ipod manufacturing, then Apple would never have been able to hire all those designers. Let's not forget that the major reason why the Ipod has been so successful is because it is so well designed. If Apple had never hired all of those designers, then the Ipod would probably not be as well designed, and the Ipod might never have been a hit. The point is that outsourcing gave Apple the flexibility to optimize its resource allocation to create a hit product. Outsourcing in general allows companies to devote more resources to other fields. </p>

<p>Now, don't get me wrong. Obviously there will be a number of specific jobs in the US that will clearly be eliminated. In particular, those jobs that involve nothing but coding with few interactions with anybody else will probably be outsourced. While that's obviously gut-wrenching for those people who are affected, that is the nature of a dynamic economy. Sometimes, certain jobs have to be destroyed (or never created at all) in order for other jobs to be created. For economic growth to happen at all, it means that some economic players have to start doing things differently. How can you expect your country to grow economically if everybody is just going to do exactly the same thing that they have always done? Economic growth means change. For example, for the PC industry to grow, the typewriter industry had to die. That was obviously bad for the people working for typewriter companies, but it had to happen if you want economic growth. What if the government had intervened and shut down the PC industry in order to save the jobs of those typewriter company employees? Does anybody think the country would have been better off? </p>

<p>To that, I would say that those people who are affected have to learn different skills. I agree that the company should help those people to develop those new skills, but those people have to make the decision to move to where the economy is. For example, I would say that engineers need to develop skills in business, in sales, in public speaking, in communication, and in management. Somebody who can combine engineering knowledge with the ability to articulate that knowledge to non-engineers will be valuable in this country. Pure engineers who just want to sit in front of a computer and code away and never interact with anybody face-to-face will probably see their jobs outsourced. </p>

<p>
[quote]
but I don't get how low supply (in terms of engineers) and an evident demand, wouldn't increase salary. "
yeah this part also has me confused..

[/quote]
</p>

<p>But that's the fallacy right there - that there is such demand. From what I can tell, there really isn't as much demand as some people think there is. </p>

<p>Now, don't get me wrong. I think there is definitely a lot of demand for mediocre engineers. People who get engineering degrees from no-name schools make almost as much as those who come from elite engineering schools. For these people, engineering is a really sweet deal. So I perfectly agree that engineering is a great deal for a lot of the masses. While there may not be a huge aggregate demand for engineers, there is even LESS demand for all those other majors out there like "Leisure Studies" or "Peace and Conflict Studies" or "American Studies" or some of these disciplines. I believe that a lot of these people who are majoring in these fields would be far better off becoming engineers. For example, a guy who is decently intelligent but not a genius can go to a no-name school to get a chemical engineering degree and make 50k to start. That's a pretty sweet deal for that guy. </p>

<p>However, it seems to me that there really isn't that much demand in the US for superstar engineers. For the superstars, I would say that you'd probably be better off becoming a lawyer, a doctor, a banker, or a consultant. For whatever reason, the engineering companies in the US are simply unwilling to pay a premium for superstar engineering talent.</p>

50

<p>Sakky's posts are always so long... whom does he expect to read them? You might get your ideas across more efectively if you wrote shorter messages, with less repetition.</p>

51

<p>For those who don't want to read them, don't read them. At least not all of them. Just skim over the parts you like and only carefully read the parts that interest you.</p>

52

<p>Well, that was somehow the point. If you write very long messages, readers will ignore a few parts, and you won't be choosing what those parts are. Obviously nobody wants to stop you from writing what you want, but if you were more brief you'd have more control over the message.</p>

53

<p>Yeah, but the problem has always been that every time I have tried to write shorter posts, some joker always comes back and complains that my posts aren't nuanced enough, or didn't talk about some detail, or something like that. So basically this is a no-win situation. No matter how long or how short my posts are, somebody will always whine. Hence, I would rather err on the side of length.</p>