Engineering and the global economy...

I recently read an article in BusinessWeek that caught my eye and I thought I'd share it.

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2006/sb20060710_949835.htm?campaign_id=search

The article addresses outsourcing of engineering positions. Recently the media has begun to report that all technical jobs (engineering being the most popular) are soon to be outsourced to China and India due to the large number of engineers these countries graduate. The article is based on a Duke University study (http://memp.pratt.duke.edu/outsourcing/) where they looked into the types of engineers that China and India graduate each year.

First of all you must know that China claims to have graduated 600,000 engineers last year and India claims to have graduated 350,000 engineers. That is staggering compared to the 70,000 engineers the US graduated. No wonder all of the technical jobs are going to be outsourced!!!

Long story short... China and India inflate their numbers by including everyone from a car mechanic to an engineer in their "engineering graduation" statistics. Secondly the Duke report said that China and India have decided to move from quality to quantity for their engineering programs and consequently many of their engineers cannot compete in the international market.

The end of the article pointed out some sad consequences that may come from these media reports. First of all there may be a shortage of highly qualified engineers in this country. Since we have scared people into believing all of the engineering jobs are going to be outsourced the article stated that people are choosing to move into the legal and medical fields. Also, a lack of recognition of this problem has led industry to undervalue an engineering education and not pay the same premiums as they would a doctor or a lawyer.

Ironically I read this article as I make the leap from engineering into law school. While the fear of outsourcing had nothing to do with my decision I do feel like adding a law degree gives me additional career options and earning potential. I guess we'll see how it goes. If the nay-sayers are right I'll end up back at work for the government as a GS-9 JAG. (Thanks for the vote of confidence!)