Rethinking an engineer's education (Globalization? The plumber fears it not)

In my composite role as administrator of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and engineering educator, I am greatly concerned about the impact of outsourcing on the engineering community, both in the short term and in the very long term. What can we do now? What should we do soon? What must we do ultimately? I believe that education is an integral part of the answers to these questions; for the salable skills in this new world are not those that have earlier prevailed. Briefly put, there is a need for reeducation; individuals must possess new knowledge-knowledge that makes their contribution to local society special, unique and sustainable.

Interestingly, developments at ISSCC foreshadowed what is now much more obvious. Long before the recent downturn, a pent-up desire for education was identifiable among ISSCC attendees. Identifiable within this somewhat-special, highly select group was an apparent ly built-in awareness of growing change and the need to adapt through education. ISSCC executive committee members, self-designated to sense and act on attendee needs, began to make more explicit one of ISSCC's historic thrusts: the provision of continuing education. So now, along with the program itself, there is a host of relatively explicit continuing-education packages, including, quite obviously, the six to eight tutorials, the short course and four forums (formerly workshops) but also, and less obviously, the special-topic evening sessions and even the plenary-talk collection.

What motivated it-what our attendees apparently saw, and saw early in their evolving environments-is an interesting commentary on the nature of the community. But, is this relevant to the current situation? Casual observation might suggest that outsourcing is a very recent phenomenon. In some of its detail, that may be true; but at the heart of outsourcing lies a collection of corporate-management views of long and lasting significance: requirements for flexibility, adaptability, just-in-time delivery and more, all overlaid on the older idea of hiring specialists on a short-term contracted basis.

But now, with outsourcing visible as a specific global answer to those long-held needs of corporate management, what should someone do whose job is at risk of exportation? Even more critically, what should the education system, particularly in engineering, do to prepare its graduates for this new globalized world? And, even more critically, what must be done to motivate entry to an arduous multiyear program (of first- and even higher-degree work) in technology, if the graduated skill set is sufficiently nonrelevant to be performed offshore at far lower corporate cost?

Needless to say, avoiding this issue, giving up and opting out are not viable options for a concerned educator. But what must be done?

Interestingly, a great deal of insight can be gained by identifying corners of our society whose occupants will doubtless remain unaffected by outsourcing. While many exist-and each can contribute elements of a direction for solution-one embodies a key element of a general solution. And that is the plumber. For the plumber's strength is that her or his role is inherently local. It cannot be exported. The leak stops here, so to speak. Correspondingly, general solutions to the societal crises that outsourcing presents must deal with a better understanding and application of what is naturally local, yet high-valued.

While one can smile at the status of plumbers in our society, or denigrate their tasks and training, we are beholden to them, and, moreover, they make a good living. But what else is "plumber-like" in other corners of our society? Specifically, what about engineering and engineering education?

It is instructive to consider engineering in the context of other professions, namely medicine and the law. The education system in all professions has an important common property, namely the focus of its education process on a single ultimate goal, the professional pinnacle of achievement. Some make it, and fulfill this goal, but all other contenders finally occupy secondary default positions:

In medicine, basic training is toward the surgeon, in search of those remarkable individuals having a special mixture of intellectual and manual skills, coupled to a personality that will tolerate no nonsense, nor need high-level assistance, but proceed, in the face of blood and chaos, to solve the problem. Of the rest, the more intellectual become specialists, often with some surgical role; but the majority serve a host of other functions in clinical and general practice.

As for the legal profession, the ultimate goal (using the terminology of the British legal system) is the barrister, the one who can ascend in the hostile world of the courtroom. There, the barrister can stand on his or her feet, supplied with data provided by lesser beings (the solicitors); talk at length, and wisely; dominate; and succeed. Of the products of legal education, all the rest become solicitors and corporate lawyers.

Now, in engineering, education is focused on the designer, the creative all-seeing all-capable guru who can create, from little or nothing, the stuff of engineering. But as in the other professions, the pinnacle position is rarely occupied. While all engineers are steeped in what might make them good designers, most perform nominally lesser tasks, dealing with such things as manufacturing and working with customers.

What is most interesting about all of this is the relative sensitivity, in each profession, of its members to outsourcing. How do its stars and others fare?

In medicine, surgeons are supremely secure, for the problems they solve are here and now. Even general practitioners are relatively secure, since their primary interface is local.

In law, barristers and solicitors are relatively secure, simply because each group, in different ways, serves local roles. But corporate lawyers are not.

Oddly enough, it's quite different in engineering, with the ultimate performer, the designer, most at risk. The discipline inherently allows abstraction and communication. Individuals can work on a communicated problem almost anywhere. Moreover, their staff might best be with them. So in engineering, the leader, with all of his or her team, can be far away from the problem.

Otherwise, those at the bottom of engineering employment are most secure. Most customer-directed engineers will likely perform better nearer their customers. But even they are not secure, for Internet coupling of customer to resources grows in direct competition with them.

So what do we see in engineering's future? Something quite distressing. It is that the current driving motivator of engineering education is most at risk in a globalized outsourced world.

Now, what can the engineering profession-and most particularly engineering-education-do about this? A lot, but it will not be easy. A major reason: The solution involves a collection of concepts that are "untouchable" in usual engineering education. Among them: "localized," "environmental," "social," "nontechnical," "interfacing" and "management."

Engineering must e-courage, utilize and even try to teach that increasingly less-common trait of effective folks, namely common sense.

Common sense is an attribute of individuals who are highly observant and truly coupled to their world, their society and their local situation-local needs and local means of delivery. All of these attributes, however important to an individual anywhere, are essential for those who wish to contribute locally. Their awareness, tuned over time, cannot be easily replaced.

For otherwise, the rest of the world is globalized. Many roles are outsourced: For example, detailed design of novel solutions of communicatable problems is likely to be done elsewhere. But the general practitioner of the emerging engineering professions is the link between those global resources and the local needs. So to structure this link effectively, a new engineer's skill set must be augmented technically: It must, for example, include facility at remote management, with supporting ability in such areas as quality assessment.

Yes, there is a role for locally trained, locally employed engineers in the emerging globalized world. But their skill sets must be rethought. New engineering aspirants should be selected more on this trait than on other conventionally structured intelligence, aptitude and grade-achieving performance-testing processes.

Kenneth C. Smith is professor emeritus of engineering at the University of Toronto

The Kerry Campaign Knows PhotoShop!

Get the true picture!
(Where our flags are the real thing!)

Support Free Republic
Secure Server

Or mail checks to:
FreeRepublic , LLC
PO BOX 9771
FRESNO, CA 93794

Or you can use:
PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com

STOP BY AND BUMP THE FUNDRAISER THREAD--
Found in the breaking news sidebar!

AMEN. It's what many of us Technical Professionals have been trying to say for a while now. Engineers; Designers; Scientists; technical specialists are all being outsourced. The more money you command in the technical field, the greater the chances of you being outsourced. This is a very real and serious issue. As one thing that unites all of the above individuals.

They are all highly educated and skilled people who work in Manufacturing.

The solution to this problem, as specified above, is to follow the Rush Limbaugh solution. Exit your speciality and retrain yourself for a boring, but stable profession that won't be affected by outsourcing. The loss of our technical leadership is a matter for others to worry about. You have to concentrate on your own priorities and that of your family.

If you do a search - you should be able to find the average salary graph someone posted here that showed "Sanitation Engineers" make the highest average salaries of ALL engineers. "Sanitation Engineers" are the penultimate local engineer. "Sanitation Engineers" are more colloquially known as "Garbage Men" - you know the ones that show up once a week to remove your trash.

I think the Canadian Professor Emeritus is absolutely correct in his description of the problem for engineers. His solution is academic mumbo jumbo.

Not one of my children was encouraged to become an engineer. The writing on the wall of the 'internationalization' of US engineering was visible a LONG time ago.

"If you do a search - you should be able to find the average salary graph someone posted here that showed "Sanitation Engineers" make the highest average salaries of ALL engineers. "Sanitation Engineers" are the penultimate local engineer. "Sanitation Engineers" are more colloquially known as "Garbage Men" - you know the ones that show up once a week to remove your trash. "

I would really like to see this graph. Are you telling me a garbage man makes more than 90k a year? Look here to see a survey done by the ppl at EE times:

http://www.eet.com/story/OEG20030828S0040

This is only the subribers to EE times I believe. Also you can check http://www.bls.gov for salary info on about 14 different engineering diciplines. See occupational handbook.

Also check here for a ranking of all occupations based on median salary:

http://www.acinet.org/acinet/select_occupation.asp?stfips=&next=occ_rep

Anyways, Engineering will continue to be a good paying profession, It just will shrink because of outsourcing, etc.

I'm an EE major and I know for a fact my business major friends take way lower starting pays and don't get as many job offers (don't get me started on my liberal arts major friends). Anyway, I would encourage my kids to go into the health professions first, then if it's not their cup of tea try engineering or law.

As an engineer, I would both agree and disagree with the author. For many years, especially IEEE, has been bemoaning that there are too many engineers who are not doing professional engineering work.

I feel that IEEE was correct, and that many of the offshoring of "engineering" jobs are really jobs that are only partially "engineering." By that I mean that I as a consulting engineer (PE),I do not worry about my job being outsourced. The reason is that much of what I do is based on field troubleshooting, personal relationships with clients and then finding solutions to problems not symptoms.

The miriad of local code variations is such that no engineer in Russia or India could keep up with designing solutions to the NEC when most states and many cities have adopted their own slight variations. And while all utility power designs must conform to the NESC, just about every utility I work with has a slightly different approach to how they expect things to be designed.

Similarly, the variations in permitting are such and the need to design things so that they will not be stalled by permitting delays is such that my work will not be outsourced overseas. It is all I can do to keep up with local code and permit variations. An engineer who is struggling with English and trying to figure out codes and permit requirements from regulatory websites will be hopelessly lost.

In short, the majority of the engineering jobs I see being offshored, are in semi-professional roles and jobs that IEEE said long a go should not be performed by fully qualified engineers. Now the author is correct in that some highly qualified design jobs are being offshored for international products that are designed to international standards and international markets. But, I feel that is the minority of the jobs and that there is the potential for really talented engineers who really know what they are doing to do well in this country and not fear outsourcing. They just need to prove every day that they are a worth more than they cost and that they are make substantial contributions to a firm's profits. But that is true about every job today.

The Economy has changed from one where people put in their time at a job in exchange for money, to one where people must produce results that are profitable or else they don't have a job.

Jobs are disappearing, more because of technology than because of offshoring. Human work, or rather human time -- spent at a desk, a lathe, a tractor, or a service counter -- is no longer the primary source of economic value. Most economic value is now created, by and large, by machines, either mechanical or electronic. People are still needed to guide the machines, but the machines do almost all the real "work".

This "problem" will only get worse as technology continues to advance. Eventually only a relative few of us will be needed to work. Granted, as the level of automation increases, products will get cheaper and cheaper so the need for money will decrease, but I predict that the availability of work will decline faster than price levels, producing a fundamental disconnect in the economy.

The odd thing is that wealth will continue to grow, at an accelerating rate, as innovation and automation continue. But working for a living will be an ineffective way of tapping that wealth. Only the owners of intellectual property and enterprises that exploit it will be in a position to make money.

So, what should one do to ensure of stream of income into old age? The best option -- as perhaps it always has been -- is to save and invest. Be part of the "Ownership Society" and capture the wealth that will almost automatically flow from almost inevitable improvements in efficiency and innovation.

I think you wrote a great post.

yesterday while watching the Antiques Raodshow, they interviewed a man who builds historical furniture. His work was brilliant and at least one "highboy" chest commands over $100,000.

There will be markets for people that provide unique things people want. I doubt that the service of companies that use engineers is anymore outstanding than the service at Home Depot or most stores, law firms etc. If we live in a serice socitey why can't you get any? So engineers that create or solve service problems will, like the hand crafted furniture maker, find a market and charge big dollars.

As an engineer and periodic attendee of the ISSCC conference the author of this article administers, I can say that the potential for globalizing engineering has existed for some time. Most engineering students in US universities are from foreign countries -- the concentration of which is higher in the graduate level. If you were to take a look a the proceedings of the ISSCC, you would see a ton of excellent papers submitted and presented by foreign engineers and researchers... so there is certainly good foreign talent to which to direct outsourcing.

The one thing that had prevented too much outsourcing in the past, however, was America's good business climate. A few years ago I was involved with a startup engineering company that consisted mostly of Japanese nationals. The reason why they came to America was because it was virtually impossible to obtain venture capital in Japan. The cultural climate in Japan also made it very difficult for a new company to aggressively pursue its hiring and development goals on a very short schedule. (Other over-regulated countries have similar issues with poor business climates).

What I find odd about outsourcing to India is that India has been known as a place where it is very difficult to start a business. My Indian friends tell me that one has to wade through a sea of red tape, filling out endless form and bribing countless officials before one can start a business there. My guess is that something must have fundamentally changed in India for it to have become an attractive venue for outsourcing. A friend of mine at Texas Instruments has told me that there are some projects in which half of the engineers on the project are working in India. Well... maybe its not surprising given that India provides a much better math education to their grade school students then is provided in most US public schools.

So, I think the best US solution to the issue would be to strive to create the best business climate possible. (It also wouldn't hurt if math and science ware taught by people who had a real background in math and science).

Until this happens, however, I will personally follow the Rush Limbaugh solution -- I start evening law school this fall.

"The solution to this problem, as specified above, is to follow the Rush Limbaugh solution. Exit your speciality and retrain yourself for a boring, but stable profession that won't be affected by outsourcing. The loss of our technical leadership is a matter for others to worry about. You have to concentrate on your own priorities and that of your family. "

Well, that's what I've been doing as fast as I can. I don't want to add more to my technical skill base because of the diminishing returns problem - expertise is expensive and no one wants to pay for it. I think I'm going to start making Las Vegas dice clocks (actually, this isn't far from the truth).

The "Outsourcing Problem" is one of the primary issues that Kerry hopes will get him elected.

Thanks for helping the Kerry campaign.

You think unemployed high tech people won't notice if you don't mention it ? You think any high tech people these days feel particularly secure in their jobs ? You think that isn't on their minds ? You don't think there are a lot of 45-50 year old high tech people who stare at the ceiling at 3 am wondering what in God's name is going to happen to their lives and their families if they have to start over again at the bottom ?

But you're right. Maybe if we don't mention it no one will notice.

wanted them to come price out parts of it.

We can do the rough plumbing, and let the plumber check it all

If you can do the rough plumbing why do you need a plumber to check it?

That's why they haven't called back...They don't want to do the parts you don't want to do. They want to do the entire job...that's what they're in business to do.

It's not worth the headache of trying to work behind someone who likely doesn't know what they're doing, or come out and spend their time trying to explain to you what you did wrong, how YOU can fix it, the terminolgy and a materials list of the fittings you'll need to buy from someone else.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.