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In the case of China, we eventually obtained useful data from the Ministry of Education (MoE) and, most recently, from the China Education and Research Network (CERN). To obtain graduate statistics for India, we traveled to Bangalore and New Delhi and visited NASSCOM, the AICTE, and the Ministry of Science and Technology and University Grants Commission. We asked several questions about company policies in hiring engineers to work in the United States. Again, the pandemic is impacting this imbalance as well, as mens college enrollment for spring 2021 saw a decline of more than 5% versus womens 2% decline from the prior year. 0000021610 00000 n
Respondents said the advantages of hiring U.S. engineers were strong communication skills, an understanding of U.S. industry, superior business acumen, strong education or training, strong technical skills, proximity to work centers, lack of cultural issues, and a sense of creativity and desire to challenge the status quo. What we found is that even as enrollment in engineering programs has increased by more than 140% over the past five years, China has been decreasing its total number of technical schools and their associated teachers and staff.
Among our efforts, we have sought to assess the comparative engineering education of the United States and its major new competitors, India and China; identify the sources of current U.S. global advantages; explore the factors driving the U.S. trend toward outsourcing; and learn what the United States can do to keep its economic edge. Ithaca, NY 14853
They did not mandate a PhD for research positions, and they said they often found many capable masters-level graduates. The nation needs Sputnik-like programs to solve a variety of critical problems: developing alternative fuels, reducing global warming, eliminating hunger, and treating and preventing disease. <<8DF7041E197FC447AFA3FD42C1F3BC01>]/Prev 1104844/XRefStm 2427>> In other words, we found no indication of a shortage of engineers in the United States. Given the pace at which globalization is happening, by that time the United States would have lost its global competitive edge. One of the biggest challenges for the engineering profession today is that engineers salaries are not competitive with those of other highly trained professionals: It makes more financial sense for a top engineering student to become an investment banker than an engineer. Indian and Chinese students are the dominant foreign student groups. Reasons for going offshore. In order to collect similar data for China and India, we initially contacted more than 200 universities in China and 100 in India. It is common in many industries to offer signing bonuses to encourage potential employees to accept a job offer. U.S. political leaders prescribe remedies such as increasing U.S. engineering graduation rates to match the self-proclaimed rates of emerging competitors. We must also make it easier for foreign students to stay after they graduate. But she focused on Silicon Valley, and this was before the dotcom bust. We offer several helpful resources below.
We obtained more data on masters degree graduates from the AICTE, a government body that regulates university and college accreditation and determines how many students each institution may enroll in various disciplines. *all figures accurate as of Fall 2020,figures use the incoming fall freshman students numbers. The second is a masters of computer application (MCA) degree, a three-year degree that offers a foundation in computer science to individuals who previously had received a bachelors degree in a different field. h[pUOm 0L!i}&4%i6-Zh*-PE
If the nation truly needs workers with special skills, it should make them welcome by providing them with permanent resident status. 0000000939 00000 n Despite what we see happening at the undergraduate level, graduate enrollment is on the rise, and womens participation in engineering graduate programs was experiencing a slow upward trend prior to the pandemic (Figure 4). Even though better-educated students will be better suited to take their places in the nations increasingly technology-driven economy, education is not the sole answer. Fifty-nine percent said the United States had an adequate supply, whereas 54% said this was the case in China. An added complication with Indias masters degree data is that students can pursue two different masters degrees within engineering, but graduates are often counted together. Chinese universities readily provided aggregated data, but not detail. CHINA IS RACING AHEAD OF THE UNITED STATES AND INDIA IN ITS PRODUCTION OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY PHDS AND IN ITS ABILITY TO PERFORM.
0000002427 00000 n Includes degrees in engineering, engineering-related technologies, mechanic and repair technologies, and construction trades for 1969-70 and later years. Figure 1: Total Fall Enrollment in Undergraduate Engineering Programs and Percent Female, 2010 to 2019, Figure 2: Total Fall Enrollment in Graduate Engineering Programs and Percent Female, 2014 to 2019, Many of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States, as well as globally, require math and science skills. Demand for engineers from Chinas top-tier universities is high, but employers complained that supply is limited. The nationgovernment, business, education, and societyneeds to develop the road maps, create the excitement, and make it really cool and rewarding to become a scientist or engineer.
Engineering shortages in the United States. %PDF-1.4 % By Ben Rissing, Gary Gereffi, Ryan Ong, Vivek Wadhwa. Still, the groups data provide the best comparison. The quality of other universities varies greatly, but representatives of local companies and multinationals told us that they felt comfortable hiring the top graduates from most universities in Indiaunlike the situation in China. Similarly, cost savings were cited as a major advantage of hiring Indian entry-level engineers, whereas other advantages were technical knowledge, English language skills, strong education or training, ability to learn quickly, and a strong work ethic. 242 Carpenter Hall Economic contributions. First, we asked about job acceptance rates, which are an indicator of the competition a company faces in recruiting staff. In Beijing, with the help of local students, we combed government libraries and bookstores, searching for these publications. All Rights Reserved. Engineering offshore. Although NASSCOM is considered to be an authority on Indias supply of engineering and technology talent, for masters degree graduates it maintains data only on students who obtain a specialized degree in computer application. Chinese executives said it was getting easier to hire masters and PhD graduates, but Indian executives said it was getting harder. As their economies improve, it will be increasingly lucrative for students to return home. Fax: 607-255-9606, Carpenter Hall
NIIT, an international corporation that provides education and training in information technology in a number of countries, is the largest private training institute and runs more than 700 training centers across India. Graduating more engineers just because India and China graduate more than the United States does is likely to create unemployment and erode engineering salaries. We believe that the data are gathered in inconsistent ways from the various Chinese provinces and that there are problems with how degrees are classified and their accreditation or quality. startxref For example, during the 2002-2003 academic year, the institutes granted a total of 2,274 bachelors degrees, according to school officials. Some Indian universities shared comprehensive spreadsheets, but others claimed not to know how many engineering colleges were affiliated with their schools or lacked detail on graduation rates by major.
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Gary Gereffi ([emailprotected]) is director of the Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness and Professor of Sociology at Duke University. 
The findings of our studies can help inform discussions now under way on how best to strengthen the nations competitiveness. So graduation rate increases have been achieved by dramatically increasing class sizes. computer science engineering majors salaries earned highest starting report venturebeat forbes above credit By Roberta Rincon, Ph.D., SWE Associate Director of Research. Degrees in engineering include degrees in all areas of engineering--for example, chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering--as well as degrees in general engineering. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Future of engineering offshore. 0000003892 00000 n
The deans and other university officials we met, especially those at top-level institutions, talked about the increasing demand they were seeing for their graduates and the shortages they were experiencing in hiring PhD graduates for faculty positions. We have been researching this issue further. To quantify the economic contribution of skilled immigrants, we set out to update her research and look at the entire nation. We believe that both sets of data from China presented in Table 1 are suspect, but they represent the best estimates available. India and China are the top offshoring destinations, with Mexico in third place. Hispanics are the dominant group in Florida, and Israelis are the largest founding group in Massachusetts. In 2004, India had 974 private engineering colleges, as compared with only 291 public and government institutions. 0000004709 00000 n
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Various articles in the popular media, speeches by policy-makers, and reports to Congress have stated that the United States graduates roughly 70,000 undergraduate engineers annually, whereas China graduates 600,000 and India 350,000. What skills would give U.S. graduates a greater advantage, and would offshoring continue even if they had these skills? These degrees, which require two years of study, are similar in structure to masters degree offerings in the United States and China. National Student Clearinghouse. Our interviews with representatives of multinational and local technology companies revealed that they felt comfortable hiring graduates from only 10 to 15 universities across the country. Where the Engineers Are. Issues in Science and Technology 23, no. 
It is too early to know the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of bachelors degrees awarded, but these are trends we must keep our eyes on. In both countries, they reported seeing an increasing number of expatriates returning home and bringing extensive knowledge and experience with them. However, NASSCOMs definition of engineer includes a wide variety of jobs in computer science and fields related to information technology, and no breakdown is available that precisely matches the U.S. definition of engineer, which generally requires at least four years of undergraduate education. Many people within and beyond government also do not seem to look ahead and realize that what could be outsourced next is research and design, and that the United States stands to lose its ability to invent the next big technologies. At the Pratt School of Engineering of Duke University, we have been studying the impact of globalization on the engineering profession. Indeed, the Democrats in the House of Representatives in November 2005 proposed an Innovation Agenda that called for graduating 100,000 more engineers and scientists annually. Current national debates focus on a demand for caste-based quotas for more than half of the available seats in public institutions. But we suspected that this information may not, in fact, be totally accurate.
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For various technical reasons, we could not use data from the reports directly, but we were able to adjust them statistically to obtain what we consider to be valid measurements. What were the relative strengths or weaknesses of engineering graduates when they joined multinationals? Rissing, Ben, Gary Gereffi, Ryan Ong, and Vivek Wadhwa. Although our research has revealed some issues of concern for the United States, we also want to focus on what we consider to be the countrys advantages in todays increasingly globalized economy. Almost 80% of immigrant-founded companies were within two industry fields: software and innovation/manufacturing-related services. 7839 0 obj
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All of them talked of major successes, expressed satisfaction with the performance of their groups, and foresaw significant expansion. A key problem is that the United States lacks enough native students completing masters and PhD degrees. 0000006536 00000 n
From 1999 to 2004, the number of technical schools fell from 4,098 to 2,884, and during that period the number of teachers and staff at these institutions fell by 24%. 