Engineering as a commodity: Can we reverse the trend? 38

[lacajun]

--
From Engineering News-Record, 4/23/2012, Gary J. Tulacz:

This view is hurting the designers, too. "Engineering has always been a problem-solving profession," says Giorgio. "When you treat design like a commodity, it will be managed that way, without regard to the value-added capabilities of the top problem-solvers."

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[moltenmetal]

David: while you have a point about slipping standards in engineering education. They have slipped because governments have listened to the continuous whining of the business lobby about "shortages", and about keeping up the grad rates for engineers coming out of developing nations etc. Taking poorer candidates and making it easier for them to graduate definitely decreasess the AVERAGE quality of the grads. The exceptional people are still in that pool- it's just tougher to find the gold through all the dross.

However, blaming the fresh grads is blaming the victims. Past generations of working engineers, and especially engineers who have "ascended" into management, have much more to do with the slide of our profession from true profession to commodity status than you could ever legitimately peg on fresh grads with a sense of entitlement. Youth unemployment is higher in most developing nations than it has ever been, and it's not because they're all lazy and coddled.

Engineers sell their services by the hour, rather than capturing the value that their work generates. What results is commodification: competition on a cost per hours basis rather than on value. Excess supply drives the price of any commodity downward.

We used to have difficulty educating enough engineers to meet our economic needs, such that wages and benefits were used by employers to compete for a scarce resource. That hasn't really been true in our profession for 30-40 years, but you'd never know it by listening to the media. Even the engineering bodies can't be convinced to read, analyze and understand the labour market data: they want to believe they're in demand and the future is rosy. Even though 2/3rds of Canadian engineering grads leave the profession entirely for greener pastures, there are still more than enough left in the market to fill all the available positions. Employers can afford to be choosy.

KENAT has the issue about shortages nailed. Employers no longer feel the need to hire young people and train them. When demographic or economic conditions shift and the labour market tightens even a little, they cry "shortage". Governments oblige by increasing the numbers of spaces available at the universities, and also by loosening immigration rules. They are rarely there to shut the taps again when the bust inevitably comes. Yes, this dilutes the engineering gene pool a bit, but the stronger factor is the supply rather than the quality of the grads: we still have no problem finding smart, motivated fresh grads to hire. Engineers who don't enter the profession fresh out of school aren't there ten years later with 10 years of experience, hence the "skills shortages" businesses whinge about.

Can we reverse this trend? Not until and unless engineers distinguish between promoting the value of engineering to society from promoting engineering as a career option or educational choice. Better engineering education won't fix this problem: linking engineering education to labour force demand such that we have fewer, better selected engineering graduates- that might help a bit. Unfortunately, even if we could get the local supply under control, that won't improve the lot of the ordinary employee engineer working in large consulting firms. Much of their work can and will be outsourced to regions where the commodity they supply can be generated at lower cost. Price pressure equals wage pressure.

 

[imcjoek]

What do the serious students do? Go along with the flow or take engineering courses?

I requested of my school on many occasions to substitute "technical electives" (specifically differential equations, Thermodynamics II) in place of some feel good humanities courses (of which there were many, I assure you).

Needless to say, they wouldn't budge. I had already fulfilled my "technical electives" requirements. Want diff-eqs? (It IS on the FE, after all!) Great. They're more than happy to oblige, as long as they can skew it into addition income on top of your required coursework. No substitutions.

Meanwhile ABET accredits this drivel.

 

[zdas04]

Moltenmetal,
I mostly don't blame the students. A new grad who understands that school is a very important foundation for an engineering career, but that the walls still need to go up is a jewel beyond price. I see them. They come into a project with the idea that most of their contribution will come after looking up the details.

It is the new grads who come into a project with the "I'm the Engineer" attitude who won't listen to field experience at all that make me crazy. They are entitled to respect and authority by virtue of their degree and don't intend to learn another damned thing. Ever. I see a lot more of those guys than I see of the first kind.

The students are absolutely the victims of the process. I haven't known very many people who would willingly do significantly more work than was required. A "B" student who took an extra 50 hours of class work to improve his technical knowledge will be ranked behind an "A" student who took the absolute minimum. The students are mostly going to do what is required. The problem lies with the requirements.

When my son was starting school I told him that he had to hook up with the Co-op coordinator first thing. That nothing is worth as much as practical experience. His school did not have a Co-op Coordinator, and the ME department head wouldn't allow companies with co-op opportunities to communicate them to the students. He was a lifetime academic who didn't see the point in industry.

As to short-sighted companies, pandering universities, and ill-equipped government, they each share the real blame of turning the profession into a commodity.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.

 

[rb1957]

yeah, and in my day i had to hike to school, 10 miles, up-hill, both ways ...

don't you think every generation says the same about the next ?

geeze, they don't teach them how to use slide rules (ok, some of us learnt in our spare time), and what about all those lovely graphical methods (ok, ditto) ... nah, these days it's all calculators and fintie elements ... geeze

but then each generation has different demands and options .. consider this site ? even 10 years ago (ok, 20), what've been needed to instantly get someone else's opinion on something, someone (hopefully) expert in the field, who you can't contact directly ?

and what of all the people in the expanding economies who are getting access to the training they need to become the engineers they have the talent to become ?

ok, our standards are slipping (in my day, engineering had a lower quota (entry) mark than arts ... just to get the cannon fodder enrolled; sure most of them didn't make it out of 1st year) but that's 'cause we're lazy (re-read first comment) and want instant gratification and don't want to do the hard work (ok, generalisation). so the future engineers will probably be immigrants.

welcome to the brave new world !

 

[Maui]

Engineers need to have their enrollment numbers at universities controlled by a governing body instead of opening the flood gates every time industry cries "shortage". The American Medical Association serves in this capacity for medical doctors. The enrollment in medical schools and programs is limited each year according to what the AMA specifies so that there will not be an oversupply of doctors. This keeps the overall number of medical professionals where it should be, and keeps their wages up. Ever notice the ever-widening gap between an average engineer's salary and that of doctors?

Engineers need to assemble the type of representation described above, but for some reason haven't. For a group of intelligent professionals, we certainly turn a blind eye to the obvious.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[cranky108]

Maybe it is just a trend, but I see companies yelling there are shortages of truck drivers, and several other classifications that require some schooling. Yet the unemployment rate is what?

Some of the issues are the cost of universities are so high that it appears like someone would never be able to justify the cost on the basis of what companies are paying (I said appears).
This is an economic trend (they don't teach it much in high school). So the schools have apperently watered down the education to be able to keep the coursework within 4 years (lower the cost, by reducing the product) and increasing the number of grads (reducing the cost of professors, by increasing the class sizes).

So it seems as the cost of universitys go up, the quality of the education goes down. To bad this isen't being relized in the state capitals where money is approiated for these schools.

So maybe the solution is to provide less state and federal money to universities to make them trim there costs.

 

[CastMetal]

I like to think the behavior of new graduates is a poor indicator of the engineer they will become after some years of experience. I may not have had the "holier than thou" mentality entering the workforce but I still suffered many of the afflictions commonly seen on this site. Reluctance to use your resources, books and phones are just so heavy, every problem is worthy of a week long research study, lack of knowledge some would consider basic (still relatively clueless on three phase power), designing complicated solutions before looking for one off the shelf, the list goes on. I have made progress in avoiding these common pitfalls and see many younger engineers doing the same. Every generation has its perceived strengths and weaknesses yet for the last 70 years each generation has pushed the envelope further than those that came before. We will be no different.

Comprehension is not understanding. Understanding is not wisdom. And it is wisdom that gives us the ability to apply what we know, to our real world situations

 

[Maui]

If you want to see what motivates these academic institutions, follow the money.

Colleges and universities are non-profit institutions, yet the determining factor in deciding if a non-tenured professor gets to keep his job is whether or not he brings in a sufficient amount of grant money. That is his primary job. Teaching responsibilities are often looked upon as a fundamental requirement for the position of professor, but teaching is at best secondary or much lower down on the list of priorities. Some professors place such a low priority on teaching duties that they have their graduate students teach their classes for them. And I'm sure that many of the engineers on this forum have experienced this first-hand.

The greater the number of students that are brought into a program, the greater the amount of tuition money that program earns. This makes the people running it look good in the eyes of the President and the top ranking officials. So increasing the enrollment numbers is good as far as they are concerned. Dumbing down the curricula widens the breadth of students that can graduate from that program as well, and curving exams helps accomplish the same thing. So the programs may become easier over a given period of time. When industry cries "shortage" and the news media broadcasts it, it results in essentially free advertising for the universities. This is often followed by a surge in applications for engineering programs.

The problem is that four years down the road when these students graduate, the number of available jobs will usually not be what they expected, and many will struggle to find employment in their chosen profession. This surplus of talent allows employers to be very selective about who they hire, and helps to keep wages down. So employers reap the benefits from crying "wolf". The end result is that engineers no longer enjoy the same level of remuneration as medical professionals, who wisely limit the number of graduates they produce each year.

Fixing this issue should be straightforward, but we would need a central organization that has the authority to issue a mandate limiting the number of students that are allowed to enroll in given engineering programs each year. And they could accomplish this by being selective, and only admitting the better students. This would keep the level of talent up, and allow the programs to be more challenging than they currently are. Please understand that I'm not referring to a union, but to a professional organization that is made up of engineering professionals. We need to put together our own version of the AMA.


Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[Maui]

The American Engineering Association is what it should be called.

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[KENAT]

Hmm, if you look at the run away costs of healthcare in the US it might be reasonable to assume that some of it stems from the constraints on number of doctors.

So if we do the same for engineering will we face the same?

Now for medicine not many people elect to outsource their healthcare to lower cost market - though there is some medical tourism.

However, outsourcing of Engineering to lower cost markets is already a reality.

So Maui, how do you handle that issue? Sure for non exempt industry areas there are rules requiring the work to be overseen by someone who is a PE that jurisdiction but it seems that approach has limits.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

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

(probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484​

 

[JohnRBaker]

My Alma Mater (a public Engineering school back in the mid-west) has capped undergraduate enrollment as well as fixing the ratio between graduate and undergrads (I understand having an enrollment skewed toward too many MS and PhD students actually undermines the scores given, particularly to public universities, by the various rating and credential agencies).

They also have a very active "Keystone" program where undergraduates get a chance to work on corporate funded R&D and design projects which are actually intended for production by the sponsoring corporations. Also, this past year they competed in a program funded by NASA to design and build a satellite intended for a low-Earth orbit radiation study and they WON despite NOT having a department of Aeronautic/Aerospace Engineering, unlike the rest of the schools which they competed against, and also unlike the competition, their effort was manned by mostly undergraduate students drawn from several different university departments under the primary leadership of the ME-EM Department.

No, I'm generally positive, at least with respect to my Alma Mater, as to what I've seen recently (as I said, I have an opportunity to visit the campus usually at least once a year as part of my job and since I'm a regular donor to their financial campaigns I'm kept up-to-date as to what's happen on campus and as to where my money is going).

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[dvd]

I do not think that the trend of engineering as a commodity will reverse itself. The people in control of that commodity seem to be the purchasers, and not the sellers. Until the sellers take control the engineering supply there is no way we can do anything but take the going rate.

I agree that there is some watering down of the engineering curriculum, but I also think that some of what is taught to engineering students leads them to expect the moon. Students need a better grasp on the mundane aspects of engineering and the work world. That mundane view cannot be provided by most engineering professors because they are, generally, a product of in-breeding within the engineering education system.

Additionally, working engineers tend to have the attitude that they are personally the salvation and no one else can provide the solution but "me." Until the profession accepts that there are plenty of avenues to get the work done, we will compete against each other at the cost of lowering our lot. The ego strokes for being able to do the work of engineer, analyst, designer, and detailer appeal to some and costs everyone.

The majority of engineering work seems to be geometry creation of some form. There is huge money to be made selling computer programs that create geometry. And, oh, by the way, the software can do some engineering work for you: you don’t even need to know how to be an engineer to turn out “engineered” results. Greed feeds on this: the company owner can save money by obtaining occasional engineering input from some program that puts it all in black-and-white, or even pretty graded color plots; the software company gets to sell upgrades. Just boot up your engineering staff on-demand. I don’t see engineers winning with this. We spend more time doing the work that used to be done by subordinates; and, we also spend less time doing our work because those subordinates seem to be performing it.

I imagine that the forum for wooden barrel makers, if it were to exist seventy-five years ago, had similar complaints. One can still buy wooden barrels in 2012. They are well made, maybe even better than in-the-day, but mainly an oddity. I don’t think that engineers will go the route of barrel makers, but there are lots of canned solutions that we are competing with.

 

[GregLocock]

"...working engineers tend to have the attitude that they are personally the salvation and no one else can provide the solution but "me." Until the profession accepts that there are plenty of avenues to get the work done, we will compete against each other at the cost of lowering our lot. .."

Your logic biffles me. the first sentence implies the 'right' approach, the second then claims it is the problem.

Biffling, baffling and boffling.

I didn't bother with the rest of your post for obvious reasons this isn't eng-rants.com

Cheers

Greg Locock


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

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

 

[SNORGY]

I think I live on a distant simplistic planet. In my world, I really don't see inept interns and diluted curriculae. In my small Canadian logging-hick-town, the high school still was able to produce students that succeeded at institutions abroad such as MIT. Smart kids have never been stupid, nor are they today. Academic curriculae may have changed over the years but by and large the textbooks I have read in 2010 (the ones used by our intern students) teach the same stuff in the same way and the same style with the same level of difficulty as those in 1980. In fact, I would argue that the earlier vintage books did a better job of presenting material in a way that was easier to understand than do the books written today. It is almost as if there is an underlying tone of "...we aren't dumbing this down for you any more like the way our forefathers used to...". Perhaps I erroneously extrapolate to conclude that if the kids are studying essentially the same theory and the books are strikingly similar from the points of view of content and scope (with the aforementioned variance in presentation), then the classroom, lectures and examinations are likely similar as well. The older books were probably written better because, back in the day, the authors probably had more passion for and more interest in what they did.
I do not blame academia or the academic realm at large for the commoditization of engineering, nor do I blame the propaganda regarding market demands for engineers. In my simple world and simple mind, commoditization is due solely to our collective inability to market, control and employ ourselves in the workforce. Specifically, we have failed miserably in convincing society that we are actually smart people who should be worth a lot for what we do. Instead, we have meekly succumbed to a system in which we can only find "employment" from "employers", where our "employers" are driven by a passion for profit instead of a passion for technical ability or creativity, and the majority of us have become whining, grumbling, disenfranchised slaves to our hated masters (many of whom, coincidentally, are MBAs). To make a bad situation worse, we have gone out of our way to cut each others' throats in bidding wars and the like, all of us desperately trying to snatch fragments of work like stray dogs competing for table scraps.
I do not agree with the message that suggests that "...they..." deserve to be commoditized, if by "...they..." we mean the perceived ill-educated and untalented young people entering the engineering workforce. The truth is, WE deserve to be commoditized. WE brought this on ourselves, and WE have done a fine job of leaving a rather poor legacy of this profession for THEM to try to fix.
Shame on US.
So...what do we do? In my mind, we start our own companies, engineers working for engineers who do engineering. We stop enslaving ourselves to MBAs, BCOMMs and other people who never will be and never can be nor ever can be expected to be like us. We start doing a better job of marketing ourselves by demonstrating to the public what we do for them and why it is valuable.
I think it was lacajun who started a thread regarding firing the MBAs and letting the engineers run the show. Well, that's pretty much what we have to do.
Are we there yet?
What steps have any of us taken to get there?

 

[Maui]

Kenat, I believe that the runaway costs associated with medical care in the United States today is a direct result of the practices established by the insurance companies. This is an area which received surprisingly little (or no) attention regarding reform in the health care legislation that was passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama. How these insurance companies set policy, handle claims, and establish charges for different types of exams and medical care, as well as the exhorbitant salaries that many of their employees enjoy are a very big part of the problem. The sky high premiums they charge for malpractice insurance, which not surprisingly was brought about as a direct result of lawsuits, is also a significant factor in these runaway healthcare costs. The wages that doctors earn I am sure does play a part in this, but I believe that it is secondary to the ones that I mentioned above. In my opinion, limiting the number of doctors that are enrolled in medical programs each year does not have the adverse financial impact on the healthcare system that you assumed.

And no, I would not expect the same issues to be mirrored in engineering if enrollment in those programs is capped. Runaway engineering costs are extremely unlikely due to the number of choices that clients have. If they are not happy with one engineering firm or consultant, they can go to another. Just as if you are not happy with your doctor and want a second opinion, you can consult another doctor. The difference is that doctors tend not to have a bidding war regarding prices because patients want the best medical care that their insurance companies will allow them to afford. They don't concern themselves with cost in many cases, but quality of care. In engineering it should be similar - clients should want the best engineering services that they can afford. But engineering firms will often slit their own throats in a race to the bottom on pricing. This is where the difference lies, and it is all too common in industry today.

Medical outsourcing is a reality these days - MRI scans are now electronically sent overseas on a routine basis and evaluated by medical professionals in foreign countries. Insurance companies provide incentives for this because it is far less expensive to have an overseas doctor with similar training but lower salary requirements interpret the results. The insurance companies and medical institutions save money if this is done, but somehow this savings does not get passed on to us in terms of lower premiums or reduced costs. So where does this saved money go? In the pocket of the medical industry - problem. By the way, would you allow yourself to be examined by a medical doctor or operated on by a surgeon who was not board certified? If the answer is yes, then why would someone go to an engineer for services if that engineer was not certified in a similar sense (read PE)?

Snorgy, I think that the mix of abilities in today's students are the same as they have always been, but that the motivations and expectations these students have on the whole are not. They seem to have a general sense of entitlement, that things will automatically be made easier for them if they encounter what they would consider to be an issue. The text books are as good as they ever were, and in some cases are substantially better than what we used. But the expectations placed on the instructors to pass a larger percentage of the students even if they underperform, and the manner in which the educational system has been motivated by "no child left behind" and similar legislation, has hampered our educational progress. It's not that students are less capable - they aren't. It's that the bar has been considerably lowered in terms of our expectations for them.

I believe that the way for us to raise our profession up is to take the reins. We shouldn't sit by and complain about how we are underpaid, unappreciated, or generally disregarded by society as Dilbert-like eggheads. We should do something about it!

Maui

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[2dye4]

I just received a MS in engineering from a small state school. The content was rigorous and challenging but the bar to pass was low. This means that the curious and capable got a good education and the average were allowed to skate through.
I personally witnessed different grading criteria used on the same exams.

 

[rb1957]

sounds like you're sugggesting that we engineers take up some of the accounting/marketing stuff (that we dislike ?) ...
but then the one's who go over to the dark side will be lost to the force ...

sounds like "i have seen the enemy and he is us"

 

[Maui]

Correction - in my post above the last sentence in the third paragraph should have read,

If the answer is [bold]no[/bold], then why would someone go to an engineer for services if that engineer was not certified in a similar sense (read PE)?

http://www.EngineeringMetallurgy.com

 

[cranky108]

Still looks like a money problem. If you feel the university you went to is watering down the classes, then tell them you are no longer donating money because of it.

I can't exactly do that because I quit donating many years ago because I felt there aquireing land by eminate domain for a sports center wasen't right.

I also no longer live in that state, so I can't use voting influnce to reduce the state contributions.

But I can discurage others from going there.

 

[JohnRBaker]

I actually enjoyed my non-core electives. After all, I WAS attending a UNIVERSITY and NOT a 'trade school'. And given the evolution of my career over the past 40+ years, I would have to say that what I learned in those courses were as instrumental as was differential equations or thermodynamics in terms of the contribution which I make to my organization or in manner in which I've been able to provide a comfortable life for myself and my family.

It's sort of like when I attended a high school reunion a few years after I started to use computers on a regular basis in my job, and I had the opportunity to talk to my old typing teacher. I was able to tell him, with a straight face, that of all the skills which I learned while in high school, that it was what I learned in his class, Typing I, that I know I will be putting to good use virtually every day where I work. I'm sure that there were some people who at the time (remember this was 1964/65) could not figure out why someone, particularly a GUY who was heading for engineering school, would waste half of his Senior year taking a typing class (except for me and one other guy, the rest of the class was made up of girls). But then who could have known back then that in just a few short years 'keyboard skills' were going to be so critical for people to have, even professionals.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.