A coming engineering shortage ? ---- Who agrees ? 86

[MJCronin]

A recent article says that there will be an acute shortage ... particularly in the electrical field !!!

http://www.csemag.com/single-articl...hortage/7b350ef419c231a9f82abc6c8bd8fac4.html

Who agrees ???

Who strongly disagrees ???

MJCronin
Sr. Process Engineer

 

[CWB1]

HH,

JME but schools that cull more students typically graduate better engineers and personally I would sacrifice quantity long before quality. I agree that there is a serious disconnect between academia and engineering but I believe the main reason for this disconnect is the seemingly common notion today that every student who attends deserves a degree. The "great" engineering school my wife attended is an example of this, their relatively high graduation rate and low hiring rates are a function of students having relatively little personal responsibility and being held to relatively low standards. They show up for class, are spoon-fed every detail of testable material, and heaven help the professor whose test questions are more than a renumeration of the few basic textbook assignments theyve had for homework. Forcing the students to think and grow by giving trick or challenging questions is frowned upon and there is little time for discussing the realities of engineering or expounding upon the basic material bc students arent forced to read and learn it outside class as they are elsewhere by the threat of failing. Projects are almost always completed in large groups, common engineering classes often sacrificed for easy "fluff" like six-sigma or OSHA certs, and should the student be dissatisfied with their grade then extra credit and curves are readily available. The university brags about higher GPAs and graduation rates but the reality is their grads trade off education and ability. I have sat through many interviews where students couldnt begin to apply basic principles or couldnt recite them, had only rudimentary knowledge of one solid modeler and common software tools, and little ability otherwise but their resume showed 3.5+ GPAs. Scarily enough, many expect roles in project management or other non-engineering departments but at engineering rates. Its reminiscent of the old joke, "Yesterday I couldnt spell engineer, today I is one."

 

[IRstuff]

"Culling" is not an end-all and be-all.

Some of the best engineers I've worked with were rather unimpressive as students, specifically because schoolwork wasn't real-world problems, and they found them boring compared to real-world problems.


TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[juleselec]

I agree with ScottyUK. There does seem to be a shortage of engineers in the power industry, but only for certain cohorts. This is from the 2015 Center for Energy Workforce Development report on gaps in the energy workforce pipeline:

While it is not just for engineers, I'd assume the age distribution wouldn't be too far off. There is a trough in the 37-47 age bracket where the supply of engineers is just low.

My anecdotal experience reflects this - like Scotty, I am part of the 37-47 age bracket and had a hard time finding work when I graduated. Luckily, I got a job in the power industry and after gaining some experience, have found no trouble finding work. And it's not because I'm any good either, it just turns out that there isn't that much competition in this age / experience group. For example, at the previous utility I worked at, I was one of only two people in the whole network planning team (of 30+ staff) that was around the same age. Everyone else was either a decade older or younger than us.

 

[BigInch]

Causes of the trough.
10 years younger = cheaper hires
10 years older = managing dept, living with budget constraints, not hiring enough expensive middle managers.

Technology is stealing American jobs. Stop H1-Bs for robots.

 

[moltenmetal]

There is definitely a "lost generation" in there- people who weren't hired as fresh grads during poor economic times. Those people moved on to other professions or lines of work. They're gone, and not coming back.

Hopefully the firms that became addicted to out-sourcing their entire training cost on others will be wiped out by the coming demographic shift. Perhaps that will finally generate some opportunities for engineers to see rising wages and enhanced working conditions.

 

[cranky108]

By wiped out by a demographic shift, are you expecting these companies to go out of business? Sorry to say, but rarely do utilities go out of business, and if they do they are taken over by another.
Sad to say I have had the same job and pay, but one week the paycheck had one company name, and two weeks later my paycheck had a different company name.

Sad to say some of the new people in the industry work for the new energy sources, but don't have many skills that translate to the utility world.

Outsourcing would be nice if the outsourcing only included the new documentation requirements of the federal regulations. But sadly, the only ones who understand them are in-house, and already have full jobs.

 

[moltenmetal]

Well cranky, it sounds like some people who were lucky enough to get in during those very slow times are going to have the opportunity to be treated like royalty. And they'd better get serious about mentoring and training the next generation on an accelerated schedule! Sounds like a wonderful situation actually- for everybody except the majority of that lost generation.

 

[cranky108]

The problem is that Power engineering is not available in very many schools. That we are hiring Electricals and teaching them power.

 

[MFJewell]

The problem is that Power engineering is not available in very many schools. That we are hiring Electricals and teaching them power.

Don't forget, there are a lot of us mechanicals working at utilities too. I have worked for two of the largest power generation utilities in the US (currently at a non-profit co-op district energy plant). I am just on the downward part of the first hump on that chart. It has been quite lucrative for me.

 

[ScottyUK]

Hi cranky,

That was certainly the case in the UK a few years ago when many polytechnics and universities got rid of their space-hungry, lightly-used power laboratories full of equipment from the 1950's and 1960's and replaced them with other things which squeezed more people into the available space. More bodies meant more money, and it didn't matter because only a half-dozen kids wanted to study an old-fashioned, maths-heavy subject with zero employment prospects. Awkward bastards like me for example - always the black sheep of any group I'm a member of.

Today the handful of places here that still have a power engineering program - Bath, Newcastle, Southampton to name a few - are very popular, with graduates being sought-after by the generating and T&D companies and earning good money from the outset. It is a far cry from this industry's darkest days in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

Good luck to today's students - power is still (almost) as a tough an option to study as it was back then, and the ones who choose to do so will have to work hard to graduate.

 

[GregLocock]

Hang on, uni isn't a vocational training scheme. Up until recently you couldn't get a degree in Automotive Engineering (and frankly from what I've seen there were good reasons for that), so the first couple of years as a graduate were spent learning on the job, either formally or informally (aka being dropped in the deep end).

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[ScottyUK]

That's true Greg, but many universities have shifted their focus toward the microprocessor / telecoms / electronic side of the spectrum - all of which are perfectly valid in their own right - and barely touch the 'old' subjects like electrical machines. Working in generation or T&D is a massive jump for the grads from one of these electronics-biased courses to make, and it's a large training gap for the employer to fill, especially in what has become a very fragmented industry without the large centralised resources of a national or regional utility to provide quality in-house training.

Given the choice of paying a relatively small salary premium to grab one of the grads with a power degree or trying to train an electronics grad who never had the chance to study anything in our field, most employers would pay the premium for the power grad because, with all other things equal, the new employee becomes a net contributor more quickly.

 

[spraytechnology]

All in all it boils down to a huge disconnect between academia and industry. After all universities will teach whatever is sexy, appealing gets published and brings money in. I remember years ago when there was a push from a university I know to study nuclear engineering, the hype was that going nuclear will be the future of energy. They successfully increase intakes etc....etc. but few years later they had to shutdown the eng dept being left with a narrow PhD program.

 

[moltenmetal]

Universities here are going off the deep end with bizarre "specialist" undergrad degrees in order to re-package engineering for an even broader audience (30% of engineering grads working as engineers is clearly too high for them- they're no doubt targeting 15%!)

My alma mater now offers environmental (civil stream- they fortunately canned the chemical stream), mechatronics, nanotechnology engineering, management engineering (barf!) and biomedical engineering in addition to the usual civil, chemical, mechanical, electrical, computer, systems design (i.e. industrial) and geological. The previous nuclear specialization died in the '80s.

Industry by and large doesn't know what the hell to do with these people. What the unis are doing is hiving off core courses from the underlying discipline and replacing them with courses related to the specialist subject matter. It's not just a matter of taking credit for a few technical electives in 4th year- a chemical stream environmental sacrificed heat transfer as one example. That's a core chem eng course. If they hacked away a couple of the useless higher math courses, pointlessly teaching analytical integration, that would be a different matter!

Nobody is getting a nanotechnology specialist job with a B.A.Sc. in nanotechnology. No, you're going to need post-grad to do that- so why RUIN the undergrad degree by chopping core courses?

I suppose management engineering (barfs again) seals the transition of engineering from basic training for a profession to "the new liberal arts education", or a sexier business degree.

I agree that engineering employers have to produce their own professionals from good raw materials. The university's job is education, not job training per se. And when they try too hard at the job training bit, they fail, badly. What works better? CO-OP work as a mandatory part of the educational process. That actually generates engineering grads who really are able to hit the ground running.

 

[IRstuff]

"Nobody is getting a nanotechnology specialist job with a B.A.Sc. in nanotechnology. No, you're going to need post-grad to do that- so why RUIN the undergrad degree by chopping core courses?"

Unclear that this is true, given:

http://www.nnin.org/news-events/spotlights/nanotechnology-careers

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[CWB1]

Nobody is getting a nanotechnology specialist job with a B.A.Sc. in nanotechnology. No, you're going to need post-grad to do that- so why RUIN the undergrad degree by chopping core courses?

Why chop core engineering classes? To make the overall program easier thereby improving GPAs and graduation rate, thereby improving the school's ranking in irrelevant media reports. "Nanotechnology" also makes for better advertising than "mechanical engineering" to the ignorant.

 

[spraytechnology]

I am amazed when I see from time to time new names for new engineering disciplines, nanotechnology, mechatronics, materials, bio, etc that are nothing but a surrogate of core competencies in basic engineering. As a matter of fact I recall graduates years ago coming out into the market place with new engineering titles and potential employers asking "what is that ?" Some of the degree may fit into an academic setting ; not always an industrial one.

 

[IRstuff]

Nanotechnology is quite different that traditional mechanical engineering, so I'm not sure why one would think it's simply an advertising gimmick; it's a multidisciplinary function that involves electricity, chemistry, quantum mechanics, and physics at the molecular level. A quantum dot has no corollary in large scale engineering. Quantum dots are being applied to industrial applications at this instant, so it's not an academic subject. We were looking at sprinkling quantum dots on persons of interest to track their movements nearly 10 years ago.

The discussion above about power engineering is an example of the specialization that has already occurred in the electrical engineering arena. 70 years ago, there wasn't much to distinguish power EEs for other EEs since they all wound up taking the same basic courses. Today, an integrated circuit design EE would probably have very little overlap with a power EE. I had many courses on transistor (bipolar and MOS) circuit design and modeling, while 70 years ago, the bipolar junction transistor had barely been invented and the MOS transistor wasn't to make its debut until about 55 years ago, and a whole new field of physics and engineering had to developed to support the industrial needs of those devices.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[spraytechnology]

ok, so how many jobs you see advertised in nanotechnology for a graduate engineer? zero, maybe if lucky he/she can get a job as a research assistant or as a grad student. Lets be realistic, better to have a degree in core engineering discipline and let life take you where it takes you.

 

[cranky108]

MFJ, I agree there are many mechanical engineers, and civil engineers in the power area, and as many of us are on the top of the red curve, there will be a shortage. Also as government requirements are ramped up, the shortage is starting now.

But just a question about why we are not hearing about robotics engineers, or shortages in that field? And maybe because robotics is covered by another type of engineering.