EE’s design and sign off on the electrical design for all architectural, oil patch and chemical plant projects.
Taking the back off a wireless isn’t training for a building electrical design
(EE’s wear slide rules hanging from their belts)
All of these professions run in cycles.
for a time, there’s a shortage.
Then salaries go up, attract new folks.
Kids take it up in school.
then over saturation because a new way is found, or OFF SHORING
Then the pay is crap, so nobody studies it.
Then the cylce begins again.
Remember when Nurses were over-worked, underpaid and treated like crap? Ask any Nurse over 60, they’ll tell you.
Now good money paid for marginally tained folks, Nursing schools are packed, and the push for foreign workers to slow the salary increases is everywhere.
An EE degree requires a lot of hard work. It is much easier and more fun to go with Gender Studies. Think of how many protests one would miss or chances to become offended if they were having to study all the time.
why take the hard courses?...
this country increasingly does not reward hard learning and hard work.
End the H-1B visa. Stop it. That program undermines US STEM talent like no other. Are you listening Mike Lee?
Course 6 (electrical engineering and computer science) is the largest undergraduate department at MIT.
But I don’t know how many students are in electrical engineering (Course 6-1) vs. the various computer science majors. Does anyone here know?
Yup - I switched from my EE major to Computer Engineering in my sophomore year in the late ‘80s - the lower division requirements back then at my university were nearly identical so it was an easy switch. It was also easy enough to see which way the wind was blowing for the future of each field back then.
Even worse, the grade inflation such that the majority of EE graduates probably should not have. A grade of ‘C’ today is yesterday’s ‘F’, and many EEs graduate with a ‘C’ these days: ‘C’ get degrees. When I was teaching engineering courses I was shocked by how terrible the grades were of the EE students.
EE is a very challenging (hard) major
And not every American wishing to undertake a EE degree can get in. Many of the leading USA universities have filled up their engineering schools with foreign students.
We are, to a considerable degree, educating the next geneation of engineering talent for Communist China (mostly) and other foreign countries.
Isn't it rather ironic that the idiotic "green" revolution is going to depend more than anything on EEs just as they are going extinct?
The "green" revolution is also going to be stymied by a lack of mining and mechanical engineers because there aren't enough copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth element mines to meet surging demand for minerals. The mineral demand is set to jump SIX times when the green revolution takes off. The Soviet central planners are failing as usual.
"We Need 6 Times More Minerals to Meet Our Clean Energy Goals", by Dharna Noor, May 6, 2021
My granny's radio had vacuum tubes...
My granny's radio had vacuum tubes... That said, EE needs to be folded into computer science so institutional knowledge isn't lost.
Differential Equations. No thanks
That’s why I went Civil Engineering
Intel had enough $$$ they could have setup their own University back 15 years ago to train future American Engineers.
It would have given a place for retired Intel engineers to teach and would have replenished the engineers now retiring.
Instead they believed the nonsense that India could supply all their needs.
The good news is Pat Gelsinger now sees this was a major mistake and is trying to address it.
Probably too late as demand for experienced analog design engineers is thru the roof at the same time they are starting to retire.
EE is a notoriously hard degree. They all go computer science because you are called an “engineer” even though you really aren’t.
That being said, my youngest daughter got her Engineering Physics degree (summa cum laude), aced all the engineering math and physics courses, but is going computer science/software for her Master’s degree. There is no question she’ll have more options.
It may just be that a smaller number of EEs are needed.
We need more women in STEM, STAT!
Twinkle Twinkle little star.
E=IR