Cranfield University (UK) says engineers in short supply... 19

[Tobalcane]

Michael S. Teitelbaum’s article indicates the reason the engineering and science field looks like there will be a shortage are from the number of new graduates for both fields have declined. Saying that, there are less people coming into the engineering and science field. Thus, there will be less people to fill jobs (man, only in my dreams). What it seems to me is that due to a combination of our “putting down” our own engineering fields and work going over seas that high school seniors will pick something else as there major in college. It seems that the scales are starting to tip in the other direction. High school seniors are not considering engineering or science as a career. There will be a point where no new people will come into the engineering or science field and then we will be a sought after group. So instead of getting PEs or more advance education, we should just start discouraging kids from becoming engineers or scientist. I’m just kidding.

I think what Mr Teitalbaum did not address is that the engineering field is being inundated with engineers with out engineering degrees. From an academic point of view, it does look like there will be a shortage of “degree engineers” (well because there are less students graduating), but no shortage of “hard knocks” engineers (people with no degree or non-engineering degree). When they do these reports, data is collected from colleges to see if there is a downward trend in a particular field. And, if there are less people graduating, then that will say there will be a shortage of degree engineers, which is true. There is no measure of how many hard knocks engineers are coming into the engineering field. I think that is where the discrepancy lies. What I understand in England, when there is report that there is a shortage of engineers; I think they mean degree engineers, not your local mechanic.

Go Mechanical Engineering
Tobalcan

 

[ScottyUK]

cooky and corus,

I feel I have found soulmates.

The wooly-minded indifference of our contemptable Engineering Council to the feelings of the UK's professional engineering community is all too clear. Until the Engineering Council finds the stomach to fight for its members, there will be no progress in improving either the social status or salaries of the engineering profession. Our individual Institutions - the IEE in my case - are little better than publishers of interesting journals. They have little interest in working to benefit the members who fund the organisation through their membership fees.



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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!

 

[moltenmetal]

Lorentz: you're my hero! What a FANTASTIC article that was!

Remember: business is not an ethical construct, but rather an algorithm whose goal is to maximize profit. To maximize profit, you benefit most from a plentiful supply of cheap, well-trained, well-educated, and "flexible" (i.e. cowed) workers in all fields of endeavour- especially if you push the cost of developing that "workforce resource" onto others (i.e. governments, through their funding of universities and immigrant settlement agencies etc.). It is totally reasonable and should be EXPECTED that businesses will lobby as a group for an increased supply of ALL types of skilled workers!!! And unlike Joe Blow P.Eng., THEIR voice will be heard loud and clear in the media and by the politicians- and they will have access to the policy agenda.

Take for example the experience of a professional acquaintance of mine. She claims she's having difficulty finding "qualified applicants" for the engineering positions her firm is advertising, and claims this is evidence of a "shortage of engineers". What it really means is that she can't find people with 10 years experience in her particular field because ten years ago, neither her firm nor any of its competitors were hiring NEW GRADUATES in that field! These grads jumped fields, or switched to the IT sector etc., and now their skills in her area are GONE FOR GOOD. It's an issue of poor succession planning rather than of a shortage of supply, and all the immigration and new graduates in the world aren't going to solve her firm's problem.

Add to this matter that what she's really looking for is people who not only have ten years of local, relevant experience, but also who are willing to work on a short-term contract for a salary 20% less than they could garner in the manufacturing industry, and the absurdity of her position becomes yet more apparent. She's just got to knuckle down, offer full time jobs and pay more to qualified applicants, and invest in training and mentoring some new employees.

I can't speak for anywhere else in the world, but in Canada the stats are available and they're crystal clear. Have a look at

http://www.geocities.com/martinsmoltenmetal/index.htm

if you want to see the stats. In a decade where Canada's workforce and economy grew by less than 20%, the number of engineers entering the workforce every year increased THREEFOLD. There can't be anything other than a massive, overwhelming over-supply of engineers in the Canadian marketplace as a result. The reason: in an effort to raise the public profile of our profession, we've convinced too many kids to take up engineering as a profession- and we've convinced the politicians that more engineers mean more economic growth, so they've opened the floodgates to immigration. In combination, we've swamped the marketplace and now there are entirely too many engineers here working in jobs that in no way are appropriate to their training, skills and experience.

 

[chris9]

Engineers are very versatile and can adapt to many different industries and types of engineering work. I’m always surprised to see jobs advertised for someone with 10 years experience of designing a specific product. Then the recruiter complains of a skills shortage when no applicant is an exact match?

If I put in a job advertisement for a doctor/lawyer/dentist with a salary of £25k and received no applicants this must mean there is a skills shortage? Would the same be true if the advertised salary was £200k?

People buy people! If you’re willing to pay enough you’ll fill any post with ease. Since engineering is not at all well paid there is surely too many engineers!

 

[jmw]

There is no shortage of engineers in the UK, whatever Cranfield says.

Any time the photo copier goes wrong, or the telephones, the water cooler, the vending meachines or anything else of similar complexity, or your TV or video at home, the washing machine etc someone will always say "Send for the engineer" and in due course some one arrives.

"I'm the _____ engineer come to fix your _____" he says and then sucks his teeth and says "Who sold you this then? Don't see many of these around nowerdays." (even though it is exactly one day out of warranty.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I always thought these guys would have a hard time claiming even to be service men, let alone engineers, but I might just be old fashioned,since they never actually fix anything, they just replace bits in an orderly sequence until it works again or they have sold you a new machine.


JMW

http://www.viscoanalyser.com

Eng-Tips: Pro bono publico, by engineers, for engineers.

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

 

[finman]

Hey JMW you've hit the nail on the head.

The one that always gets my back up is "Technical Sales Engineer"...... didn't they used to be called reps? and the evergreen IT engineer is another source of disbelief.

Maybe I'm old fasioned but didn't engineering be something to do with metal, nuts & bolts and stuff?

 

[ruggedscot]

Looking through the job vacancies here in the UK gets depressing when you see adverts for sales engineers, that has to be the lowest of the low. Why allow these to go unchecked ? Why do we continually allow our reputation and viability in the workplace to be diluted and debased. An engineer should be that and only that, trying to glam up other jobs or make them sound better by adding engineer to the title only serves to debase the actual position of the engineer. The water cooler guy ? an engineer ? Pah who you trying to kid ? has he got a degree - no I dont mean a degree in social science or other such non related subjects but a proper bonafide engineering degree ? if not then why is he calling himself and engineer..... Technician maybe but certainly no engineer. The proliferation of the word engineer seems to be a way in which you try to gain more money from the customer, Ill send you an engineer rather than the technician, this way it sounds more grandiose and the customer doesnt baulk when you sting him for the bill, suppose we just have to take it, maybe even become consultants just to increase our marketabilitiy.

Rugged

 

[mabn]

Rugged,

The company I work for has a few sales engineers. They provide enineering services to help sell the product. Often, the position involves data analysis of physical properties; research liasons with the customer's research departments and university research areas; design work of the customer's system with the product we are trying to sell included, used to estimate performance; development of best practices related to the product and its maintainability, etc.

For our company, these tasks help to differentiate us from our competitors and offer extra services that maybe they cannot. It may not be specific product design, but I would still call it engineering.

Mabn

 

[ScottyUK]

Mabn and RuggedScot,

You are both right, and part of the reason that is true is that the term engineer is used to spice up pure sales roles, and the term gets a bad image which denigrates the engineers who have a sales / marketing element to their role. I must say that I personally regard sales engineers as hyped-up salesmen until they prove that they are otherwise, and I leave it very much up to them to prove it. The good ones fly, and the bad ones fall.

I agree fully with the consensus that the term 'engineer' is one of the most abused words in the English language. My employer is one of the offenders, the management believing that, by a miracle to rival feeding 5000 people with two fish and a loaf of bread, they can make a technician into an engineer, or even more comically make a shift supervisor into a senior engineer, simply by ordering them a new sign for their door.

Part of the problem is that too many people are running engineering companies who have absolutely zero concept of what the engineers do. Without this appreciation of the amount of knowledge and experience required to become a professional engineer, is it any wonder that they hand out the title like sweets in a candy store? Until this situation is corrected, we engineers will always be seen as boffins and in the case of many electrical engineers, as sorcerors versed in the black arts.




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If we learn from our mistakes,
I'm getting a great education!