The missing engineer? |
There has been handwringing in the media lately about why
our colleges and universities are not producing more STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math) majors as well as about the dearth of female engineers in
Silicon Valley. Having an
engineering degree myself, a husband with an engineering degree, a son who has just completed an engineering degree,
a daughter who is considering an engineering degree, a sister who is an engineer, a brother-in-law who is an engineer, friends who teach engineering, and being an advisor to a
young woman who is interested in medical school but is not afraid of math or
science, the difficulty of attracting and retaining STEM majors has been
nagging at me.
First off, not all STEM majors are equally in demand on the
job front. Over the years I’ve known many brilliant physicists unable to find a
job in their field, and biology majors (the major of choice for pre-meds) currently
appear to be in oversupply. What is in demand right now are grads with degrees
in computer science, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. Other
forms of engineering also reliably lead to jobs, and math majors report hiring
success although their job title is unlikely to be “mathematician.”
So why don’t more American kids go into engineering if
that’s where the jobs are? In my
observation, there are a number of reasons:
1.) Follow
the money. Engineering is considered less prestigious than medicine, law, and
business, and less likely to lead to a high income, regardless of current starting
salaries for engineers. Like it or not, medicine especially has more cachet
with top students and their parents which mean talent flows endlessly in that
direction.
2.) Engineering
is hard. It’s not just that the material is conceptually difficult. There are
many kids who could make it through engineering curriculum that get shunted
away because:
a.) Engineering schools are notorious for much
harsher grading than humanities and sciences. (Average grades range from ½ to
almost a full letter grade lower.)
b.) Engineering
schools are notorious for their incredibly heavy workloads. Getting a degree in
engineering means cramming 5 – 6 years of normal college workload into 4. The
result is the average engineer has less free time and less fun than the average
humanities major. Engineers will tell you their classes are twice as hard as
humanities classes for half the units. In fact, most upper-class engineers
regale prospective frosh engineers with horrific stories about their workload
and how easy "fuzzies" (non-techies) have it, their tales punctuated by bitter laughter.
c.) Engineering schools require tortuous
engineering breadth courses, mostly because whoever designed the curriculum
took them so you should, too. But it's pointless. The amount of knowledge I retained a month after my
circuits, material science or aero-astro engineering classes I could’ve picked
up from a few hours of watching Discovery Channel. (Oh, the needless suffering. My
statics class, on the other hand, was actually interesting, potentially useful,
and not too bad.)
d.) Because
of the heavy course load, engineers have to start taking the engineering core
courses freshman year and dive heavily into their major sophomore year. While one can
decide to major in English or political science spring of sophomore year
without problem, beginning engineering spring of sophomore year would make graduating
on time nearly impossible. Leisurely
dabbling and taking time to make up one’s mind is not a luxury engineers have.
3.) Engineering
schools at state universities often severely limit the available slots making
it both very hard to get in and very hard to switch majors if a kid later decides
another form of engineering would suit him/her better. (In California, for example, many, many
qualified kids are turned away from the engineering schools at the UC’s and the
Cal Poly’s.)
4.) High
GPAs are extremely important in law and medical school admissions. In addition law and medical school
admissions committees seem to place little value on engineering and
the analytical thought process it develops. This results in law and medical schools refusing to cut
engineers much GPA slack in their admissions processes. So anyone thinking they
might, in the entire course of their life, ever apply to law or medical school
takes an enormous risk to major in a field that produces notoriously low GPAs. At
Stanford, for example, fully 1/3 of freshmen enter as pre-med (an extraordinary
number.) Less than half of these eventually apply to med school. Very few of
these pre-meds major in engineering even though the majority could probably do
the work, and there is a bioengineering major designed pretty much just for them. Many of those initial pre-meds who later decide med
school is not for them might have been very happy with engineering had they not
been frightened away from it as frosh pre-meds.
5.) Math
departments have an innate disdain for engineers (practical, grimy brutes uninterested
in the beauty of proofs) and don’t go out of their way to teach math in a
manner that is helpful for budding engineers. In my day, the rumor was that the
math faculty drew straws to see who got stuck teaching freshman calculus.
In any event it was usually the lowest status, most heavily-accented adjunct
(if not visiting) professor who taught calculus to engineers, not always a
recipe for success.
6.) The
number of units required for an engineering degree makes it very difficult
(though not absolutely impossible) to double major or study overseas. It also leaves much
less room in the schedule for just sheer academic fun and exploration,
supposedly part of what college is all about.
All these factors mean that unless a kid is willing to work
very hard and knows with certainty at age 18 that he/she wants to be an
engineer and nothing else, he/she is likely to shy away from engineering and
never know if it might be interesting, less hard than they thought, lead to
interesting work, etc.
This is not to say that the humanities have no value! I was
an English major undergrad—I love literature and history! I certainly
understand that not everyone is cut out for engineering and that the world
would be a dull place indeed if it were only made up of engineers (or only
pre-meds, or only art history majors, or only economists . . . ) But it seems counterproductive
to make engineering quite so miserable, quite so risky (for anybody needing a
high GPA for grad school) and require quite so many sacrifices on the part of
the average 18 year old.
In addition, if engineers are in demand and important to a
state’s economy, why doesn’t that state’s universities accept more kids into
their engineering programs? It may cost more, yes, but to skimp on engineers
when kids want to study the subject and employers need the grads for their
companies to thrive seems insane or at least economically demented.
Perhaps engineering should be a 5 year program rather than cram so much into just 4 years. Perhaps some of the more nonsensical breadth
requirements could be reduced. Perhaps law and medical schools could be
convinced to give engineering GPAs a substantial bump when considering them
against bio or history majors. It just seems to me that a lot of smart,
talented kids who could be quite successful as engineers are kept away from the
field needlessly.
photo credit: Peter Stamats
photo credit: Peter Stamats
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