We are in a vast engineering shortage across all disciplines. The main problem is colleges and universities have lost track of the true disciplines and are turning out great mechanics of latent theory. But the enlightened cross-disciplined minds of theory that can truly “engineer our futures” are lacking because of a let’s study how they did that so you can too focus.

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Engineering is the discipline that has created all the man-made wonders all over the world, whether it be in the construction phase as in old world or in the design phases with construction in the new world.

Lack or shortage of Engineering personnal would ensure eventually that the technological lead that this country has had all these years would be taken by others and one day men would be visiting USA to see the historical site that it once was.

Is Ann Rand being proved true? Has John Galt removed all the capable men in this country?

George Thomas

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Greed and lack of Vision has caused America to produce non-inventive engineers, who, if properly educated and trained, could help America to maintain our former position as world leader in every field requiring a new widget.

It begins with the greed in acadamia, where college professors continually petition the INS to grant more visas for foreign students to study in the USA — spreading the false notion that we are having a shortage of engineers from within our own nation. The reason, they get $50+ for each student in their classroom. In addition, they make only a minimum effort to teach theory, rather than the practical aspects of Engineering and Design. Consequently, graduate engineers usually can’t solve problems that require creating an innovative, or even a practical, Design.

The greed continues when the newly graduated Engineers are hired by Corporate America, who have been ill advised by their accounting staff to fire the experienced “overpaid” engineer and replace him/her with a lower-paid new graduate or foreign-born worker.

Therefore, we have lost the benefit of our “apprenticeship” system, as there are no grey-haired, experienced engineers to supervise the younger ones and share with them the benefits of their experience, while teaching them the real aspects of creating innovative and/or practical designs that could resolve the real problems.

The result: Jobs are constantly over budget and over schedule and require multiple reworks to obtain a working end product.

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First things first.

Simplistically, where do American engineers come from? Mostly, from american universities.

What to american universities primarily want to do ? Mostly, they want to “screen” for potential researchers, at the undergraduate level. Then, they want to (audition) for trainee researchers, at the masters level. And finally, they want to train (apprentice ?) researchers, at the doctorate level. Thus, the better researchers are “sifted” from the rest, probably to more publishing, garnering more grant money, and hopefully, more academic aclaim. And if, somehow, a graduate (accidentally ?) slips into the actual practice of engineering, and becomes adquately successful enough to endow a school with a building named after himself, well, that might be nice if it encourages more research. But heaven forbid that a school should actually get it’s “hands” the slightest bit dingy by trying to actually focus on producing real practitioners!!! Oh, the indignity of such a thing…

(…he sarcastically said…)

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