How bad is it in the UK? 16

[corus]

In the UK it takes 3 years to get a degree in engineering, longer if you don't have the right qualifications to begin with. For a masters degree it takes one year full time study. You can take a HNC or ONC instead, which are lower qualifications than a degree, and still call yourself an engineer. In order to get chartered status (PE in the US) the basic qualification is living for an additional few years. It has little value other than to show that you've gained a bit of experience.
To be a doctor, lawyer, architect I believe that you have to study for 7 years plus. There is no comparison.
Those who do study a 2 year tech degree and draws pictures is called an engineer just as someone with a Masters is called an engineer. Perhaps that's the problem.

corus

 

[flamby]

Perhaps the problem lies in human nature and we just love whining.

Architects whining on medicos.

http://www.archsoc.com/kcas/Doctors.html

Personally, I just couldn't bring myself to become a doctor because of 1)the odd hours they work 2)their work is not 1% as interesting as mine is 3) just the thought of cutting and sewing one anatomical part for my entire life makes me feel sick. Can't this human body just evolve over time to make the job a little more challenging?

Ciao.

 

[ScottyUK]

Corus,

The C.Eng under the SARTOR-2 selection criteria was a bit harder than that: a number of my colleagues have had their applications declined in recent times. Obviously I don't know the specific reasons and it would be crass to speculate, but these were reasonably senior people who might have expected to get accepted if your criteria were universally true. I hope it is a sign that the standard is being maintained, because most all the other standards in the UK seem to be dropping in the past few years. Hopefully the SARTOR-3 requirements coupled to the IEE trying to broaden its membership base won't dilute the C.Eng to the level you envisage, although I too have my doubts.

I agree that medical doctors are usually very intelligent, very committed people and that their course is long and challenging. A childhood friend studied medicine and he remarked to me that (paraphrased) "We have to memorise a lot of stuff to diagnose problems. You guys have to understand it all!". He said he couldn't study electrical engineering because the maths was such heavy going and the course program was so intense compared to his. He'd got an A-level maths grade 'A' in the days when only two or three kids in the school got that grade. I believe he's now earning at least double my salary and working half the hours. Ho-hum!

The idea that lawyers are in some way equivalent to doctors is grossly unfair to the medical profession. There is a lot of competition to study law so the law schools can skim off the best students and the entrance grades are therefore high. The course isn't inherently difficult in the way that medicine or engineering is. The closed shop and protected title is what keeps their salaries high.



----------------------------------

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

 

[QCE]

That is exactly the problem corus.

Even the engineers in the UK think

-Engineer Degree is less then math degree
-Charter Engineering status is useless
-2 yr diploma and 3 yr degree is the same thing

Pleasse continue to complain about your salary.

 

[makeup]

DrillerNic,

You are right, there does seem to be a need for engineers to relocate to Aberdeen. But who in there right might is going to take on board the cost of relocation for what will be in most cases a contract position. Whats in Aberdeen after all. I have been contacted on many occasions by agencies offering mid 30's per annum. I can earn this without the upset of relocation. As for those companies quoted, I for one would love to work for any of them but like Scotty said, try and get in. These positions tend to go to a select few and yes they could be well paid but they are not a reflection of the industry as a whole. It is low paid, hard work and generally unrewarding. Not the first time I have said this but it has become careerless. I would say that the standard pay for professional engineers in the UK in 30K-40K if your lucky. I accept working offshore pays more, but who wants to do that for there career.

Engineering is not prepared to take on the responsibility to train anyone. They headhunt. It does not offer anything that cant be found somewhere else. There is no shortage of skills out there, but there is a total shortage of people prepared to take on board transferable skills and train in house. My personal opinion for this is, there is no long term investment in people skills because there will be no long term need. Immigration will ultimately solve the problem and allow the costs to be kept low and therefore continue to make engineering a total unattractive option for denizens and anyone starting out or looking for a career change.

The construction industry is not having this problem at the moment. Nor is renewables. People are also wising up to the fact that if your going to work hard, do something that you can do yourself. A resent C&G study supports that young people do not see any value in working for someone else.

When visiting those companies that cry skills shortage, which is now part of my job, I generally find crap. They want something for nothing and wont do anything about it.

 

[moltenmetal]

makeup's nailed it on the head. Industry cries shortage any time they have to pay a premium for ANYTHING, even if it's to get someone to relocate for a risky contract position in some remote location the wife and kids aren't going to be thrilled with. Oh yeah- and they're not offering opportunities like this to the recent grads or hordes of recent immigrants who would actually find such an offer worth accepting because their opportunity for ordinary professional engineering jobs are so limited!

A lack of succession planning and a lack of commitment by businesses to their professional employees- these problems cannot be solved by graduating or permitting the immigration of yet more engineers. Yet business will continue to cry "shortage" and will NOT cry "stop!" once a particular perceived shortage becomes an oversupply. Why would they? What's not to like about an oversupply if you're a business? It pushes down wages and makes employees more "flexible" (i.e. willing to put up with sh*tty working conditions, no benefits, contract work without a contractor's salary, uncompensated overtime etc. etc). Oversupply renders our profession into a commodity, with the same stink associated with all other "rendering" operations.

As to opportunities for engineers, don't be confused by QCE's enthusiasm for Canada as an alternative to the UK. Canada may well be better than the UK for engineers because the situation in the UK sounds so dreadful, but it's no picnic here either. We've got a massive oversupply of engineers: at least 100,000 engineers have been supplied to our marketplace in excess of realistic estimates of demand in the past decade and 10,000 more are added to that number annually. Graduation AND immigration rates to our profession have both exceeded economic and labour force growth in our nation by a significant margin and show no signs of slowing much less reversing. Your chances of being employed 2-years after graduation in ANY job are roughly the same graduating from engineering as they are graduating from the AVERAGE university program here (despite tuition being greatly higher and the course of study greatly harder). Some estimates put the chances of landing an actual engineering job on graduation at roughly 50% on average. Your chance of employment in ANY job 2-years out is considerably worse as an engineering grad than if you graduate with a degree in ANY medical field, or even religious studies! University profs/administrators and government officials in the provincial education departments here view engineering as "the new liberal arts education" and have given up any expectation that grads of engineering programs will actually WANT to work as engineers and go on to professional licensure. See

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

if you want to see the stats for Canada.

 

[TFL]

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS ARE LISTED ON THE UK IMMIGRATION PAGE AS A NEED PROFESSION. IS THIS TRUE?

 

[rb1957]

indentured serfs (or snurfs) too ...

 

[TFL]

EXCUSE ME?

 

[QCE]

You see moltenmetal is even complaining about Canda's system imagine if he lived in the UK. Engineering Immigration to Canda is hurting the chances for new grads to get jobs that is a fact. However comparing the situation in the UK and Canada I think even moltenmetal would choose to be an "Engineer" in Canada.

Lets list the cons:

UK - nojobs, low wage, no respect

Canada - no jobs

To Moltenmetal: I think the Canadian system is the best I've seen. Keep up the good work of informing people that there are no jobs here. May we have a shortage one day and all of our wages will go up even more. Cheers!

 

[corus]

As this is becoming a UK bashing exercise, it's worthwhile to point out some comparisons between the UK and Canada. In Canada the unemployment rate is 6.8%

http://www.statcan.ca/english/Subjects/Labour/LFS/lfs-en.htm

,whereas in the UK the unemployment rate is 4.8%

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=12

,close to the figure that government would consider as full employment. This might explain TFL's comment that structural engineers are needed in the UK. The general conclusion would be that you are more likely to be employed in the UK than in Canada, hence the comment of 'no jobs' in the UK is ill informed to say the least.

A comparison of wages between the two countries for chemical engineers (for example) shows an average salary in Canada of 52,000 canadian dollars

http://canadavisa.com/documents/salary/c.htm

whereas the average salary for UK engineers is 42,000 GBP

http://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/helpwithyourcareer/jobprofiles/profiles/profile540/

As one candian dollar is worth less than half a british pound sterling, there is obviously no comparison. Similarly a comparison of petroleum engineers worldwide shows that candians aren't the lowest earners. In fact the Carribean and South America beat them for that position

http://www.spe.org/spe/jpt/jsp/jptmonthlysection/0,2440,1104_11038_2871041_2873205,00.html

A survey in the Sunday Times on Sunday 5th June showed that the qualification that gave the largest increase in wealth in the UK was a degree in mathematics and science, followed closely by a degree in engineering (history isn't worth the effort by the way), so engineering might not be No. 1 in the UK, but No.2 sounds ok to me. If value equates to respect then engineering can't be too bad in the UK. You just need to have the right qualifications.

As for Canadian engineers.. I'm losing respect for them.

corus

 

[GregLocock]

corus, I think you need at least to factor in cost of living.

I'm surprised chem engs get that much, hmm, mechies are about 10k less, that explains it.





Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[QCE]

Relax Corus,

I'm not bashing the UK. I'm actually bashing the UK engineering system. I think we can all agree that your comparison of unemployment rates is not a good comparison when we are talking about the employment rate of only engineers. Also we are talking about engineers that are employed at a real engineering job.

Next the salary thing is not very good. The article clearly states this is the average for an experienced engineer. The website for the Canadian salary is from a law office and is not really in the ballpark.

What does "gave the largest increase in wealth" mean?

Please check out:

http://www.peng.ca/english/become/need.html

 

[GregLocock]

That Canadian site records pretty much the same wages for all the types of engineer I looked up. I don't believe the numbers either, starting pay for a graduate engineer is 50000, and I know experienced engineers are on at least 90k. So I think you (Corus) have been misled. Have you been to Canada?

FWIW as far as cost of living goes I reckon 1US dollar=1 Canadian dollar= 1 Australian dollar = 1 pound, at least that's how it feels to me!


Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[GregLocock]

Sorry that should be 40000-50000

Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[corus]

Greg,
I deliberately referred to links so that my opinions were based on fact and not to baseless comments such as "UK - no jobs, low wage, no respect".

The Canadian dollar is worth about 0.4 GBP when I checked.

The increase in wealth that a degree gives was calculated by comparing the average salaries of those who left school at 18 with 'A' levels (whatever they are in the US and Canada) and who then started full time employment, compared to those who at 18 years went on to University and gained a degree. From memory a maths and science degree earned an extra 200,000 GBP whilst an engineering degree was valued second at about 190,000 GBP. I did find a link to the story on the Sunday Times web site but unfortuanetly the online version of the paper didn't include the table of figures. Unfortunately my copy of the Sunday Times has now been taken away by the Sanitation and Waste Disposal Engineer, previously known as the binman.

corus

 

[DrillerNic]

The lack of status of Engineering in the UK has been a gripe for decades, if not longer. I've read people seriously arguing that the profession should be renamed Ingeneuring or something, like on the continent, as that carries the implication of ingenuity rather than the oil-under-the-fingernails implication of engine derived 'engineer'. I've seen attempts to get 'Engineer' a notfiable title (apparently most of the people who are EURING are from the UK, possibily to get a title?). I do get irritated by people who confuse engineers and mechanics, but generally let those people wallow in their ignorance and get on with my life.

But the salary surveys quoted above show that engineers in the UK are doing pretty well in terms of pay: don't forget that average salary in the UK is something like £22,000 pa. and an average salary of £40k puts engineers in the top 10% of all UK tax payers. Comparing engineers to other professions, I think on average we do pretty well; yes there are differences between branches of engineering and geographical area of working, but then not all law graduates are QCs earing megabucks in commercial law; most of them are doing conveyancing for £35k or something.

And comparing salaries between countries is always tricky; I've lived in different parts of the world and as well as the cost living you have to factor in the levels of social provision of services to get an true idea of salary parity. The UK is a very expensive place to live, but the NHS is still free (if lagging behind say, France and Germany in some areas of quality). So a direct comparison of UK salaries vs Australian salaries vs German salaries etc is sometimes misleading.

 

[makeup]

An average of 40K seems very optimistic.

 

[rb1957]

maybe the 40k figure includes the contribution from garage engineers (mechanics), and sanitation engineers and ...

as to the continuing debate between corus and greg, i think greg's point was that effectively (ie what you can buy with) 1 pound = 1 cdn dollar ... having lived in both systems, i think this is reasonable (within engineering accuracy!).

i also agree with the previous posts, that you can find data to support just about anything (and no corus, i'm not accusing you of anything). i think anecdotal accounts are reasonable in this context ... not many posters have said "i'm well paid and think i have a high status job" ... maybe in their high paying jobs they don't have time to post on fora such as these.

 

[moltenmetal]

rb1957: no engineer should base their conclusions solely on anecdotes. Perhaps I've been guilty of doing so with respect to the UK. I don't live there and haven't studied their situation in depth by any stretch.

I do live in Canada and I HAVE studied the situation here- extensively.

You may be able to "find data to support just about anything", there are some things for which the data is collected by a reputable 3rd party and is accurate and clear. That's definitely the case for the supply statistics for engineers to the Canadian marketplace versus time which I have posted on my website.

The demand-side data is NOT clear, nor is the salary data which has been posted here. There ARE salary surveys available from our professional bodies here in Canada but they have a significant (high) reporting bias since only those who have licenses are reported, yet roughly 1/2 of Canada's engineers are unlicensed. The thousands of engineers who are unemployed or under-employed are not represented in these salary statistics, nor are they reported in the unemployment statistics available from the same sources.

But what IS clear here in Canada is that the growth in supply of engineers over the past 12 years is so enormous that no reasonable estimate of workforce demand could match it. Oversupply is clearly indicated, and it's supported by numerous secondary indicators. Anyone who weighs such data equally with a few people reporting "I'm all right, Jack" is sticking their head in the sand. They've got lots of company- most people in Canada's engineering advocacy and regulatory bodies have their heads in the sand on this issue too, as does Citizenship and Immigration Canada's bureaucracy. Our so-called federal advocacy body, teh Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, has its collective head shoved in an even darker and less pleasand place. Fortunately, the current Minister Joe Volpe has woken up to the issue and has publicly stated that the current system has supplied Canada with "...more engineers than we could hope to use."

As to comparing salaries, "comparative advantage" has to be taken into account. Cost of living in Canada is far lower than it is in the UK. But what matters most is a comparison of the relative compensation levels of occupations with similar educational and personal responsibility/accountability/liability levels. In this regard, Canadian engineers have slipped relative to the other senior professions by more than 50% in the past forty years.

This Canadian engineer isn't going to let his profession slide further into the toilet without a fight. If that costs me corus's respect, that's a very small price to pay.