patrick.net

I've noticed that a lot of Patnetters say that there is no shortage of engineers in the US. I never really hear this anywhere else except from people on these forums. Why here? I've also found lots of Patnetters to be very anti-education, which is also strange and seems like a minority position except among some libertarian types. Not picking on one person, but here's a typical quote on the engineer thing:

HousingWatcher says

Which is complete and utter nonsense. There is no shortage of engineers.

This was a response to thomas.wong (http://patrick.net/?p=1127889#comment-775304):

When it came to his turn, Jobs talked about the United States' lack of software engineers, and said that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. Obama responded that such a change had to be part of the proposed Dream Act - allowing undocumented immigrants who graduated from a U.S. high school to become legal residents - which Republicans had blocked.

...

That resonates, as does Jobs' plea at the dinner for a crash program to train U.S. engineers. "You can't find that many in America to hire," Jobs said. "If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here."

Hard to live in the Bay Area without dealing with lots of tech people who always say that opposite -- that it's hard to find quality engineers. What I gather is that it's really easy to find mediocre and bad engineers, but it's hard to find good ones. This makes sense since not everyone can be a great engineer.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that there are engineers over the age of 40 who have trouble getting jobs, but aren't a lot of them washouts? I surely know quality engineers who are boomers. I certainly know CS-types who are over 40 and have great jobs. Do I just know a sample of really good people?

By the way, reason I thought to ask is that I saw this today -- asserts the opposite of said Patnetters and gives stats on the amount of science, engineering, and math grads, but doesn't really say much other than that:

http://news.investors.com/Article/588637/201110191813/College-Has-Been-Oversold.htm

Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) has been flat.

Moreover, many of today's STEM graduates are foreign-born and taking their knowledge and skills back to their native countries. Consider computer technology. In 2009 the U.S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor's degrees in computer and information science. This is not bad, but we graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago.

The story is the same in other technology fields. The United States graduated 5,036 chemical engineers in 2009, no more than we did 25 years ago. In mathematics and statistics there were 15,496 graduates in 2009, slightly more than the 15,009 graduates of 1985.

Few fields have changed as much in recent years as microbiology, but in 2009 we graduated just 2,480 students with bachelor's degrees in microbiology — about the same number as 25 years ago. Who will solve the problem of antibiotic resistance?

If students aren't studying science, technology, engineering and math, what are they studying? In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

As I've said before, nothing wrong with being an art history major if your goal in life is to be a museum curator, but it's not a great general purpose degree or anything for jobs in many other fields, even if it might enrich your mind.

#housing