#8 Mechanical Engineering Technology
Only 15,112 degrees issued 2008-2009
Job openings down 1.45%
Predicted job loss 2008-2018: -700
#9 Chemistry
Only 22.466 degrees issued 2008-2009
Job openings up 2,100
Predicted job increase 2008-2018 2.48%
So, what has lowering our educational standards, and importing H-1B Visa’s done to our future? We have sabotaged our future. We can easily live without Journalists and others - but who is going to engineer future devices? Who is going to use their Chemistry degrees to advance medicine, refineries, plastics, composites, mining and energy needs?
Oh yeah, we’ll just import more foreign technical workers - and further de-stablize the technology workforce. It’s cheaper to hire an H-1B engineer than a native american (no Social Security taxes alone is good for ~$20,000 per engineer).
As an engineer who has faced more than one layoff, plant shutdown and outsourcing - the fact that our politicians are creating policies that ENCOURAGE businesses to export my job, and then import foreign nationals to compete against me for my job (with tax advantages) certainly does not encourage me to recommend young people to consider a career in engineering.
People near where the production plants are.As environmental regulations and inspection requirements for everything began to really really push manufacturing overseas in the mid to late 80s, those of us who read up on Austrian Economics pointed out that this would be an inevitable (Not just possible) result. Design won't remain on a different continent from where problems need to be solved indefinitely.
Mechanical Engineering Technology is not a Mechanical Engineering degree. It is not even an engineering degree. It is engineering lite for students that cannot cut the math and science of an engineering degree. It prepares students to be a glorified assistant to a real engineer. That is why it is useless. You would be better off learning to be a mechanic or a machinist.