Obama job plan includes increasing engineering graduates??? 21

[Fisch88]

How do all of you "not so fresh" engineering grads feel about increasing the number of new grads and then having some sort of "incentive" by the government to hire the newbies? Are there that many jobs available that currently unemployed engineers can't fill?

 

[TED7]

I think politicians seem to mix up 'Creating jobs for people qualified' with 'Creating people qualified for jobs' as the latter is far easier and looks just as good on paper.

Will
Sheffield UK
Designer of machine tools - user of modified screws

 

[SomptingGuy]

Dyson and BP have recently moaned about the lack of engineering graduates in the UK.

I think (on the Dyson front) it's just PR, trying to quell the hatred that will descend on him when he moves his engineering offshore.

- Steve

 

[TheTick]

I've been getting calls from recruiters asking for referrals. I think industry may be hungry for young and cheap talent. They didn't seem so interested in experienced talent a few months ago, though.

 

[KENAT]

I think Ninja182 may have summarized it pretty well.

I mean, from a "USA Inc" point of view I'd rather see engineering grads than more liberal arts majors (or pick your humanity of most contempt;-)) however, I'm not sure it's the best way of doing things, and yes eventually it may de-value us.

Surely supply and demand suggests that if there were lots of well paying Engineering Vacancies that are attractive, there'd be no problem with extra grads getting hired so why would companies need incentives? Rather than putting effort into more eng grads, and incentives to hire them, why not more effort into getting good grads. Heck, maybe tighten up on abuse of H1B visas too.

If they'd pay the engineering grads to engineer what they sometimes get paid to 'management consult' or work in the financial sector... then I doubt they'd have much trouble filling jobs.

If you want to 'increase supply' of a skilled profession to benefit the country, why not start with medicine? (And if they wanted to benefit the country by reducing the supply of some other grads I'd like to start the list with Lawyers, Political Science Majors, afore mentioned liberal artists...;-))

While there are undoubtedly other factors at play, how much of this is that the employers advising the govt want to encourage cheap labor?

Posting guidelines faq731-376

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

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

 

[ash9144]

Exactly right Ninja.
I remember his speech promoting this facet of his socialist agenda. And it still makes me angry. All this is going to do is make it easy for people to get a degree in engineering that have no business getting one. It will create a bunch of idiot engineers taking jobs, reducing salaries and causing major engineering failures. Like anything government becomes involved with it will be at the detriment of the rest of us.

 

[SnTMan]

What ever the effects, we must remember the only real agenda is re-election...

 

[HDS]

Does he explain how this is a jobs program? I thought jobs programs were supposed to create jobs. What is the theory, that engineers invent things and those things create jobs?

As other have said this is backwards. Increase manufacturing and investing in US businesses in the US then there will be more engineering in the US.

 

[SnTMan]

"Does he explain how this is a jobs program?" - Simple, HIS job.

Don't take your eye off the ball

 

[cranky108]

I think more economic classes should be required of non-engineers. And maybe enough math to balance a check book too.

If we water down the engineering programs it won't make more jobs for engineers (maybe at McDonalds), but will make more demand for qualified engineers.

There are a shortage of some engineers, but many schools have deleted needed classes for these specilitys. That's where the shortage of engineers mith comes from. Not from the general classes of engineers.

 

[moltenmetal]

There is no shortage of fresh grad engineers in Canada, and our unemployment rate is lower than that in the US. In Canada, less than 1/3 of people with engineering degrees actually work as engineers or engineering managers, whereas when surveyed in their 3rd and 4th year, at least 80-90% of engineering students intend to pursue a career in engineering. Yet as high as your unemployment rate is right now, the situation for your fresh grads is way better than it is here in Canada for one reason only: your H1B visa program for foreign-trained engineers. Here there is no such program- there are NO controls over how many engineers arrive here as immigrants versus how many the labour market needs. Even if only half of those immigrants take jobs which might otherwise be taken by fresh grads, the result would still be devastating.

This is the same old game played again and again by politicians and the business lobby worldwide, and abetted by the publicly-funded educational institutions. There's a logical error in the reasoning behind doing this. They argue (correctly) that engineers are important to the economy, but they incorrectly assume that if they increase the number of engineering grads, the economy will do better. In fact, what we have already and have had for many, many years, is a critical shortage of entry-level positions for fresh engineering graduates, such that most leave the profession immediately upon graduation.

Rather than seeing their role as public servants, the university system see themselves as a "business" which needs to grow at all costs, regardless what is happening to the population. This is a growing, parasitic drain on our society, yet "education" is the 2nd worship word here behind "health care"- nobody can cut its funding in any way without howls of public protest.

In the 1980s, firms got addicted to not needing to hire young people and train them. When the labour market tightened a bit in the '90s and engineering salaries started to rise, the major engineering firms cried "shortage!" and lobbied the Federal government to remove the profession-specific quotas on "skilled immigrants". As a result we got a flood of engineering immigrants so huge that a number equal to Canada's entire engineering graduating class tried to settle in Toronto alone every year from 2001 through 2003. Immigrant engineers got smart, talked to one another, and stopped coming in such huge numbers- nothing changed on the quota side or the points system and yet their immigration rate dropped from 16,800/yr in 2003 to ~4-5,000/yr where it is now. So the major engineering employers are now abusing the temporary foreign workers program- the one intended for migrant fruit pickers and other seaonal labour- all in an effort to avoid having to hire young and train them.

All of this is what happens when a profession becomes a commodity. I don't see it changing any time soon.

 

[owg]

More engineering graduates does not necessarily mean more engineers. Rowan Atkinson has a masters in electrical engineering but he saw the light. If we end up with more comedians that will be a good thing. I suspect that an ideal training program for comedians is attending a religious school (Rowan went to the Choristers School in Durham which provides the choir for Durham Cathedral, Rowan was a "non-singing chorister") then studying engineering. And then there was Engineer Margaret Thatcher who also got smart after graduation.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[cranky108]

It looks like the public universities are failing to provide the tools necessary to the students. And with the number of privite universities, and for profit universities, maybe the real answer is reduce funding for public universities.
In the short time there will be shortages of grads, but in the long run we should get a better qualitity of grads.

After all, do public universities give any stats on the number of grads placed? At least one for profit does.

 

[KENAT]

Erm, wasn't Thatcher a chemist/barrister?

As to comedians, I think our governments already have more than their quota thanks very much.

Posting guidelines faq731-376

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

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

 

[StoneCold]

I for one would rather have more bartenders.
I hate waiting for a drink!
Faster service, larger bill, more spending, economy fixed.
Same logic they used for adding engineers.

Regards
StoneCold

 

[SnTMan]

StoneCold, wonder if the G'ment could make re-training funds available to engineers that want to become bartenders to make room for the new grad engineers?

Regards,

Mike

 

[monkeydog]

SnTMan,

That recommendation might work out great for Materials and Process Engineers, but what about the rest of us?

 

[cranky108]

Why do we need bartenders anyway? Can't we automate that like we do with bank tellers/ATM machines. I mean something like those coffie machines that add milk, and sugar.

Given such a machine would only do the most popular drinks, simular to the local bartender.

However, we need to keep that cute girl that brings the drinks.

Anyone know how to make a subassembly that inserts umbrellas?

 

[SnTMan]

monkeydog, I don't think the pre-requisites are THAT tough

 

[controlnovice]

@MoltenMetal: Just worked on a project with Engineering office out of Canada.

90% of the engineers were from Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia. The rest from the UK. I don't think any of them were naturally born Canadians.

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