Afraid I have to agree with you - engineering is not a respected profession in the US. It is a tough grind all the way through to earn a Bachelor’s. What’s taught doesn’t prepare you for the ‘real world’ - if you don’t keep renewing your knowledge base - after 4-5 years - you get dumped for a cheaper graduate just entering the work force. If you want to stay employed, you need to position yourself so you are a direct influence on the company revenue stream. Anyplace else, and you’re overhead and a target when someone cheaper comes along. And, being in IT isn’t going to save anyone - why do you think every vendor is concentrating on ‘process automation’? No one’s sales or marketing literature will say so - but the idea is to get rid of as much dependency on ‘talent’ as possible. Not all of the jobs are going away, but there are far more lucrative and secure professions.
Sure, all of us have to renew our knowledge base, all the time, but it is better to start with a degree in Engineering than social science.
I agree. I am a licensed Civil Engineer. After 38 years in the consulting business I will retire next year.
I give my plumber more respect then the government OR private sector gives a Professional Civil Engineer. Folks want public infrastructure for “free”. Since they can’t, they prefer to buy other “products” with their tax dollars like welfare and day care provided by the public school [child care] system. Politicians don’t care much for infrastructure. After all bridges don’t vote, welfare recipients do!
Education of engineers parallels that of the rest of academia —pretty pathetic. Case in point -— the so called global warming scam would be laughed out of the Public Square if a plurality of the electorate had at least a real high school education.
The H1B Visa conduit is about to die from its own dead weight. The Obama depression is killing engineering jobs and the uneducated products of H1B diploma mills in the US are short circuiting the process.
Actually the H1B visa deal is an immigration pipeline. If you are a South Asian. you get your local BS degree, then enroll in a Masters program in a US diploma mill, get a job for low wages here, apply for a visa, get it and then boom you are on your way to a Green Card/citizenship.
I hired two HiB guys last fall. They were incompetent plus the work in the Obama Depression is withering away so I had to let them go. They may now have to go back home to India