Posted on 08/11/2006 4:31:10 AM PDT by grundle
FRANKFURT - When high school junior Daria Schirmer conducted scientific experiments with 8-year-olds as part of a school project this year – building a periscope or a compass with a magnet – she became not only an inventor of sorts but also part of the solution to what looms as one of Germany's greatest challenges: how to keep its sterling reputation as the world's leader in engineering.
For centuries, Germany led the world in technological prowess, from the motorcycle to the refrigerator. In the 19th century, inventors and entrepreneurs like Gottlieb Daimler, Carl Benz, and Carl Wilhelm Siemens developed products for brands still respected today. But over the past few years, young Germans have dramatically turned away from engineering – and now, the country needs 18,000 engineers – a third more than last year, according to the German Association of Engineers in Berlin. Alarmed that this gap could endanger Germany's engineering creativity, businesses are trying to stem the tide by launching a publicity campaign to make engineering sound like fun from kindergarten through university.
"The image of engineers has never been so bad," says Markus Roeser of Do Things, a coalition of 80 businesses, universities, and research institutes created five months ago to fill the engineering gap.
The group sponsors school projects, gives awards to youths making special scientific discoveries, awards scholarships, and helps engineering students find internships and young researchers commercialize their inventions.
"If we don't succeed in making young people enthusiastic about technical jobs again, we're running the risk of losing our place as the world's leading exporter," of manufactured goods and technologies, says Mr. Roeser.
"The lack of engineers is Germany's No. 1 hindrance to innovation," says Roeser. "At stake is to keep Germany's creative potential."
"Little Einstein Experiments," the pilot project that had pupils like Daria visit grade schools to do experiments every week, is the crux of this publicity campaign. Sponsored by the German state of Hessen's entrepreneurs association, it is meant to awaken scientific thirst early on.
"Children are naturally curious about learning. It's important to encourage their enthusiasm so that the fun doing experiments lasts," says Monika Zieleniewicz, Daria's physics teacher at the Albert Einstein High School in suburban Frankfurt who supervised the program. "That's how you help develop children's motivation for those fields."
"The focus has to be on the schools," says Benjamin Burde of the Berlin-based Mathematics and Science Excellence Centers in Schools, which supports mathematics, computers, science, and technology education. He notes that in Germany, those disciplines have almost disappeared from the school curriculum.
How engineering lost its cachet
Being an engineer no longer has the high status it once enjoyed.
In the mid 1960s, 41 percent of Germans said engineering was a job they had a lot of admiration for. In 2001, only 22 percent said so, according to the Association of Engineers.
A study by the Allensbach Research Institute, Germany's leading polling firm, found in 2003 that being an engineer ranked seventh among young people as a prestigious career behind pastors, doctors, and university professors.
Part of Germany's engineering decline started in the 1970s as the environmental movement grew and people started questioning the impacts of ever-faster energy-hungry technologies on society and the environment.
By making people skeptical about technological progress, it gradually hurt the prestige of engineering jobs says Joerg Feuchhofen, head of the Association of Entrepreneurs in Hessen, which represents 100,000 entrepreneurs in the state of Hessen. "The Germans often looked at it as something that endangered the environment," says Mr. Feuchthofen. "That's a reason why the fields covering ... technology have lost ground in the education system."
Ten years ago, there were twice as many engineering students at universities than today according to the German Association of Engineers.
The problem isn't new. But attention was focused on the dearth of engineers this spring when Airbus-Germany announced it couldn't find 600 engineers needed as they gear up to expand their production over the next two years.
"That Germany can't fulfill a major order in China that would have created many jobs was a big shock for the nation," says Roeser.
Indeed, Airbus isn't the only firm hindered by Germany's current lack of engineers. Thirty percent of German employers say they are short engineers, according to a survey by the German Association of Engineers.
"At least four or five years ago, people came to interviews," says Andrea Gossel of the Schunk Group, an international car-part manufacturer headquartered in the small village of Heuchelheim. "Today they don't ever bother to show up."
You reap what you sow.
Perhaps they all read too many Dilbert cartoons and figured life in the "cube" wasn't worth it?
Your missing engineers are over here, in a country that rewards talent and hard work, instead of penalizing it to support lazy socialist freeloaders.
A lot of your doctors are here too, and more every day. They are tired of working for bus-driver wages and paying 55% of that in taxes.
I love to see the collectivist dream dying. Keep up the sh*tty work.
-ccm
So, not only did they kill off their primary ethnic group who contributed the truly great engineers and scientists they continue to maintain a climate (proverbial and otherwise) that discourages any foreigners but Anatolian goatherds and Moroccan rugweavers from moving there.
My Son is a Mechanical Engineer. He said that his company is looking for two more engineers, and having a problem finding them. Apparently, there is a shortage right now.
There is a shortage of engineers and designers in most of the US.
I'm not surprised that we're raising millions of Al Gore cavemen. Eco-fascists are the most stupid, brainless, brainwashed morons whoever walked the earth.
Without engineers we'd be wearing bear skin suits and digging in dirt for our daily breakfast of grubs and roots.
And without engineers I wouldn't own one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century - a cordless screwdriver with which I can drill needless holes in places where my 300 feet of electrical cord can't reach.
There is a real easy way to get more engineers - raise their salaries - the supply will then increase...
Companies here started importing cheap engineers in the early 70s.
A friend of mine was making $50k/yr and Hughes was importing English engineers and paying them $18k/year and they thought they were on top of the world.
Our schools for years have been creating the same problems that the Germans are having, turning out ecofreeks with their entire education based on lies.
My Son graduated from Georgia Tech, and his education was largely apolitical, just good science. I gathered that most people going into science and engineering tend to be more conservative than liberal arts grads.
Stupidity is bad for the environment.
I hear Iran has an Engineer who could be looking for another job.
My little (32) brother is a registered professional Civil Engineer. He found he can't get work at a decent wage because all the grunt work - work he likes to do, like designing small airfields - go to engineers from India and China. Our cousin is also a registered civil who works with FERC on power generation dams, he is also a professional deep sea diver. He quit out of disgust at being mistreated, his small engineering firm ended up rehiring him at triple pay because they found no MBA could do his work, the owner's 350 pound son couldn't do it, and they couldn't survive without those talents.
There is a real snob problem in American businesses, managers look down their nose at employees who are involved in "task specific work." It's the MBAs who work with the broader overall view that get the paychecks. It's how Microsoft is run, actually. And Ford, GM, US Steel. It isn't the wage differential that's killing US manufacturing, it's the boob managers.
They're both finishing up their MBAs anyway, why fight it?
I hope that is true...my rising Junior wants to be an engineer in the materials science area. I have visions of paying for her education and then her not being able to get a job.
Ga Tech Alumni here - yeah - you can say that GA Tech is conservative. For example:
When it came to desegregation - there was not on peep from the campus
When it came to letting in women - they were aghast. How could the administration do this! This would interfere with their studies!!!
If they were still on top of the world after they saw their first month of living expenses, then this was back in 1977.
" then this was back in 1977."
I think it was more like 1972.
I understand that at GT they have a saying that girl at Tech are like parking spaces, either taken, handicapped or illegal.
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