why the apathy for engineering/hard sciences?

Parents Forum
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<p>IMO it will be decades before the Chinese people are wealthy enough to buy material amounts of US products. And by that time they won't do it anyway. They will simply copy, illegally or otherwise,any US products that they want for themselves and then manufacture and sell them domestically. Also by that time the US will no longer be making anything.</p>

<p>Right now, and for the forseeable future, the "goods" that the Chinese buy from us are raw materials. They use them to make products that we used to make here, and then they sell the finished products back to us. Sort of the same relationship that the imperialists of old had to their colonies.</p>

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<p>How many people posting in this thread have lived in another country for an extended period of time and, more to the point, speak that country's language?</p>

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<p>It sounds like going into engineering is a bad idea. I was really looking into ChemE and civil engineering, and this sounds disappointing. Is it better not to be an engineer at all?</p>

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<p>celebrian: I wouldn't worry---but of course I'm an optimist. </p>

<p>However, Bush just announced an initiative to build more oil refineries in the US. Who do you think is going to build them? Foreign chemical engineers?</p>

<p>As for civil engineering... roads and bridges are inherently local. Hard to fly in a road.</p>

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<p>Most of the work that a civil engineer does in the office, rather than onsite, could be done by someone in an office in another country, and then transmitted electronically to the site. There are really striking examples of architecture and even radiology being done that way in a Business</a> Week article from two years ago.</p>

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<p>Tokenadult--for civil engineers, yep, a lot of the design work can be done in a remote office. But every single civil engineer I know spends a substantial amount of time in the field.</p>

<p>And I know a lot of structural engineers who get a lot of work that's local, too---esp. after earthquakes.</p>

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<p>aparent5, I couldn't agree more with your post. Some of our brightest kids coming out of high school seem to choose the world of "ideas" rather than the world of the physical sciences and mathematics. As others have noted, the world of ideas in those disciplines may require many years of preparation whereas the world of ideas in philosophy, business, psychology and other areas of study are much more accessible. At my son's university the philosophy department's website boasts that philosophy majors are often the "intellectual leaders on campus". If you are intellectually curious and ambitious, the physical sciences, math and engineering may not be as appealing at 18 or 19 as other subjects. Add in a mixture of youthful disdain for the idea that college prepares you for a career, and you have a philosophy major rather than an engineer.</p>

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<p>While it is easy to succumb to the hype of the threat of off-shoring engineering, I'm not that alarmed for at least two reasons:</p>

<p>1) From a purely logistical perspective, there are many downsides to working with people on the other side of the world. First is time zone differences. My company has R&D facilities in the US and in Germany. These people must work together very closely to make a product. Unfortunately, because of the 6 hours difference, this only gives them a few hours per day to have real time communication. As a result things take much longer than they would if people were working roughly the same hours. Taking this issue and extending the problem to India or China and you get a situation where any real time communication becomes extremely difficult to accomplish. Secondly, R&D teams and product management need face-to-face meetings to produce a quality product. This means costly and time consuming air travel to the other side of the globe. Despite advances in teleconferncing and video conferencing, nothing really is a substitute for face time. Finally, language issues can be a cause for mistakes that end up costing money to fix or poor product quality. The bottom line is that the entire equation of outsourcing has to be evaluated - not just the delta in cost of labor. Sure, there will be some outsourcing of engineering, but I think it is going to prove far less disruptive to job prospects than some people think. </p>

<p>Who ever said that jobs for US engineering gradutes are impossible to find should talk to my son. He and his engineering classmates had multiple offers for co-op positions this year. Generally, one of the motivations for a company to offer co-op is to get the inside track on that talent when they graduate. If they had no plans to hire US engineers, they wouldn't be offering co-op positions.</p>

<p>2) For those who argue that a liberal arts education prepares one for a broad base of future employment, I would say that engineering is even better. Having a sound foundation in technology and the discipline of problem solving is indispensable in today's tech-oriented business world. An engineering education is a very strong stepping stone into fields of law, business, finance, marketing, medicine and a host of others.</p>

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<p>Token Adult,
My husband is an engineer working for a Korean company in yet another Asian country. The partners on his project are the mainland Chinese- so he supervises and works with engineers from 3 Asian countries...And he has lived overseas a long time, and he speaks the local language...</p>

<p>As to your comment on creative and well designed solutions emerging from other countries, all I can say is that there is no way my husband would have the job he does, or be paid the money that he is if these countries had a plethora of engineers who could do it themselves. I cringe every time I drive over some of the overpasses here, as these 'well designed and less expensive' solutions have been known to crumble with nary any provocation..</p>

<p>My husband, by virtue of superior engineering education in the US and subsequent experience has creativity, technical knowledge, critical thinking, planning, oversight, resourcefullness, fluidity of thinking and general engineering know-how that is unmatched among his peers/superiors/subordinates...And, this is also true relative to Engineers he has worked with from '1st world' countries as well. His Chinese and Korean counterparts, in particular, are well schooled in some domains, but often rigid in their application of their knowledge. </p>

<p>And, just for the record, his brother who had the same superior undergraduate engineering education is now a hugely successful patent lawyer.</p>

<p>Why don't kids become engineers? I think many engineers, like DMD77's son, are 'born.' It is not something you see yourself becoming, it is something you can't hold yourself back from becoming. I think an engineering background can provide superior preparation for an array of professional endeavors, but, quite frankly, the hard work scares off plenty. Add that to the doom and gloom predictions of outsourcing, and the cards are dealt.</p>

<p>Our eldest 2 are firmly in the liberal arts camp for college, it appears, but #3 is a model plane builder, experiment designer and ardent drafter of imaginary cities. She is a superior math student in a school which is 75% Asian. An engineer in the making!</p>

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<p>dmd77 - actually if the environmentalists actually allow any chemical plants to be built - several decades from now when the litigation is done - it will be foreign outsourced engineers that will be used.</p>

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<p>Robrym, thanks for your comments. I'm mulling, and may have more to say later.</p>

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<p>Poetsheart: I have two words for your D: Defense technology. Think Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, or smaller companies which do SBIR work. That ain't gonna be outsourced any time soon. In fact, many of the companies which do that type of work don't allow non-citizens in the building without constant supervision - as in, employee walks them to the bathroom supervision. Non-citizens can't be employees. Many require security clearances (again, must be a citizen). Long-term, that's where the stability is. Pays less than true private sector, but not much less, and the job stability is great.</p>

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<p>Patuxent, it's funny how we're two different kinds of pessimists. I'd hate for the plants to be built but assume the votes are there; you seem to assume they should be built and assume the votes aren't there.</p>

<p>I guess we'll see.</p>

<p>Frankly, though, I never met a Texan who didn't like the "erl bidness."</p>

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<p>Ah, what I don't understand is why students feel they have to definitively choose between humanities and sciences. It's perfectly possible to be a history major and take a reasonable number of chem or math or physics courses just because they're interesting, and it's perfectly possible to be a chemistry major and take history and poli sci and foreign languages and such just because they're interesting. I understand that with engineering disciplines, the course load is so high that adding random humanities courses for fun can be a little difficult, but it seems that if students are interested in physical sciences, they shouldn't feel like going into the sciences will mean they'll won't have the chance to enter the "world of ideas."</p>

<p>(says a chem-major-who-is-also-a-closet-history-dork... :-D)</p>

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<p>Hell, I studied bio, chem and physics for fun just 'cause. I love physical science, but I'm a poli sci major.</p>

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<p>
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How many people posting in this thread have lived in another country for an extended period of time and, more to the point, speak that country's language?

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<p>i am an indian girl living in singapore riite now... other than ang, i speak hindi (my mt and main lang of india) as well as pickin up bit of chinese as singapore is chinese majoruty)...yeah this engi talk is scaring me too... currently i have a chem+biomolecualr engg offer at one uni and business managemt as well as accountancy (double deg) offer at another uni... i really really cant make up my mind... are u guys sayin tt engg n sciences are losing prospect in US or everwhere??</p>

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<p>Neha: if you like Singapore, chemistry and molecular biology, then you are in the right place at the right time. The government of Singapore has just financed a major new biotech incubator.</p>

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<p>dmd77 - sorry I am not a Texan though the wife did work for a Texas oil company when we lived in Alaska a quarter century ago. I just think that if you want the lights to come on when you throw the switch and your car to run and your water chlorinated (fluoridated might be another thing :-) then you ought to willing to live with the power plant, refinery, and chemical plant somewhere in the neighborhood.</p>

<p>I grew up in a steel town. Those old mills polluted the water and the air but also created all those good paying manufacturing jobs you leftwingers so long for - but have done all in your power to destroy. In college I worked in a outmoded 75 year old steel mill that needed investment in the worst way to compete with the Japanese and newer European mills not to mention the emerging second world steel producers. What was the one thing they had to spend money on - scrubbers for the smokestacks to the tune of millions of dollars. The mill was gone withing 4 years along with all the others in Mahoning Valley and the jobs too. But oh the air is clean and so is the river. And my generation? Well we all moved east or west or south or north.</p>

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<p>Patuxent, while I'm not a NIMBY-ist, I firmly believe we should be talking conservation and alternative energy sources AS WELL AS more oil refineries and better relationships with the Saudi princes. I don't hear our government encouraging conservation, except through allowing higher prices at the pump. (91 octane is nearly $3/gallon here.)</p>

<p>As for the electrical plants, I remember when coal-fired plants and the steel mills of Pittsburg made the air in Philadelphia black and unbreathable, and I am thrilled to see blue skies on the east coast.</p>

<p>And while I am not "pro" nuclear energy, neither am I "anti." I think there's room for a lot of serious retinking of power plant design. The last new nuclear power plants were designed in the 50s and built in the 60s... imagine what we could do now if we approached the problems of safety and waste disposal with a fresher viewpoint.</p>

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<p>The trouble with engineering education is that it is so demanding, and limits your other options so early, that kids who don't choose it going in because they want more time to explore, basically miss the boat. That said, my husband is an engineer and he actively discouraged our son from engineering -- not as a profession, but as an education. (Globalization in my husband's field has expanded, not stolen, his work. He's done mathematical modeling of earthquake hazard for countries ranging from Switzerland to Papua New Guinea.)</p>

<p>I always felt that the basic skills to get out of college were thinking and writing. For someone mathematically inclined, like my son, I'd add quantitative skills. I guess I'm a believer in the equivalent of a liberal arts education for quantitative people -- laying a groundwork for their being able to add more specialized skills over a lifetime of self-study or continuing education or ingenuity. Perhaps I just don't know enough, but it seems as if the specific major does not matter so much because there is a convergence. The engineer, the physics major, the computer science major, even the economics major (as someone pointed out), the biology major with an interest in physics or statistics may end up doing the same thing -- applying mathematical techniques to different ends.</p>

<p>If they can also write a decent article or report, and make a coherent presentation, I just don't worry about their futures. Languages are wonderful and should be learned for many reasons, but the fact is that almost all technical work at some point gets discussed in English. If there is a day when the Lingua Franca is no longer English, then I admit we're in deep trouble and should all sign up for Berlitz, or maybe take to the ocean in rubber boats.</p>

<p>I keep thinking about one of my roommates whose mother insisted she learn key-punching so that she would always have a job. Wonder what she's doing now...</p>