STEMUP 2

[BUGGAR]

Over the next five years, with more and more engineers, I see movement towards a more advanced, yet practical avenue called STEMUP: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Unemployment Preparation.

 

[moltenmetal]

allgoodnamestaken: it's not engineers themselves who are creating the problem here, though those who refuse to acknowledge that there is an oversupply are not helping matters. Sometimes I do feel that the toughest people to convince there is a problem of oversupply of engineers here in Canada are engineers themselves.

No, your issue is, or should be, with the employers of engineers- only some of whom are engineers themselves, mind you! They recklessly scream "shortage!" and the various levels of government respond with increases to both engineering school enrollments and engineering immigration. The universities respond to increased "demand", which they define as "students applying to their programs" rather than "employers hiring their graduates for what they've been trained for"- universities here think they're businesses with a growth motive, rather than public services who spend precious collective resources that could also be spent on a thousand other things our society needs.

It's not engineers themselves who are demanding that you get a Master's degree- it's employers who are responding to a buyer's market by setting the bar higher still.

The OP who started this thread wasn't making a joke: they were addressing a real problem in the profession that a lot of people have their heads in the sand about- or in even darker places. And they were doing it in a way which got attention. Good for them!

I'm an experienced engineer who has been gathering data and advocating in relation to this issue for over a decade. I've pounded my head against this wall for a long time. So be careful who you blast with your vitriol. I've been doing everything I can manage to bring attention to this issue, to inform the people at all levels in positions of power so they have the correct information upon which to make decisions. Many of them are still attempting to solve the problems of the 1950s and '60s, or are reacting to employer concerns that are based on a misunderstanding of the real situation. The first step in solving any problem is analyzing the problem and acknowledging that it's real.

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

I think you missed to point. There is a spark that we are looking for in engineering grads. A type of leap from the book world to the real world.

Some people just don't seem to have it. That's what seems to be missing in so many young engineers.

Why do you assume that's different now than any other time? This is the shuffleboard portion. What do you think happened to grads back in the day that didn't have the spark? Some didn't make it, some developed it, some found jobs that didn't require it. Just like today.

If you can't see what questions to ask, and must be given every step of the process, then I might as well do it myself. Why did I hire you?

When you graduated did University prepare you for every task possible, or did your employer train you when you first started out? You hired someone who will in the future (hopefully) be perfect for the position you want. If you wanted someone who could already do your job without any training, you shouldn't have hired a new grad!

The answer is to ask why, not how.

If someone doesn't know the how, I think I'd prefer they ask that too. It sounds to me like your expectations are the issue here - you hired a new grad and what you want is an intermediate engineer who has already done it all!

it's not engineers themselves who are creating the problem here

Yes and no. Obviously there are other actors here too, but the engineering bodies aren't doing anything to help either!

They recklessly scream "shortage!" and the various levels of government respond with increases to both engineering school enrollments and engineering immigration.

You know who has the power to protest this in a meaningful way? Not engineering students and new grads. Practicing licensed engineers are the people in the industry who have the most power and influence to work on this. Do you blame students for wanting to be engineers? Or new grads for wanting jobs? Universities graduate students - that what they do. They aren't going to decrease intake.

The ones in relatively secure positions with the expertise and some influence are the ones who should be acting.

It's not engineers themselves who are demanding that you get a Master's degree- it's employers who are responding to a buyer's market by setting the bar higher still.

Not true anymore.

http://blogs.asce.org/ncees-endorse...on-on-educational-requirements-for-licensure/

http://www.asce.org/raise_the_bar/

It is the engineering bodies, made up of currently practicing engineers, who are increasing the academic requirements to become an engineer. To keep the protests to a minimum they're going to put an 8 year delay on the effect so that those in school now can get out, but the bottom line is that its the engineering bodies who are now going to require a masters degree. The value of the engineering undergraduate degree is going to plummet - it will be the "pre med school" of engineering.

 

[Terratek]

I personally see no problem with engineering requiring a graduate degree for licensing. Maybe that would help solve some of the oversupply we have right now (lol). It is currently the only professional career path that doesn't require a post graduate degree and is also the lowest paying professional career on average.

Doctors, pharmacists, CPA's, Lawyers all have higher education requirements and all get paid higher on average.

It might lend a little more respect and pay for those willing to run the gammet. Of course, I suppose I'd feel differently if I didn't have an engineering master's degree.

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

Doctors, pharmacists, CPA's, Lawyers all have higher education requirements and all get paid higher on average.

Except that none of those require a particular undergraduate degree. They have specialized graduate degrees because for pharmacists and doctors any bachelor of science counts, and for a lawyer almost any undergraduate degree works. Then you get a specialized graduate degree with the specific education in your field, be it law, pharmacy, or medicine. It doesn't take 8 years to train a doctor in medicine, even though they're in school that long.

What is being done here in engineering is that you will require a specialized undergraduate degree, and then a non-specialized masters degree that really only adds difficulty and cost rather than some specific training thats been identified as lacking in engineering education. If they require a specific masters degree too that would be even more of a barrier to people becoming engineers, and far above and beyond what other professionals require.

On the surface those seem like decent parallels but when you actually look into the details you see that they are actually the reverse of the engineering system proposed.

 

[Terratek]

yes, you can have any BS going into these other professional degree programs (as you can also for a master's in engineering or architecture), but depending on the BS you hold, you could have substantial pre-reqs adding even more time than the typical plan. Either way, it's more time in academia than a straight bachelor's in engineering.

Heck, even with my bachelor's and master's in engineering, if I wanted to get a CPA, I'd have to go back and take a bunch of undergrad accounting and related classes before being at the same place as those who have a BS in accounting already.

Most folks without a master's would disagree with the validity of more education makes you more qualified. But then again, there are a bunch of people without degrees at all that claim there is sparse value a university education whatsoever. My father happens to be one of them. I respectfully disagree. And I also think the non-technical classes are just as important as the technical classes if you are purporting yourself to be a true professional.

And you are incorrect about the specialized bachelor's leading to generalized master's. It is absolutely opposite from that and unless you can support your claim, I have no reason believe universities are changing their policies. I graduated in 08 with my bachelor's so this is not coming from the shuffle board conversations. In fact, they forced us to increase our undergrad breadth rather than concentrating on say, structural.

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

http://www.asce.org/raise_the_bar/

a master’s degree in engineering
OR

an additional 30 credits of graduate or upper level undergraduate courses in engineering, science, mathematics and professional practice topics completed inside or outside a university setting.

A masters degree in engineering, or 30 credits of eng, math, sci, and professional practice courses (ie a more generalized approach).

If the requirement is so loose as to allow an engineering masters, or just a bunch of related courses, then its really not about having some particular knowledge and really just about making the whole thing more onerous. "We're graduating too many engineers and we don't know how to get them all jobs without training them, so we're just going to put more random barriers in front of becoming a PE to protect it against people as qualified as we were when we graduated."

That's not coming from me, that's coming from the ASCE.

 

[Terratek]

So ASCE is looking to require 30 general hours. I said a master's degree. I still mean that. In my field, those 30 general hours would still be very helpful. I see no requirement forcing you to make it genera - just the option, apparently. Why pigeonhole yourself when you don't need to? Anyway, the state of affairs isn't as bad as you think it is. At least I don't feel like it is. Then again, I already go mine. You need to get yours. I'm more than happy to mentor up an coming engineers and I do so with the two engineers who work on my staff. I am a high needs learner and have always thrived with more guidance. But once I got it, I got it good. I do agree with on the job training but not on the job train yourself.

Anyway, just finish your degree, make good grades and you will likely find a job. You'll be grandfathered in to the existing education requirements, so spend your energies being the best you rather than lamenting what awaits those behind you. Be glad that the barriers to entry are raised as your paycheck will also be raised.

 

[testing]

If the requirement is so loose as to allow an engineering masters, or just a bunch of related courses

If it's a non-thesis master's degree, then it basically is just a bunch of related courses.

 

[moltenmetal]

allgoodnamestaken: you absolutely have several very good points! I fully agree that, on average, this generation of engineers is failing the next generation- on many counts.

We do see the same pressure here from the engineering regulatory bodies to increase the academic requirements for licensure. These same folks encourage increased engineering enrollment and expend a lot of energy recruiting kids into the profession. They fail to differentiate between the benefit of engineering to society (which is indisputable) from the benefit of engineering as a career choice (which is very disputable!) or the need for an increased supply of engineering graduates (which is beyond dispute- we are drowning in them already). That said, we see pressure in the opposite direction, to drop the experience and mentorship requirements from licensure for fear that it is acting as a barrier to licensure, and hence employment, for foreign-trained engineers and fresh grads. In my opinion, that would be an opportunity to take our flawed professional license and make it utterly and completely meaningless.

Absolutely, working engineers should be more diligent in carrying out their responsibilities to the next generation of engineers- in many, many ways. Our regulatory bodies fail us in this regard. To be fair, working professional engineers are suffering under the yoke of a regulatory environment which puts on them additional responsibilities arising from their title, without meaningful matching benefits arising from that title- and they are doing precious little to change that either. Here in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, a licensed professional engineer is granted no meaningful rights arising from their license, that do not require an additional "license" to take advantage of (i.e. a certificate of authorization), or cannot be obtained by a "legal" cheat of the system (i.e. by working in an industry considered "exempt", or for an employer with a C of A). So if you're concerned that the experienced engineers are failing in their duties toward the next generation of engineers, I'd argue that they are also failing in their duty to defend their own generation as well.

Regrettably, we engineers are too timid, and too concerned about perceived conflict of interest, to pursue our own self-interest through effective advocacy. So what we have here in Ontario is an advocacy body which stays silent about the oversupply of engineers to the marketplace (i.e. they are not doing any effective public communication on the matter, though they may be talking quietly and privately with various levels of government without mentioning this anywhere publicly), while at the same time advocating "continuing competency" requirements for people already having a license, and threatening students with refusal of admission to the advocacy body if their Frosh Week activities get out of line (a power they do not have). They don't understand their role- they think they're an extension of the regulatory body! I helped found that advocacy body, and am dismally disappointed in the result: it has utterly failed to live up to its mandate, though there have been a few hopeful signs along the way.

I don't blame students for seeking engineering as an educational choice. I blame educators and engineers both, for failing to point out in a meaningful way, that an engineering education is no longer any guarantee of an engineering job- and that those who seek an engineering education and do not end up with an engineering job, are not all patent lawyers and CEOs either. Most of those who fail to gain entry to our profession upon graduation, have not sought other employment by choice, but rather by default.

 

[cranky108]

allgoodnamestaken, With all respects, no my employer did not train me. My boss did not know how to do the job either. I learned on my own. And many of the things I do now with a computer I did by hand, and it took me several days more to do each. But I learned it, and the struggle was good for me.
Yes I did take several classes after I was employed, and they were only valuable after I had some time on the job.

And this young engineer I was ranting about. I did not hire him. He was hired into another department, because they wanted someone in the field more (I refuse to take family undertime pay).
The problem is the managers in the other department don't understand the job, so they don't know what questions to ask at the interview. This is the second engineer they hired, because the first one left after we would not allow him to purchase the latest (most costly, and difficult to work with) and greatest equipment.

If you can't learn the job on your own, then you need a different profession.

That said, I do work with a group of engineers, but each of us has a different skill set, so we don't overlap much on what we do (project, electrical, mechanical, structural, civil).
We don't have extra spaces for training positions, because of managment position constraints, and the little cross training we have just helps to make us all well rounded.

Maybe the drunken navy guys in the other department has training positions, but we don't (how they always have money for stupid things I don't understand).

 

[allgoodnamestaken]

Again, if you want someone who can just come into your organization and figure out everything without any training, you need to hire for that. You'll find its not many new grads who are capable of that. The failure here is with your organization's hiring. What you actually want in terms of abilities and responsibilities is an intermediate engineer but you keep hiring a new grad.

 

[BUGGAR]

As the OP, I think allgoodsnametaken got my message pretty well. I intended sarcasm and cynicism in my original post.

 

[Terratek]

I disagree with Cranky on the self training thing, at least to the extent he states. However, that probably stems from different fields of engineering requiring a different structure of skills application. I don't know much of anything about electrical engineering.

Most civil projects (including structural) are somewhat formulaic and there are a lot of standards of practice which vary by region that you simply could not know or learn on your own without being trained by someone with experience. Even a seasoned civil engineer would require some re-training if they decided to move to another region and practice in the same field. For example, pavement design is much different in California than in Texas. You could figure out DOT design as that is relatively codified, but private pavement wouldn't have anything more than "that's how we do it here" for one reason or another that evolved from years of pavement experience in that region. One thing I like about civil engineering is that there is a lot of knowledge that is handed down in a way that is almost impossible to be conveyed from books and just good problem solving skills. The calculated solution is often not the correct solution.

That said, a little baptism by fire, where appropriate, is good for you. Regardless of your field, you do need to learn to think on your own. I am a needy learner and one critique my bosses handed me after about 2 years was that when I came across something I wasn't sure about, have my best idea for a solution to accompany my question of what to do. I always do that now and it was more about confidence building than anything else. If my employer was hardcore about learning on your own with minimal support, I probably wouldn't have made it. But they nurtured me and I'm a department manager now. I wish I was a less needy learner....

 

[someguy79]

If we send more people through more classes/lectures/homework/tests, we are likely to get people similarly prepared to what we have today. Sure they will have taken more courses, but how much of that is retained? How much course work is really useful/practical in the end? I certainly have forgotten quite a bit, but the education was still useful because I remember the important foundational knowledge. If I need something more in depth I can go look stuff up and get help.

More education is nice, but I don't think that's a good answer. School is great for learning theories, but very often falls short on practical skills. The best prep for a real engineering job I had in school was Formula SAE. Yeah, race cars are cool, but it was the most realistic environment. There were schedules, budgets, problems, testing, lots of communication, physical stuff to build, and no 'correct answers'. Even that was just a small version of working on engineering projects.

Of course curmudgeonly attitudes about how much better things used to be are not helpful. However, if there were specific things that worked better in the past maybe they need to be reconsidered. What are these things?

As I see it, people used to stick around one job/company for longer periods. In so doing they would pick up more knowledge about that organization/industry naturally. With higher turnover we can't expect that sort of institutional knowledge to be easily transferred. I don't think that these sorts of learning can be taught in school. Schools (Universities included) are just too general, even at the Masters level.