Germany alarmed at lack of engineers [because young people think science is bad for the environment]

Yahoo News ^ | August 10, 2006 | Isabelle de Pommereau

[vladimir998]

You reap what you sow.

[trashcanbred]

Perhaps they all read too many Dilbert cartoons and figured life in the "cube" wasn't worth it?

[ccmay]

Hey Krauts,

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

[muawiyah]

Well, not just what they sow, Deutschland is short on top flight engineers from India and Pakistan ~ and trying to find a good Chinese researcher there is exceedingly difficult.

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.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

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.

[thackney]

There is a shortage of engineers and designers in most of the US.

[sergeantdave]

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.

[2banana]

There is a real easy way to get more engineers - raise their salaries - the supply will then increase...

[dalereed]

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.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

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.

[Right Wing Assault]

Stupidity is bad for the environment.

[mass55th]

"He said that his company is looking for two more engineers, and having a problem finding them. Apparently, there is a shortage right now."

I hear Iran has an Engineer who could be looking for another job.

[spudsmaki]

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?

[SoftballMominVA]

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.

[2banana]

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.

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!!!

[Erasmus]

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.

If they were still on top of the world after they saw their first month of living expenses, then this was back in 1977.

[Locomotive Breath]

I was an engineering professor for 14 years. Materials science is always a good field. And frankly, employers will fall all over themselves to hire a woman because they are under such pressure to do so because there are so few woman engineers.

Based on my experience of keeping up with students after they graduate, and my own cohort of students, the bigger problem will be that she will be presented with the option of getting married and raising a family and will choose that over engineering. Of the women I know, the only ones who had a long career as an engineer are the ones who never married.

To do really interesting work as an engineer she will need a Master's degree. The good news for you is, as long as she is a superior student, graduate schools will fall all over themselves to enroll her and will pay for her to be there.

Actually, very few students have to pay for their own graduate school, Offers of admission almost always come with an offer of financial support. The real problem is the foreign students for whom an advanced degree is a ticket into permanent residency in the US. So you're a US citizen with a B.S. and you're in graduate school being supported, but at a salary level about 25% of what you're worth in the open market.

Most of the others in your graduate school will be foreign nationals on student visas. They too will be supported at a salary that they consider to be a heck of a lot of money. As such they are effectively indentured servants. The professor can make them do anything he (or sometimes she) wants and they can't complain or they will be sent home in disgrace. What US-born student wants go compete with an indentured servant in graduate school?

To get their student visa they had to promise to go home upon completion of their studies. I've yet to see one go home. Companies will take them on as a cheap source of labor while they get their permanent residency which process drags out for years. Meanwhile, they continue to be indentured servants because if they lose their jobs or change jobs or even leave the country they whole process starts all over.

I don't know how hard it is to get permanent residency in Germany, but if they actually make the foreign nationals go home it probably explains why they have a shortage of students.

[dalereed]

" then this was back in 1977."

I think it was more like 1972.

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

I understand that at GT they have a saying that girl at Tech are like parking spaces, either taken, handicapped or illegal.