Why has society devalued engineering?

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I find it good that people are speaking out about social issues but I feel that at the same time engineering has been devalued.

Our roads and bridges are falling apart and our power grids are failing. Even some parts of our space program are struggling.

Have we as an society stopped aspiring to build an amazing future? Have we become afraid of getting our hands dirty?

Remember the optimism of the 70s.

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Did the Apollo missions lead to this optimism? Did the absence of human spaceflight from American soil for nearly a decade lead to society losing interest in engineering and building a better future?

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Judging by salaries being paid in the market place, there seems to be a great deal of value placed on engineers. What am I missing?

You seem to be talking more about a lack of national vision, which is a much more complicated question. Space flight was sold to a post-WW II generation, caught up in a Cold War battle with communism and its success with Sputnik. Even the Interstate Highway system was sold as a national defense project.

Unifying against a common enemy is a dynamic that has effectively united societies for as long as people settled into city states. But unifying around a set of positive ideals is much more dicey.

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All of the vision is now being driven by private businesses that can move much faster than government managed programs.

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[soapbox]

There was no devaluation of engineering, there was just the devaluation of scientists who were pointing out the problems that these developments were supposed to solve

Your phone with a camera + computer + text + calendar + Navigation ++++ is as impressive a feat of engineering as anything among those photos.

These feats of engineering were planned to reduce pollution and climate change. That is why they never happened.

The thing with building and developing environmentally friendly buildings and vehicles in that it is cheaper for developers, politicians, and people to simply ignore or deny the problem and pass it on the the next generation. That has been, in fact, the philosophy of the majority of voters in the USA from the 1980s to the early 2000s in a nutshell (cutting taxes, not investing in infrastructure, cutting funding for education, etc).

Politicians fought against the policies that would force environmentally friendly cities to be built. So, rather than try to solve the issue of pollution, they simply spent billions on the denial that there is issues of pollutions and climate change, to discredit any scientists whose research demonstrated that these are a problem, and to convince their voters that all the scientists and politicians who were warning about climate issues just wanted to raise taxes.

Their voters voted for anybody who said A. everything is fine, no need to change anything, like get a smaller car or otherwise inconvenience yourself, and B, they (the politicians) want to cut taxes rather than spend money on developing environmentally friendly infrastructure.

The politicians also made it a “moral” value to deny pollution and climate change.

It is, really, no different that from what we have seen with the pandemic. A bunch of corporations and wealthy people wanted to fight any shut down which was costing them money, politicians who were being paid by them attacked the scientists who showed that the pandemic was happening, and that the shutdown would help slow it , and then these politicians created a moral value of denying the pandemic.

They deny that the pandemic is a problem, they claim, instead, that Dr Fauci is the problem. They are against masking, distancing, or vaccination, and anybody who says that these are required to stop people getting sick and dying becomes The Enemy, and they pass laws making these illegal.

Exactly the same as with climate change, They claim that there is no climate change and that the big problem are the scientists who demonstrate climate change. They are against reduction of emissions, reduction of fuel use, and pass laws that make it illegal to have policies that fight climate change, or even mention in any plan or policy that there is climate change.

I mean, people are flat out denying that their friends and neighbors are getting sick and dying, so why is it surprising that the same people are flat out denying that the air and water quality are getting worse, or that the climate is changing?

In fact, the climate change deniers are mostly the same groups as the COVID deniers.

The reason that these things weren’t built is the exact same reason that mask mandates were not enacted in so many places in the USA.

You should have asked

“Why has Society Devalued Medical Research?”

“Why Has Society Devalued Science?”

“Why Has Society Devalued Education?”

The answer would be “some parts of society have devalued them all because they are inconvenient to a bunch of wealthy individuals and corporations, and these have paid off a bunch of politicians to convince people that medical researchers, scientists, and educators are The Enemy”.

[/soapbox]

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I think that engineering has almost been too successful. People have gotten the mistaken impression that we can do anything.

We put a man on the moon, made personal computers, built the Internet, created GPS, and came up with cell phones. Surely we can do anything at all?

Of course we really cannot do anything at all. Also, it comes at a price. Also, if you let the politicians design our engineering efforts, it should be no surprise when the power goes out in a few large states here and there.

I think that we are no longer willing to pay for it, and we do not agree on the definition of “amazing future”.

I see a lot of people who do not want to put in the work. However, I also see a lot of young people who are very much willing to put in the work, and I see arguments about whether when only a few are willing to put in the work whether or not it is fair to let them keep some percentage of the profits.

The US has always been contentious. So far it seems to have mostly worked over the last 200 years. Our kids will get to see whether it works over the next 50 or so.

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Engineers are paid well but computer science and startups have exploded in the last few years and lots of kids , whether they have the aptitude or not, seem to want to go into CS these days. There is money and a cool factor there .

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I have 2 kids with great math ability and I wish I had a dime for every person who asked if mine were going to study engineering! Neither had any interest, though ironically H is an engineer and has done very well. I do know a lot of kids who have gone into engineering and are making good careers in that field. I sure don’t see it as “devalued”?

I do think we need to invest in infrastructure and the sooner the better.

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Not true. Compare salaries between Wall Street and engineers in the 80s. Engineers were devalued and many engineers went to Wall Street. It is only recently the value of engineers is rebounding. Thanks to tech boom, engineering can compete against Wall Street. It takes time to equalize. Don’t know it spilled to other engineering aside from tech.

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Engineering is a collaborative profession, but our society/culture doesn’t properly value the contributions made by everyone in a collaborative effort. We workship and compensate “superstars” who can be singled out, not someone unknown working behind the scenes. This is the reality, even though many of us wish it were different.

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Kids today want to make $$$$$$$$ as easily as they can. They want to be “entrepreneurs” without knowing what that means. Engineering is math and science, and as Talking Barbie told us, “Math is Hard!!!”

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I think the opposite is happening. Engineering is expanding, and becoming more important than ever in our digital society.

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It used to be different. We may pivot back. It may already be happening.

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Engineering is still valued, but most companies don’t want to spend money for research & development in the way they used to. A couple billionaires who are living out their childhood fantasies are putting money into r&d, but companies that used to have staffs of innovators now depend on other companies to innovate (then buy that as a “product”). I suspect this is due to the need to cut costs in order to make profits so the stock value will increase. I used used to work at a large company (once much larger) that employed an amazing r&d staff. That staff made discoveries that were used in other industries. It was really cool, but now … that’s gone. And being an engineer at that company is odd … everyone works on a small part, they don’t actually know what product they are working on, and due to worries about trade secrets being stolen, the typical engineer doesn’t even know what is being planned. It’s less interesting work than it once was.

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I have wondered about this but no longer have access to inside info as you appear to have. This may actually be a better opportunity for engineers coming out of college and the reason why startup culture is so attractive to many graduates. When our S was looking for internships for his sophomore summer. He interviewed with a few silicon valley startups but also with IBM (after all “Watson”). After he returned from his IBM interviews NY he said there was “no way” he would consider an internship with there. He said the whole experience seemed like something out of the 1960’s. In the end IBM offered him the internship but he declined. Instead he accepted an internship at a very small silicon valley start up where he worked on some extremely advance machine learning applications.

I think many new engineers are attracted to startups because they can work with advanced technologies that were once only available to large companies. They are attracted to opportunities and not just money. Although the money is also good :+1:

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I don’t see any indication that society has devalued engineering. The opposite, I think.

One thing to keep in mind about engineering is that, for many jobs, the goal is to work your way out of a job. You develop the best widget possible at the lowest cost, and you’re done. It’s not like teaching, for example, where there is a steady flow of new students to be taught.

And that’s analogous to the “national vision” that one poster referenced. We have our basic needs covered more so than they were in the 1950’s. There is no desire for more grandiose things. We’re done. On to different things.

On average, everything is always getting better, despite the doomsayers.

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Engineering has not been devalued. Certain majors are more viable than others due to the digital transformation of society. But the demand for (in demand) engineering graduates is through the roof. If you graduate from just about any ABET accredited program and don’t need visa support, you will get multiple offers from all sorts of companies – multinationals to startups.

Just FYI, two private colleges in NC have stared engineering programs in recent years – Elon and Campbell. Both are seeking ABET full accreditation.

Three state unis are expanding offerings/adding more students – UNC-Charlotte, East Carolina and Western Carolina. NC State is also expanding 2+2 programs with two additional universities.

Now if you graduate with a degree in textile engineering or paper engineering, I am not certain what the future holds.

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Government spending decisions and “futurists” being wrong, as they pretty much always are, equals devalued engineering? What a silly premise.

Take a look at recent development in automobiles, electronics, home automation, a helicopter on Mars, etc., etc. All driven by engineering. Take a look at the top salaries paid out of college. Substantially engineering.

A lack of silly ideas like nuclear power cars does not mean engineering is a failure.

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The OP was comparing now to the 1970s.

Moreover, you are ignoring the fact that, in the 1980s there was a huge boom in Wall Street hiring, so they were paying much higher salaries than most other industries. They also just had discovered that engineers could do math, so they started hiring engineers. Since the tech boom hadn’t started yet, there was a much lower demand for engineers.

Salary is not about how much society values a profession, but about how much the profession is in demand. Until the first tech boom, fewer engineers were being hired, so there was no need for corporations to pay as much as they do now. s I mentioned, in the 1980’s, Wall Street was hiring big time, so the salaries that they offered were also very high.

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Engineering is extremely valued by Americans, perhaps more so than any time in history. Many younger persons would cite their cell phone as their most valuable possession, certainly one they could not live without. The enthusiasm surrounding tech has almost become mythical, in some cases. Many people believe almost any tech claim is possible, even when the reality is not as promising. An example is self-driving cars. The amount of enthusiasm, money, and time poured in to self-driving cars does not reflect the large amount of challenges in implementing such a system or how likely a feasible system is to be possible in recent years.

The interest in tech among college students has skyrocketed in recent years. The number of students majoring in CS at highly selective colleges has often quadrupled or quintupled in the past 10-15 years, often making CS the most popular major. CS is also usually the major with the highest average starting salary at highly selective colleges, often by wide margin. Non-CS engineering majors also are usually compensated quite well, and are usually popular.

The wealthiest persons in the world are often owners of a popular tech company that has changed society, fueled by persons investing in the company and driving up stock prices. For example, Elon Musk is usually among the top 2, depending on stock prices. He has certainly valued space flight, via Space X, pursuing feats that few dreamed of in earlier decades, even if the government is not spending a large a portion of budget on space flight as in certain past decades.

Rather than interest among Americans, you may be describing US government spending. For example, one could say the US government has not made updating infrastructure, such as roads, a priority. This does not mean Americans as a whole devalue engineering.

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I have a feeling the lawyers, doctors, nurses, and teachers out there are scratching their collective heads about this supposed devaluing of engineering?

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