Speaking as an electrical engineer, IMHO its a societal thing. American society values occupations that manage and redistribute wealth but not those who create wealth. Lawyers, and brokers are deitified but engineers, designers, and the trades are seen as "geeky."
Its mainly an Anglosphere thing. US, Canada, Australia, UK, NZ. For instance lawyers just do not have that much status in the rest of the world. There are 1,000,000 lawyers in the US which is about 70% of the worlds supply for a nation with about 25% of the worlds economy.
Germany and Japan are the opposite. Engineering and design are the elite jobs there and it shows. BMW and Sony anyone? Siemens and Matsushima?
China and India also value design and engineering and it shows.
There is one thing that will keep the US on top. Creativity. We are the most creative in the world.
You reap what you sow.
Alright, PEs, in my field the journal articles are written almost exclusively by asians, no doubt supporting research for their faculty advisor. Very very little of the information is of any use whatsoever in actual practice. Some of the information is innately inconsequential, because of the other variables in construction. How important is it to model an answer to +/- 3.5% accuracy if the assumed loads are +/-15%. It is not how many answers you get, or how accurate the answer if you dont ask the right questions. I have a friend and mentor, East European, who taught engineering at night for a major state university. 20 years ago, 3 or 4 sets of answers to his assignments. Farsi, Chinese, Urdu, all the same solutions. OK, so they work together, or one carries all. But he said it was because they could study engineering without speaking English.
From SOCIAL STATUS point of view I agree with you that Engineers fair better in these countries. However Engineers in the US are still payed better than their counterpart in Germany and Japan, I know this since our company have branches in Japan and Western Europe, and our engineers in the US with make 25% to 30% more in salaries than our counterpart with same position in Western Europe and Japan. Also American Engineers have vastly more resources for R&D, and design than those in Western European and more than those Japan.
Of course it is not worth comparing our engineers salaries and access for R & D and design to those of China and India, it is a joke to do so, and that why every Chinese and Indian engineers ultimate dream is to come and work in the US.