St Patrick and the Shortage of Engineers
Posted by Heading Out on March 9, 2006 - 3:47pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: education, engineers, peak oil [list all tags]
If you are going to rely on technology to solve the problems of running short on various fuels, as they are currently produced, then you need certain folk (engineers, scientists and technologists), who understand the current ways of producing those fuels, to come up with that technology. It is likely that some of the new advances will come from "thinking outside the box", but generally you need to know what's inside the box first. The problems that we have are several-fold, but let me hit just a couple, the current lack of students, and the growing shortage of faculty to teach them. (And while I write largely about the United States, much of this also applies to Western Europe.)
And it is our ability to constantly innovate new products, services and companies that has been the source of America's horn of plenty and steadily widening middle class for the last two centuries. . . . .The executives, the department heads, the sales force and the senior researchers are all located in the cities where the innovation happened. And their jobs create more jobs. The shrinking of the pool of young people with the knowledge skills to innovate won't shrink our standard of living overnight. It will be felt only in fifteen to twenty years, when we discover we have a critical shortage of scientists and engineers capable of doing innovation or even just high-value-added technology work. Then it won't be a quiet crisis anymore, said Jackson (President of Rennselaer Polytechnic) "it will be the real McCoy."He gives some numbers
It (the National Science Board) said that of the 2.8 million first university degrees in science and engineering granted worldwide in 2003, 1.2 million were earned by Asian students in Asian universities, 830,000 were granted in Europe and 400,000 in the United States. . . . Science and engineering degrees now represent 60% of all bachelors degrees earned in China, 33% in South Korea and 41% in Taiwan. By contrast the percentage of those taking a bachelor's degree in science and engineering in the United States remains at roughly 31%. Factoring out the science degrees, the number of Americans who graduate with just engineering degrees is 5%, compared to 25% in Russia and 46% in China.I have mentioned this topic before several times , but in the past mainly from the point that we will not have enough engineers to run the operations that we will be needed. However it is in regard to the innovation issue that there is perhaps more reason for concern.
Universities have, over the past decade or so, been closing departments that teach in the energy production disciplines. Enrollments were down, there was not a great deal of external research funding available, the programs were very expensive and the faculty were ageing and retiring. They could take those positions and move them over into Management (to pick just one target) where there was a greater demand for students, the programs were cheaper to run, there were faculty available and there was a demand for the product. Well now enrollments are rising rapidly in the energy production departments (mining, petroleum, nuclear, geological engineering for examples) and oops! Where are the faculty to come from?
It used to be, back when my hair was a different color, that when the US fell short, it could go pirate faculty from Europe (that's partly why I am here) but Europe cut way back over the past decade and more, so that supply is gone. And as Friedman points out Asia is increasingly interested in keeping its brightest at home. Universities, as a general rule, do not pay quite as well as industry, and in energy at the moment that is more than usually true even at entry positions, further up the ranks it becomes an almost embarrassing comparison. It is likely, therefore, that faculty shortages will continue. This has two short-term consequences.
Higher teaching demands are going to make less time available for the faculty to make those innovations that are needed to help solve our supply problem (and yes there are some answers), but this also has a hidden cost. Because for junior faculty to remain at university they have to prove that they are research productive. Which means they have to find resources to fund the work that they can do. Historically that funding came from the US Bureau of Mines (the one Federal Agency that was closed and done away with) or the Department of Energy. Unfortunately as was noted DOE budgets are being cut all across the Energy field, despite Presidential promises to the contrary. So where can the faculty find the funding to develop these new ideas into solutions that have a chance of succeeding? Good question ? And without it, our colleagues will sadly deny tenure and another engineer will head back into industry.
This is not a hugely expensive problem. If we consider, for example, that there are 13 mining schools, and each has 1 junior faculty member, and they could do meaningful research for $100,000, then we are talking about $1.3 million a year as an investment. (I hasten to add that this is not my idea, but that of Mike Karmis at Virginia Tech). Expand it to all the energy programs and you would still be at less than $5 million.
Will it happen ? Well see one of the things one does at St Paddy's celebrations is to sit around and gloomily stare into a pint of ale and bemoan the tragedies of life. And here I have given you a start - you've still got a week to mediate, and have another beer, and then . . . .
When I was in college, they put out an April Fool's issue of the school newspaper, which included an announcement that the administration was considering offering Thermodynamics classes in English, as well as the traditional Chinese and Urdu.
(Just kidding, I call my 8 month old Disentropy. However, I am the only one who gets the joke around here.)
What I mean is that once an economy's growth slows, it seems that the need for engineers would diminish. China is going like gangbusters. Hence the focus on engineering and science.
Normal capitolism, yes.
That would be consistent with the even smaller number of engineers graduating from Europe.
Why SHOULD someone who has brains and ability in applying those brains any way they wish go into a carreer track when other carrier tracks:
- get a %age of sales (salespeople)
- Have TV shows about them (lawyers)
- Recieve more pay, enough that you have Congress-Critters and a President call them overpaid (lawyers) or Warren Buffet calles them overpaid (MBAs as CEO)
- Most comapnies have tracks where MBA's and salesman can advance in title and pay, but others can not.
In a land where everyone feels they are a superstar, why would they want to limit themselfes income wise by being an engineer?What I mean is that once an economy's growth slows, it seems that the need for engineers would diminish
When an economy produces nothing but deritive works, of course you don't need engineers. Look at how well Hollywood and Disney does w/o engineers!
I just found one trying to put a rechargable battery bank in the same box as a 10 kVA power supply and put that box in the control room. I don't think this new world's gonna' be an easy place to live in. But, I'm sure the accountants and lawyers will smooth it out for those that are left.
As a senior I've had to change careers several times. http://www.geocities.com/computersystemsdocumentation/bill5g.htm
What is bad is having to discard lots of knowledge you worked hard to learn [like the IBM 360 assembler programming]then having to devote time to learn new stuff.
I just read
We've even had to make a career switch into law!
Our legal project visibility links are related to Iran: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/bpayne37/index.htm#margolis
First I thought the bourse is opening on March, 16th.
Second it is ridiculous to think that selling with discount of your own oil will hurt the dollar significantly. The bourse would be a threat only if it would offer market to other players, wanting to sell oil in euros.
Third I did not know that Iran is attacking USA... sounds absurd to me. They may be provoking the hawks here to go in the trap of attacking them, but this is a whole other deal.
I think there is a whole bunch of people trying to present Iranians as suicidal idiots, ready to die until the last person, in order our gas to be 10$. I don't buy that.
western world and applies to a who range of
skills that will be much-needed in post peak
societies.
We should note that many British universities
are actually closing down Engineering, Chemistry,
Physics etc. departments because such subjects
require laboratories [which cost money to run].
Here in New Zealand, has been a huge upsurge in
numbers of students opting for hotel management,
catering, business studies, economics,
media studies.....
a whole raft of subjects that will be
essentially useless in less than a decade,
perhaps as little as 5 years from now, if the
projections concerning oil supply hold true.
When I have pointed out that the ability to
practice medicine and produce food will be in
crucial in the future, and that there is
unlikely to be employment for another 50,000
hotel managers, the majority have just smiled
pleasantly and gone off to enroll for one of
the multitude of courses predicated on the
delusion that economic growth will continue
forever, that there is no such thing as resouce
depletion and global warming is something for
distant generations to think about.
Education is now essentially a business and
follows the same business as usual dogma that
prevails throughout society.
The richer nations will probably be able to
rely on a continuing flow of trained migrants
from overcrowded and politically unstable
nations to keep the infrastructure and hospitals
functioning, as we head through the bumpy
plateau into decline.
If we were truly as brilliant as we often claim, we would lead the world in the graduation of engineers who were trained to head us in the right direction. Then we would be ahead of the rest of the world. Then they would look to us for original ideas that are actually fixed in reality, that actually lead to a POSITIVE technology feedback loop, instead of our current NEGATIVE technology feedback loop.
It is time to admit the US is like an ignorant drunk having an argument with an enormous genius. Too proud to admit error, the drunk continues on his dangerous path, taking verbal potshots at the seven foot tall black-belt wearing genius who does not care if the idiot lives or dies. Either we have a small epiphany and realize that continuing this line of action will probably get us killed or seriously injured, or we realize that there may be an alternative. Just admit the US lost its way some miles back and it needs new directions. It is not enough to simply try and repair a system that is deeply flawed at its deepest levels. We need to retrace our steps and reset the system so it works with nature in an intuituve dance of action and reaction.
I love metaphor soup.
Kiyosaki covers this in Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In the '60s, every mother wanted her daughter to marry a doctor, because that was the ticket to the good life.
That is no longer the case. Doctors are now just like any other wage slaves, squeezed by HMOs and other changes in the market. The way to riches is now an MBA, not an MD.
But the money certainly does make a difference. I have heard many times over many years that the us needs more engineers and fewer lawyers. The marketplace disagrees, routinely compensating easier careers more than engineering ones, both in dollars and prestige. We can, and do, hire foreign born engineers (rather than lawyers), which reduces the demand and pay for those born here. I personally know a us born, young physics grad from USC, having difficulty finding work. Neither the governmnet or private industry sees any shortage of engineers and scientists - when they do, the salaries will reflect it.
Yeah, but when I was in grad school, I thought all that business stuff was boring. Toxic, really - I couldn't stay awake through discussions of business, and the thought of actually having to slog through an MBA program wasn't something that I really wanted to contemplate.
I have heard some say that law is the same. Deadly dull for the most part - people got in it for the money. I have run into some lawyers who absolutely hate what they are doing..
The ones who are only chasing the money tend to be the weakest links anyways. They are the ones with no love of the subject, and they may or may not have any natural aptitude for the subject. In my experience, they tend to screw up a lot and simply make work for others who do have more experience.
The problem with science and engineering is that there is no guarantee of being able to have a career without getting laid off and forcibly retrained as something else. Even before outsourcing, the market for aeronautical engineers tended to be cyclical and depended upon the space program or how Boing was doing. You have already mentioned the problems with having careers in the energy fields.
That's why the first thing they learn out of school is how to put the blame on somebody else.
Pay them more. In India, an engineering degree is a way out of poverty, whereas in the U.S. it is a way in.
When we really need more engineers, the price for them will go up. A half decade or so later, we'll have them.
At the college where I taught, typical number of qualified and overqualified people applying for a position in English or Poli Sci--200 to 300. Typical number of qualified applicants for a position open in engineering technology--Zero.
The M.B.A. degree, which I earned back in 1965, when it meant something, is now just a piece of paper that allegedly certifies that you can maybe do bookkeeping and simple financial ratios. The universities are grinding them out like sausages, because there are far far too many people with A.B. degrees in business (an easy major), and in an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaf, it now seems as if to get an entry level job the M.B.A. stands about where a high school diploma did in 1950. While I'm on a rant about MBAs, look at all those Harvard MBAs who created Enron and others who eagerly encourged our biggest banks to lend tens of billions of dollars to South American countries that will never be paid back.
This unending escalation of credentialism creates jobs for otherwise unemployable professors, but all that most college degrees certify (notable exceptions being math-heavy areas such as engineering) is that you are not utterly lazy nor do you have an I.Q. much below Forrest Gump's, and you probably spend less than a third of your time in a drug-induced stupor.
Thank you, I feel much better now;-)
I worked at Tektronix for a few years. Not one project I worked on came to market. It was very discouraging and the problems weren't in the engineering (or so I say. wink wink). And Tektronix had a reputation at the time of being a company run by engineers.
I'd have a hard time explaining to anyone why they should enter an engineering path at this time. Not much money. No respect and little job satisfaction. As soon as you develop something the project will get shipped off to India.
That's not to say we don't need engineers. Up in Prudhoe Bay the men need whores but that doesn't mean I'd tell my daughter it was a wise career choice.
Cooperate management spends all their time in the air, traveling from meeting to meeting, where they show each other PowerPoints made of recycled slides. Graphs that go from the lower left to the upper right, often without labels. Bubble Charts! What crap. The emphasis is all on maximizing short-term profit, and on making the boss look good. No development program can be justified unless it pays back in a year.
Once we've built up the capabilities of the companies in India or wherever in design and manufacturing, we'll find they have damn good ideas of their own, and we'll end up just selling their stuff - if we're even needed at all.
I seriously doubt I'll be doing engineering much longer. I don't really know what I'll do - there isn't much I cannot fix if I'm determined to, and if I can find the time I hope to get into ironworking/blacksmithing. It's no way to make a living now, but once I'm out of work, and have given up the health insurance and 401k, don't have to commute, sell off the car we still pay on, forget about sending kids to collage, and cut all other costs, then it might be viable. At least if I can combine it with gardening.
But the question is - after 5 or 10 years of that, would I be any use as an engineer anymore? I doubt it. At least it would be very difficult. While there is an element of engineering in all of the projects I do, I would be out of date on all the tools, and all the components, etc. And I wonder if I would even want to anymore. Beyond that, good design requires a team (even if small) that works together well, and is greater than the sum of its parts. It takes time, effort, and good luck to put that together. And once torn apart, it is lost.
1. Follow your bliss. In other words, go where your passion is.
2. Get as many credentials and proficiencies as you possibly can.
All my children are doing well in their careers, except for the one who chose the noblest profession, teaching. Graduating with top honors from a top college and with outstanding recommendations from her internship supervisors, she has never had a full-time job teaching after more than ten years of seeking one. Why? For practice, God made an idiot. Then, He made a school board. Or, to be more precise, if you want to get hired you better have an uncle on the school board. Some of my very worst (stupid, lazy and dishonest) students have gone on to become public-school teachers--because of who they were related to.
We need to get the very best people into teaching and into engineering and the hard sciences.
Alternatively, from a self-interested perspective one can do well as a golf or tennis pro at an upscale country club. All those bored trophy wives of the lawyers etc. need to be entertained . . . yessss. There are still a few good jobs. Bartending at a five-star hotel or being a maitre d'hotel can be very lucrative. I think diesel mechanics are doing well and will continue to do so. Electrical power generating plants will need engineers to replace the ones that retire. Everybody flushes, and so I imagine the demand for sanitary engineers will continue at a steady level.
So it's ten years. Socializing is easier and pay better.
Maybe in the past, this would have been true. Will it be true in the post-carbon age? I doubt it.
Will anyone's salary go up? Companies will not be hiring or giving out raises when the economy tips into recession...or worse. If the government weren't drowning in red ink, they might launch a "man on the moon" project for energy. But they are drowning in red ink, and won't get any better post-peak. They'll have a lot of other things to spend their money on, like relocating New Orleans residents, paying unemployment and food stamp benefits, and building up the military.
Tainter argues that technology, like any other human problem-solving method, eventually faces diminishing returns. We have been getting less and less return for our investment in technology for several decades now, and I suspect peak oil will only accelerate it. When the economy's bad and few jobs are available, how many families will pay $100,000 or more to send their kid to college? They will never make that up, especially when you consider the four (or more) years of lost wages the student will also be giving up. Many bright, capable students are already being forced to forgo college because they can't afford it.
We're past Peak Energy Expertise (at least in the US and Western Europe).
But I would like to throw in the idea that this is yet another symptom of the general decline of the US as a culture and world power. The other symptoms are too numerous to list -- huge trade deficit, no savings, huge budget deficit, great disparity in the distribution of the wealth, corporate malfeasance, a "bought and payed for" congress, questionable elections, flat or decreasing income for most Americans, unaffordable health care, growing illiteracy, ... and on and on.
Loss of necessary expertise in crucial industries just joins this list. I just feel that the bigger context should be considered. An MBA is what is valued where you manipulate numbers and paper assets. An actual expert in the field finding and recovering ever more scare hydrocarbons is getting harder and harder to find. And as you note, there's nobody to get them started in school. It's really sad.
It's Japanese engineering that most impresses me at the moment. They really care about quality control. It shows in even the little things. Tighter seams on their cars, that make them look classier than American cars that cost more. Blank CDs that are less likely to corrupt your data than those made in other countries. DVDs that are much sharper, brighter, and crisper than their American counterparts.
Moreover, Japanese products are designed with people in mind. Take apart a Japanese item, and you'll see that it's designed so that it's not only easy to put together, it's almost impossible to put together wrong. There will be maybe three screws that hold several different parts on, where a similar American item might have 13 different screws, all different sizes.
A Ford or GM engine is clearly assembled outside the car, then put inside with no thought of how the eventual owner will maintain the engine. The oil filter is often impossible to reach, and the oil drips over the brake lines or fuel lines when you try to drain it. Toyotas, OTOH, are designed to make it easy for the owner to change the oil and do other routine maintenance.
The Japanese engineering that I acknowledge is superior in many ways, is both the result of earlier American engineering and largely aimed at an American market, not to mention the fact that it exists solely because it was enabled by Americans - The Marines to a large extent in this case - see Tarawa.
While you have good points, the issue with the car industry is largely one of the American market. Ford and GM engineers merely implemented a horribly stupid strategy handed to them by the MBA's.
The Japanese have certainly never produced more montrous vehicles than the Hummer, F150, Ram, Yukon, and Excursion then sold them for so little for so massive a profit. This task required competent engineers as well.
Your comments, while warranted, speak more to the end result of the engineering rather than the engineering itself. I certainly agree with your emotion, however.
From a strictly engineering standpoint of view, Germans build better cars than Japanese. But as with many things in life, there are many factors involved.
1. How many were born in the U.S.?
2. How many were educated in the U.S.?
The fact of the matter is that our public educational system is broken, and without tens of thousands of VSA, there is no way we could keep our standing.
By draining the best brains from Asia (and elsewhere), we benefit and they lose. Because living conditions are rapidly getting better for the well-to-do in India and China, the flow of VSA to the U.S. is diminishing. But if you go to Fremont, Calif., you may observe some interesting phenomena.
Oh, and about the Marines, no argument: But without the Navy to take them places and keep them supplied, the U.S. Marines can't do much.
I know a guy who works as a headhunter and has TONS of qualified engineers on his roster who cannot fi