Short product life cycles. Fast turnarounds. A constant barrage of new information. A race to stay on top of technology while getting new products out the door. To win the race, America must lure college students into engineering. Otherwise, the nation could compromise its position as world leader in technology innovation as more baby boomers retire.
THE AGING WORKFORCE
What's important to older, experienced engineers? One answer dominates the list of responses to this question: staying on top of the barrage of information. With technology evolving at light speed, market forces demand an increasingly specialized engineering pool. Even within certain specialties and subspecialties, the pace of change makes adapting to new technologies a daunting challenge.
Compounding this is corporate reluctance to provide reimbursement, not just for formal continuing education, but for the technical literature, journals, seminars, etc. needed to keep up to date. An associated difficulty is the time squeeze. With reduced work forces, there just aren't enough hours in the day to filter new technologies and decide what subsets to focus on for optimal productivity gains.
What else is important? Engineers I interviewed agreed on the importance of working for companies that recognize the value of a lifetime of experience. Many companies view older engineers as less desirable and/or too expensive and seem to conclude that experience after a certain point doesn't seem to matter when compared to costs. Too many displaced senior engineers have discovered that for most companies, experience counts only if they have the "exact" experience a company needs—there's little commitment to reshaping solid basic skills to fit a specific job description.
Some companies are increasingly aware that experience is a valued commodity, and that recent grads—even those with advanced degrees—can't begin to offer the skills possessed by seasoned engineers. A study commissioned by the IEEE five years ago interviewed 139 supervisors (94% of whom actually manage the hiring process at their companies) about hiring practices. When asked to identify the specific characteristics they generally look for when hiring EEs, 35% called out technical skills/knowledge and 34% said experience. Supervisors also consider three attributes to be most important in engineers: problem solving, teamwork, and communication skills. Older engineers (45 years and older) were rated stronger than younger engineers in problem-solving and communications skills. Supervisors saw no difference between the two groups in teamwork skills.
Older engineers searching for a position in today's job market find themselves competing with foreign engineers with temporary H-1B visas. To hire a foreign worker on an H-1B visa, the position must be a professional one that requires, at a minimum, a bachelor's degree in the field of specialization for entry into that position. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) estimated that in 2000, approximately 78,000 workers came into the U.S. to fill IT jobs. According to Steve Richfield, high-tech consultant, these jobs pay about $40,000 per year, about half the rate demanded by U.S. software engineers. Is there a desperate shortage of software engineers? The H-1B proponents think so, but Richfield suggests that there's only a shortage of willingness to employ available domestic engineers.
Another problem for the aging engineer is a "generation gap" within a company, where experienced over-50 engineering managers clash with younger, under-30 engineers. A real cultural difference can show up when younger engineers approach problem solving differently than senior management. Some companies have responded to these challenges by handling age differences as a diversity issue, much like race or gender.
RETIREMENTS SHRINK WORKFORCE
The retirement and replacement problem in the engineering population must be dealt with as the industry attempts to address markets of the future. Updated statistics from the National Science Board (NSB) paint a cautionary picture: Unless current retirement rates change significantly, the science and engineering (S&E) workforce in the U.S. will see a rapid decline in the engineering pool as the total number of retirements increases over the next two decades. More than half of those with S&E degrees are age 40 or older. This 40-44 age group is nearly four times as large as the 60-64 age group that's currently retiring. The shift of the 40-44 age group toward retirement is a red flag. Without changes in degree production, retirement behavior, or immigration, these figures imply that the S&E workforce will continue to grow, but at a slower pace, and its average age will increase over the next two decades.
There's no easy way to track engineers' retirements. Some individuals retire from one job and continue to work part time or even full time at another position, sometimes for the same employer. Others leave the workforce without a retired designation from a formal pension plan. By age 62, 50% of both S&E bachelor's and master's degree recipients no longer work full time. However, S&E doctorate holders don't reach the 50% mark until age 66 (Fig. 1). Thus, after age 55, full-time employment for PhDs remains significantly greater than for the other degrees.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (February 2004 Monthly Labor Review), two areas related to electronics engineering can look forward to significant growth. Computer-system analysts, who numbered 468,000 in 2002, are expected to increase by 39% to 653,000 in 2012. Software application engineers numbered 394,000 in 2002, but that number is expected to balloon 46% to reach 573,000 in 2012. Other fast-growing computer-related fields include computer-support specialists; computer software engineers, systems software; network and computer systems administrators; and network systems and data communication analysts.
ARE ENGINEERING ENROLLMENTS DECLINING?
It depends on who you ask. The NSB reports that from a 1983 peak of about 441,000 students, undergraduate engineering enrollment declined to about 361,000 in 1999 (an 18% drop), and then rebounded to 421,000 in 2002 (Fig. 2). However, that latter figure is still 20,000 shy of the 1983 peak.
Despite the rebound, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) says the percentage of college students seeking degrees in science and engineering is still falling. Its 1985-2000 statistics show BSEE degrees earned dropping 25% over the period from 23,668 in 1985 to 17,672 in 2000. All engineering fields, not counting computer science, saw a decline of 23% from 77,572 degrees in 1985 to 59,536 in 2000. Lower CED stats may reflect the fact that not all enrolled students finish a degree.
But the engineering schools with which I spoke saw a steady or improving trend. In academic year 2002-2003, student enrollment at MIT, for example, was 10,317, compared to 10,204 in 2001-2002. There were 4178 undergraduates (4220 the previous year) and 6139 graduate students (5984 the previous year).
This upward enrollment trend was corroborated by Dr. Zaki Bassiouni, dean of the College of Engineering at Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge. While LSU's engineering enrollment has been fairly consistent, its freshman numbers show an upward trend. And for the entire department, undergrad enrollment has jumped about 250 over the last five years. Recent enrollment at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, has also been steady, with no indication of future declines.
Pennsylvania has a competitive engineering school market with Drexel University, the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering & Applied Science, Villanova's College of Engineering, all in Philadelphia; Lehigh University in Bethlehem; Penn State, University Park; and Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, Pittsburgh. Drexel, Lehigh, and Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering are pleased to report that there's no evidence of decreasing engineering enrollments at their respective institutions. Their concern, however, is the barely increasing pool of engineering talent nationwide and what this ultimately means to U.S. technology leadership. Drexel's associate dean of engineering, Dr. Mun Choi, states that while Drexel's enrollment has been stable, national engineering enrollment seems to be falling off in fields that were considered hot just four or five years ago, such as computer science, information technology, and computer engineering.
Will these slight increases in enrollment be sufficient to replace the engineering population lost through retirement? Dr. El-Aasser, Lehigh's dean of engineering, suggests that if the percentage of women increased to the same proportion in society, we would be on track with a more appropriate number of engineering students. A study by the American Association of Engineering Societies/Engineering Workforce Commission's (EWC) Engineering & Technology Enrollments, Fall, 2001, placed the total number of engineering freshmen at 106,825 (19,509 were women), a 4.9% increase over 2000. Computer engineering was the largest discipline at a total of 22,576 (almost 4000 women), mechanical was second at about 13,800, and EE came in third at about 13,000 students.
RETAINING EEs POSES CHALLENGE TO SCHOOLS
For Dr. G. Kemble Bennett, PhD, PE, vice chancellor, and dean of engineering at Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, the challenge isn't decreasing enrollment, but retaining the engineering students who do enroll. "We really haven't seen a downturn in the enrollment of engineering students," he says. "The university has a cap on the number of engineering students we can admit, and even in a program as large as ours we consistently turn away qualified applicants. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a drop in the national averages."
Dr. Mary C. Juhas, assistant dean of the College of Engineering at Ohio State University, Columbus, agrees. Part of the problem, as she sees it, is the rigorous engineering curriculum—especially the mathematics courses, as well as "gatekeeper classes" that include chemistry and physics, both of which involve laboratory courses and demand a great deal of time.
How can colleges retain their engineering majors? Incoming freshmen who have a genuine interest in engineering as an eventual career path can be dissuaded by a low grade in math or science, especially if they were accustomed to maintaining a strong academic record in high school. In addition, students may not know if they really want to major in engineering, and the fact is, they just don't see much engineering in their first few years of study.
When Lehigh's Dr. El-Aasser realized that freshmen needed to get the big picture without waiting for junior-year engineering courses, he suggested inverting the "education pyramid." In response, the engineering college designed a three-credit course where freshmen participate in two five-week projects in teams of five to six students. Each project has at least one engineering challenge based on theoretical concepts with deliverables at the end. Students have the opportunity to pick an area of interest, and the faculty assigns a second project that forces students to move beyond their "comfort zones."
Another direct approach was implemented at Drexel about 12 years ago to decrease the weed-out rate and keep students interested in engineering. Now, all courses in physics, math, and chemistry are taught with an engineering perspective. Theoretical foundations are supported with real-world engineering applications, giving students a chance to make the correlation. Working in teams of five, students are assigned projects as their first engineering course.
"Engineering is a team sport," says Motorola CTO's chief strategist, Charlie Backof. "Unfortunately, colleges tend to teach it as an individual sport." He states that while design classes are typically the only courses that bring multidisciplinary teams of students together to solve a problem, far too many colleges fail to offer these classes until the senior year. He recommends that schools begin these classes earlier in the program and require a series of them across the full undergraduate program, rather than a single event at the end.
Texas A&M starts team projects in the freshman engineering year and requires senior-year projects that teach prospective engineers that not everything is math- and science-based. For example, national policies and business aspects of marketing, packaging, and timing are integral parts of the production process. Senior engineering students find themselves interacting with business majors and people from the Bush School of Government who are studying policy. If the project is energy-related, an awareness of government energy policies is critical to its success. This multidiscipline effort teaches students across a wide spectrum of majors to realize that just coming up with the best scientific solution may not necessarily bring a project to fruition.
For over four decades, a hallmark of Drexel's engineering curriculum has been its mandatory co-op program. Typically, students spend 18 months working in engineering companies in three cycles of six months each, getting paid, but more importantly, being treated as junior engineers with responsibilities. They acquire professionalism and organizational skills and learn to develop presentations to sell their ideas. This is a tremendous asset for students when they look for a job. Employers find that these grads come to work ready to work.
Further recommendations come from LSU's Dr. Bassiouni, who suggests using student leaders and recent grads to reach out to new students. He recommends introducing freshmen to both academic and social programs with an engineering slant, such as engineering olympics. In addition, schools should offer tutoring services and supplemental instruction to help students succeed in engineering courses. Several schools have engineering councils, which often serve as a liaison among the administration, other societies, and engineering students. Councils serve a social purpose while also increasing engineering awareness among students.
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