Maybe Finland has smarter students? 31

[jmw]

The issue raised was whether Finish students were right to call for engineering places to be limited.

The simple answer is "yes".

Consider educational establishments just like any other manufacturing operation. The law of supply and demand applies here as much as with any other organisation providing a service or product.

It is a proper function of government and education (or other regulatory body) to anticipate the demand and cater for it. In what sector of industry is over supply or undersupply appropriate?

What we see all too often is the situation where the wrong criteria are applied to university places.

If there is a forcast need for 50 engineers what is the benefit of producing 100? 50 of them will not find jobs and will have inappropriate training for the alternative available jobs. The jobs will be devalued and possibly some of the best students will not even enter that career path.

What this leads to are imbalances, too many engineers and not enough teachers or nurses.
It seems immoral to me that a wealthy country should so far get its forcasting so wrong that they need to draw on recruits from other parts of the world. The UK has been notorious for many years for recruiting nurses from over seas. Special imigration rules are proposed for other diciplines.

Poor countries provide many of the nurses required in the UK. They struggle to provide training for their students and then find these students lured away by richer countries who have failed to provide for their own needs. What does this do for the country that trained them? How do they recover their investment in training? how do they provide for their own needs?

Unless someone can tell me how this benefits the originating country, I tend to the opinion that the Finish Students are right to expect better planning from their governments and universities, as should students and industry in all countries.

Oversupply is just as bad as undersupply.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[JAE]

Well, respectfully, I just don't see it that we poor stupid sheep, er, citizens, should demand the "right to expect better planning from their governments" and to make everything be nice.

This always just devolves into the two camps of the world:

One who sees that governments can and do fiddle way too much with society and economies and end up creating disasters - and that free enterprise and supply/demand can and will correct themselves over time...

...and the other who sees that governments should manage our lives for us and design our environments such that all will be well.

In Finland, it is probably way too late to go back to freedom (the first option) and so the strike seems to be the only option left.

 

[DonPE]

I agree that the Finns were right to demand a limit on the number of engineering students, but I don't this could work in the US. Colleges are like manufacturing operations in the US, as jmw stated above, and their goal is to produce as many units as possible. Whether we "units" find jobs or not is not the schools primary concern: they've done their job and gave us an education. I recently attended an alumni reception for my alma mater, and the dean of the college of engineering talked about how many more students the school is attracting. I was unemployed (again) at the time, and was pretty furious, but the reality is that there were also representatives in the audience from large corporations which have a symbiotic relationship with the univerisity: the schools get very large corporate donations (go to your school's website to see), and the corporations get a steady supply of cheap labor. Having an abundance of engineers keeps the unit cost of an engineer down, and allows for a larger pool to select the "best and brightest".
There are two ways in the US to limit the supply of engineers, and thus increase the cost: 1) Control the licensing of engineers (the PE license in the US), and 2) Advise prospective students not to study engineering in the first place. A student "strike" would not work in the US.

 

[JAE]

DonPE - I agree with most of what you say - but I'd have to state that in some disciplines in the US there is just not that many engineers out there.

I manage a structural engineering department and I can tell you that I just don't get flooded with lots of candidate's resume's.

In fact, many firms in our area are stealing engineers from other firms to staff up.

Now maybe in other disciplines there are swings in numbers but this is just the nature of the thing - there will always be swings in available candidates as students learn what the job markets hold.

In fact, I would argue that its the STUDENT'S responsibility to investigate what the market holds, combine that with their own personal aspirations for a career, and then make a wise decision as to what field to enter.

 

[QCE]

I'm not sure if it is better for students to have the "freedom" to ask that engineering enrollment be reduced.

or

If it is better for students to have the "freedom" to have no power to do anything about student enrollment.

Maybe the question should be:

Is it a better system to have corporations influence the universities engineering enrollment with cash donations or is it better if the engineering enrollment is influenced by university or government or students opinion on needed supply?

 

[jmw]

There have been other threads that have lamented the "commercialisation" of education. AN over emphasis on this sort of criteria for judging the success of an institution can have adverse side effects.

However, I am forced by JAe's comment to wonder (and not for the first time) just what governments are there for?

In the UK it certainly is, or has been, the responsibility of government (The Department of Education) to make some estimate of the number of places required. Of course, i may have misunderstood this since the government subsidises (or subsidised) education to a significant extent. I know that my grandfather, when a civil servant in the Min of Ed, was once warmly congratualted on extremely accurately predicting the number of student teacher places required and provisioned for based on duration of training, proportion of teachers entering training and failing, proportion of teachers leaving the profession etc. In other words, exactly the sort of thing the Finnish student are deploring as lacking in regard to engineering places.

From DonPE's comments i guess this is not a universal approach and not universal in the UK, as i have suggested. Unless of course it does take place but is now totally ineffective e.g. when predicting the number of nursing places required for example.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SacreBleu]

DonPE, I am totally against your suggestion 1) - why should I, as a hard-working and modestly-paid PE, have to pay a lot more to group of bureaucrats?
If this country (USA) had any sense (and balls) left to it all, it would put real restrictions on all the H1-B visas, instead of the farce that it is now.

 

[EddyC]

I think that the giving of financial aid to students is enough involvement by government. Should the government, after now subsidizing someone's education, now have to guarantee a job placement and salary? I would think that the awarding of financial aid would be enough.

 

[QCE]

EddyC

I think that most people in this forum do expect the government to supply them with a job and a nice salary. That is one of the main causes of people in this forum complaining about the position of the engineering profession.

- the government lets to much business go overseas.

- the government lets to many foreign trained engineers into the country.

etc, etc.

I think most people will not support a government that lets the unemployment rate soar. Although I've seen stranger things.

 

[JAE]

EddyC and QCE - I think both of you (and me included) and others in this thread are looking at the world through totally different eyes.

I sense, QCE, that you work in a country where the government is very active in controlling, planning, and creating all sorts of economic and social conditions, such as a university. I'm not judging this here as to the value of such socialistic governments...just pointing out that this thread seems to be a series of posts that talk past each other as some here see the government as totally responsible for our well-being and others see the government as limited in scope.

For the students in Finland (remember them?) they are most likely in a socialized setting where they are complaining about the gov't mis-informing them, directing them into engineering, etc. and have no recourse but to go on some sort of strike.

In other countries where gov't is more limited, the idea of a student complaining to the bureaucracy about "not enough jobs out there" is absurd. Individuals much more responsible in these kinds of societies (at least they usually are or should be) and free enterprise reigns.

 

[BitTwiddler]

Go to this site:

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1995/11/art5full.pdf

On page 64 of the Monthly Labor Review for November 1995 it states that the low, moderate, and high estimates for employment by “Electrical and Electronic Engineers” in the USA in the year 2005 were 402, 417, and 439 thousand. Employment in 1994 was 349,000. The respective rates of increase were 15%, 20%, and 26%.

Next, go to this site:

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes170000.htm

Note that the category “Electrical and Electronic Engineers” has split into three categories: “Computer Hardware Engineers”, “Electrical Engineers:, and “Electronic Engineers, Except Computer”. Add up the number employed in all three categories in November 2003: 70,110, 149,540, and 131,240.

The total sum is 350,890 for November 2003.

Total employment in 1994 was 349,000.

The net increase is 0.5%.

The estimated minimum increase by the year 2005 was 15%.

Are you SURE you want your national government to micromanage the number of engineers your universities may produce?

Engineers in other specialties can easily use these two documents to see how accurate the predictions were for their branch of engineering.

 

[chris9]

I have to smile when engineering managers complain that they just can't get anyone or there is a shortage. The last place I worked for spent a year trying to recruit an engineer before giving the job to a Chinese immigrant on half the UK salary. At the same time I hear about new graduates unable to find employment. Finnish students are smarter.