Don't we have enough trouble filling jobs in the hard sciences and engineering as it is? Don't the politicians claim that the US is losing its edge in the sciences? This is the fix.
Really? Which
jobs? You mean the ones at places like
Google? I don't think Google or any of the other glamorous engineering firms are having any trouble. It's the places that can't pay the expected rates that do.
Aka the ones that, even after a doctorate, pay some token low six figures, leading you to becoming a cog in a giant machine in which you're paid a token sum and life is "comfortable" so long as you get up for work at 7:30 AM and only start to unwind at 6:30 PM, with only two weeks of vacation every year, for the next thirty five years of your life?
I'll tell you a couple of reasons why have trouble filling engineering and science jobs:
1) Because Wall Street wants these same engineers and scientists more, and are willing to
pay for them (mainly because it can like nobody else). Would you rather receive a massive cash bonus from a bulge bracket or a hedge fund, or stock options from a startup which could very easily go bust, for putting in the same hours? (Or simply be a cog in a large machine, completely out of control of your own destiny, but I'm not even considering this!)
2) Because engineering and science job prospects (with a very select few exceptions, like
Google and perhaps MSFT) #$*&ing suck! Think about this. You work your 9 to 5 for the rest of your adult life making middle class salaries, watching your kids get saddled with student loans and living a ho-hum existence until you're old and gray and your spouse is saggy and your body is breaking down from the inside.
Retirement--because you've given so much of yourself to the company that you don't have anything left we can use.
Sound like something that gives you the willies? This is what I'd call failure, and I'd consider it hell on Earth.
3) Because of increased competition. Why should Americans have to study their @sses off in a grueling engineering major when they'll have to compete with foreigners with stronger work ethics, more intellectual purity, better primary schooling systems, and all for less upside? And if you thought it was tough in undergrads, wait until you see the grad courses! (Interestingly enough, I must be oblivious to this fact because I naively think that my hard work alone can carry me through to better performances than other people...so far, though, it's been working)
4) Because innovation for innovation's sake gets you the Dotcom burst of 2000. At Lehigh, there was a course mandatory for all IEORs to take called Engineering Economy, whose overarching concept was this: the only good engineering is the profitable kind. So now that FE came along, who needs to engineer a product? Why not go and skip straight to the money?
If we're to make engineering more attractive, we can't just make the work more attractive, but the lifestyle that comes as its reward more attractive, and make it easier to get there (read: quota in universities for American students pursuing engineering/hard science...they're next to nonexistent as it stands...there can be all sorts of minority quotas and foreigner quotas, yet none for Americans themselves...hah!). And so long as companies are willing to hire foreign engineers by the dozen in their foreign headquarters (or sponsor their H-1Bs), they have no reason to overpay for intellectual talent here in the states. So, the only people who are willing to pay for the brainpower (Wall Street, Google, other big tech firms) get it in spades.
