Posted on 06/23/2013 6:06:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's tough to find a job everywhere: in the US, in China, in Europe, and in India.
Think education is the answer? I don't.
Economic Times reports amillion engineers in India struggling to get placed in an extremely challenging market
Somewhere between a fifth to a third of the million students graduating out of India's engineering colleges run the risk of being unemployed. Others will take jobs well below their technical qualifications in a market where there are few jobs for India's overflowing technical talent pool. Beset by a flood of institutes (offering a varying degree of education) and a shrinking market for their skills, India's engineers are struggling to subsist in an extremely challenging market.Engineers Churned Out in Spades
According to multiple estimates, India trains around 1.5 million engineers, which is more than the US and China combined. However, two key industries hiring these engineers -- information technology and manufacturing -- are actually hiring fewer people than before.
For example, India's IT industry, a sponge for 50-75% of these engineers will hire 50,000 fewer people this year, according to Nasscom. Manufacturing, too, is facing a similar stasis, say HR consultants and skills evaluation firms.
According to data from AICTE, the regulator for technical education in India, there were 1,511 engineering colleges across India, graduating over 550,000 students back in 2006-07. Fuelled by fast growth, especially in the $110 billion outsourcing market, a raft of new colleges sprung up -- since then, the number of colleges and graduates have doubled.
How is [the situation in China] different than the average liberal arts major in the US expecting the world at their doorstep just because they have a useless degree that prepares them to do nothing more than work as a part-time retail clerk, 25 hours a week, dumped into the Obamacare system?If education was the answer, there would not be millions of engineers looking for jobs.
Yet, we are told education is the answer, without ever addressing the questions "for who? at what cost? in what field?"
These articles were purportedly about China. Change the names and faces and the stories are not much different than you can find right here in the US, in Italy, in France, or anywhere else in a slow-grow global economy.
After growing at an astronomical rate for years, the cost of education is going to plunge. Job statistics will force that outcome.
Even that isn’t a sure thing.
You will get a contract, for a short time. Great if you are single (I did something similar back in the day, had a LOT of fun). But with families it is harder to move every six or so months. And the energy markets are going to hit the wall, leaving a lot of these guys out of work.
If you play in that field, you know the cycles. But I see a lot of young families making the jump without realizing that you are one legislative session away from unemployment.
Engineers? I’m about to start a geek fight.... Most IT requires little to nothing that would be classified as actual engineering.
If India had a million actual trained Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Software (and related disciplines) engineers they’d have a true national asset that they could tap and create value.
Instead they have a bunch of software installers and hardware rackers that they call “engineers”.
IT depends on somebody actually doing something real before it comes significantly into play. “google” is nothing without people who actually do something real that provides the content for them to index, sort, and distribute.
Don’t get me wrong- I have worked with some wonderful and talented people from India- forgive me if I made it sound like 100% of the degreed people from there are useless- that is absolutely not the case.
Just in the last 5 or 10 years- they churned out way to many unskilled, and I have worked with groups of them that clung to each other in a group, refused to share information, and churned out garbage code (like a high-schooler)
When you suddenly double or triple your output of engineers, you get more and more from the lower half of the bell-curve. And in a class full of morons, graded on a curve, even an idiot can get an A.
You’re right. However, we can’t just force American students to study engineering or math. The incentives have to be changed so that those with the ability are motivated to do the work.
The end game is socialized medicine. Most major companies want it, and view Obamacare as the stepping stone to get it.
My father was a logistician in the nuclear weapons field, with a degree in Management (and 32 years in the Navy). His title at his last company was “Senior Engineer.”
They gave him a secretary because he refused to learn word-processing or even email!
We can stop providing subsidies and low interest loans to students studying worthless majors. That would cause many of these students to pick a more useful major or go to a vocational school where rightly most of these less than stellar students should go in the first place.
“Don’t expect an optical engineer to design sewer systems.”
Any true engineer, if properly educated and trained, should be able to understand and practically apply concepts (at some basic level) to just about any other engineering discipline.
“The end game is socialized medicine. Most major companies want it, and view Obamacare as the stepping stone to get it.”
No. Most companies wish simply to be in the business that they know, and not have to hire a legion of staff that do nothing related to the business in which they choose to focus on.
Don’t cast business as the “bad guy” in the healthcare debate.
Your job has nothing to do with your healthcare. That it happens to be the case to a large extent in the US is not an advantage of doing business in the US.
Can’t those IT jobs be automated?
Somebody has to flip Burgers and push Fries with that.
Check out Michigan Tech in Houghton, Mi.
You graduate and you have many offers
Here is why I said that.
My company, and many of the major companies in the area (one likes to make big machines painted green) have stated internally that they want to have socialized medicine. Because that will allow them to cut the insurance bill by shifting cost to the tax payers.
My company specifically has the current healthcare insurance costs listed as why they feel not as competitive in the US market. The per person overhead is higher than in Europe (we are also about twice as a productive, which gives our US plants a net gain).
If a system of socialized medicine is in place, the amount of money a large corporation pays on health care will go down. The taxes on the workers will go up, but that is a net good.
I have talked with quite a few other companies, who have similar views. They view socialized medicine as the cheaper option.
In my 20 plus years of software development I’ve determined that college education only accounts for maybe 20% of the required knowledge for my career field. Technologies are changing constantly and only those who have the aptitude and desire to keep up with those changes will survive in this field. I’ve met people with only a high school degree who were brilliant coders/developers and other people from MIT who couldn’t write the most simple of programs.
Software development is as much an art as it is a profession. Some “artists” are just better than others and have natural ability to visualize an entire application in their head. Having a holistic view before even starting makes applications less buggy, easier to understand and easier to enhance. Just as Da Vinci visualized his art works and inventions before he put it on paper.
“American companies need to hire Americans.”
Would you hire the samples that our public schools are “graduating”? I sure as hell would not.
Sorry a job is not a right.
Sorry a job is not a right.
I work with a Michigan Tech grad. He is a huge asset to our department.
It is not. I should have put the "turn off sarcasm" tag at the end of my statement ( /s ). My bad.
They could use about 100,000 engineers in India to design safer water systems for the population, as well as garbage processing systems, sewage systems, holy cow elimination systems, traffic systems, streets and housing,...
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