What About Tomorrow's Skills?

Learning competency skills is something to do with the enthusiasm levels of individuals and their sincere drive to conquer survival skills.

Many people after joining a particular job and getting set takes for granted that they have made their life settled and things will go on safer for ever.

Education can only impart science, knowledge and few practical level demonstration including inter disciplinary subjects.

Making successful application & utilization is purely left to the discretion of the student and not anyway connected to education system.

Based on trends and future predictions one got to draft a real life plan and acquire all possible skill inputs.

That calls for smart assessment and good mentors too.

Above all that life and experience are best teachers more than institutes.

Many companies today engaged in manufacturing, have hired young engineers to replace seasoned practitioners in the design, development and manufacturing aspects of a product's growth cycle. First, these young engineers are cheaper and therefore more attractive. I can buy two young, inexperienced engineers for the price of one mature engineer. Secondly, educational models have changed as well as technology and the newby here again has the edge. Looks like a no-brainer so-far. But this is where I think the advantages of youth ends. As the author wrote math and science seem to be out of favor (as well as abstract thinking). The state run college near me had just completed (about 5-6 years ago) a large wing just for the engineering department and whoosh, no more students wishing to enter this field. Too much brain drain to complete a 4 year course and not enough reward. Might as well stay in school a couple of more years and enter the medical field where the pay is considerably higher (my vet makes $200K and he's in his thirties). Greedy execs. have changed the face of manufacturing forever and the flow is all offshore. This country will never regain the same things that made it a world class leader. Yes, we will have pockets of manufacturing strength in the U.S. but they will be just that, pockets. Us oldtimers in the meantime, will have jobs well into our seventies, as long as we continue to pull rabbits out of our hats! Stay positive.

I believe alot more are following the money.......pharmacist for one.

Know of several (7) people that graduated, currently enrolled, and enrolling to become pharmacists. I have asked all of them (2) questions

1.) What made you decide to do that.

All replies were the same......money being the first, and having a job the second.

2.) the second question, Do you enjoy it?

The majority had look on thier face that was shock and shrugged thier shoulders, about a quarter muddled an answer to the effect....its ok, there was only a one that had any kind of excitement.

I refrain from asking that again, if I want to hold a conversation with them.

phoenix911

We are experiencing a similar phenomena this side of the pond, and it appears that engineers are very undervalued. Accountancy and Social Work graduates find it easier to find lucrative positions after they leave college than engineering graduates. I believe that is partly due to the historical practice of requiring some degree of experience to temper the 'Book learning' of young engineers, I also believe that many companies have taken advantage of the ease of international communications nowadays, and following the philosophy of 'Globalisation' have farmed out many of the engineering functions to lower paid engineers in other countries. Strangely enough the role of the engineer is still highly respected in the countries where 'offshoring' is practised, more respect than is shown to engineers in the first world..... IMHO after the passing of the 'dinosaurs' of my generation, where we are being encouraged, nay, 'forced' to work more years before retirement, the role of engineer in its true meaning of the word will disappear from the 'First World', after all, many of the people who worked as engineers overseas in the 'offshoring industry' are being invited to immigrate to the countries who used to train many good and worthwhile engineers, but unfortunately no longer think it is worthwhile educating sufficent numbers of homegrown talent.

As someone who went back to school a number of years ago in order to get an engineering degree I dumped it and returned to the service work I was trying to escape. Here are a bit of my reasons why and they are similar to what my friends who are engineers in my age group have said also.

The engineering class work given now is crap and a half. It has almost zero practical application in real world situations. The reason the math and sciences are not popular any more is because they have been made so abstract and impractical they cant be understood let alone used in any reasonable fashion in day to day applications.

An associate of mine in college has a dad and grandfather who were both life long engineers and this is basically what they said about the new junk they pass off as math and science. My friend was having trouble with is math classes in college(so was I). He asked his dad and grandfather how this garbage is used in engineering being it doesn't look like anything he saw them ever use while growing up and being around actual engineers at work. Both said that whats being taught has no practical application and they see the results of teaching it whenever they get a new fresh out of college person hired into the company. The new guy cant even balance his check book properly (no practical applied math skills) let alone do real engineering math. He can juggle the Greek alphabet to no end but he cant put one part of it to practical real life application.

For myself as someone who uses complex math and science on a daily basis to figure out how to repair and modify devices and equipment I know what day to day math is used and required. That garbage they teach and tell clueless new kids right out of high school that they will need to become engineers is absolutely useless for real life application.

As someone who taught themself math and science because of a life long fascination and love of how everything works and functions I can tell you the stuff they have in colleges now is not what makes real life things work. Its fine for theory and abstract day dreaming but it doesn't fit the day to day real world at all.

Some of the finest engineers I have ever worked around and also who were the ones that made me want to become an engineer had nothing but a simple $10 wall mart pocket calculator, a stubby pencil, scratch paper and a brain and the could take on the world and win with it! I admire them and respect them far more than they can imagine.

For now I am going to stick with fixing things a bit longer. The math and science I use at least add up. The pay is not much less than some of my engineer associates of my age. And being my own boss now means I have far more free time then they have!

I may not get to rub elbows with the big shots but I sure can go and have a beer and a hot dog with some wonderful people who were once customers but are now friends of mine!

After a few years in college a second time I now appreciate what my line of work is about and what knowledge I learned from it long ago. I have far more regrets about the time, money and effort I wasted trying to become something that is now apparently less than who I all ready was and am.

Engineers of the old school are not less than who I am but those who get degrees seem to point out other wise nearly every time I have the displeasure of working around them. Its not really there fault though. I know it was the educational system that made them that way. Most of the old school engineers seem to feel similar about it too.

The engineering field has changed in the last few decades and not for the better. Those who could be super engineers and have the brains, natural skill and talent unfortunately willingly walk away from the class work and like me become something else. They were not weeded out but were smart enough to see what they were looking for can be found some place else for far less effort and with better working conditions. The ones who do make it through are unwittingly just diluting the collective skills and knowledge of the few good ones still in the field.

I'd like to put in my two cents worth on this topic from a non-engineer's view point. Now I work in a sort of unique industry where we are paper pushers but we touch on every industry out there. I am a Customs Broker, that is the guy who decodes all the government red tape for importers. Besides being aware of the 600 or so sets of laws that govern international traffic we must also deal with the technicalities of all the industries for which we handle the imports. I've been at this for over 30 years and have found it a grand challenge as I get to play part lawyer part technician (dare I say engineer?) and I am expected to know everything about everything. I'm now at the point where I am the guy who gets to classify everything nobody else knows anything about. So I am basically paid to learn stuff. Gotta love it when the boss says "I have no idea what this is or what it does ……. Go find out."

Over the last 20 years however our industry has constantly lowered our prices (value) to our clients effectively making it impossible to retain highly skilled and/or intelligent staff. Maybe it is because I see only the shallow end of the wage pool around me but I am constantly depressed by what I see. Not only do people know nothing about basic math or sciences, they don't seem to care that they know nothing. When, for example, it is necessary to discuss the various types of pumps with a client in order to do your job effectively, you would think people would educate themselves accordingly. This does not seem to be the case anymore. People are content to flip a coin, make a declaration which exposes the client to all sorts of financial risks, and go on about their day with a smile.

So in my mind it is not so much the lack of knowledge or skills I find appalling, but the lack of concern. I have always said there is a huge difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is just a lack of knowledge and is curable. Stupidity is either having the knowledge and still doing the wrong thing, or knowing you lack knowledge and doing nothing about it. Stupidity has no cure.

It is said that we live in the age of information, it is such a shame to see so many people ignoring it all.

Alternative healing (and voodoo in general) is the new-age form of placebo-engineering.

Natural science is (I'm sad to say) going down the drain.

We head into a new dark-age which mocks the rational intellect, and promotes untold number of variations to plain ignorance.

Today, the empirical is considered as just one version - a fad - a tricky way of conviction - one of possible many.

But not at all as scientific methodology or rational reasoning, God forbid.

Heck - "Scientific" has a bad conotation, because we are used to comecially corrupt scientists and scientific production.

This is a sad, sad state of affairs, because we indulge into mocking it, from a technological platform of hubris - which was achieved by the empirical in the first place.

Sorry, but that's the way I see it.

Your not the only one who sees it.

That which works and can be proven has been tossed aside in favor of that which cant be proven right or wrong. That way no ones feelings of superiority get hurt.

0 - 9 in the mathematical world got tossed and replaced by every symbol of every ancient alphabet so that the formulas can be juggled, tossed, ripped apart, and rearranged to make anything mathematically possible just as long as 0 -9 don't ever make it back into the equation.

My engineering math class professors said many times the wonderful thing about theoretical math is you are never wrong! If I am designing something that the lives of other people depend on I need math that proves I am wrong at times. If it doesn't I will get people killed and I cant live with that thought.

That goes with real science and any other proven technical knowledge. WE need solid doses of reality from time to time to let us know we are wrong. If it cant be fully proven with real numbers and real chemistry or physics I do not trust it, ever.

If it can be built and cant be explained I can still accept its real because I can see it work! But if its just a theory based on unfounded unproven or unprovable garbage I have no interest or belief in its validity to ever be built or work as theorized.

Alternative fuels and power sources are a great example. There are fuel and power systems that defy common reasoning and rational explanation at this point but yet do in fact work. There are however many more concepts that will never work despite what the theoretical numbers and the nuts who believe them say.

In a supply-and-demand situation, were the supply to drop and the demand not, then the value achievable for job applicants will increase, which is good news, really. The engineering profession ought not to complain about it!