Senators on floor bemoaning the decline in Ph.D. level engineers and

scientists. They need visas for foreign workers at this level. This is really aggravating me. They get up there and piss and moan about lack of workers at this level while they defund education or make certain that our local systems are saddled with so many unfunded mandates that they can't afford to teach. They pass budgets which make it hard for people to afford educations to become teachers in the lower levels, let alone afford graduate school. Once someone has achieved an expensive education, then we find those jobs outsourced. We train so many scientists and engineers in this world. What is wrong with this picture. I don't want to hear about poor immigrants. This legislature has made it damned hard for our children to get ahead in decent paying jobs. The next time they get up and expound on the lazy American worker or the dumb American student, I would hope that we are insulted enough to call them and remind them of their duplicity in undermining the labor market and the educational system.

We are ignoring the needs of the country by not putting money into education and training programs. I see it very much as an effort by conservatives to control who will get education (the rich legacy kids) so they can smash the power of the middle class and limit access to the ruling class.

teachers. My daughter was in pre-al this year and the teacher would only take 30 kids. I think she finished with 35 kids out of a class of 130 or so. Only the top kids got to take the class the rest have to wait until 8th grade.

the lack of qualified engineers, even when the unemployment rate among engineers is rising.

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Archive/GradDegrees.txt

A tried and true tactic employed by the industry lobbyists to expand the
H-1B program has been to push the Education Button, the all-purpose stun
gun of Capitol Hill. All one has to do is push that button, and the
Congress and the press are rendered senseless.

SNIP

Bottom line: The premise of the bill is unwarranted. If employers want
workers with graduate degrees, they should hire the tens of thousands of
unemployed American tech workers who have graduate degrees.

SNIP

* H-1Bs with graduate degrees are used as CHEAP LABOR by big firms.
Intel has claimed repeatedly that most of the H-1Bs it hires are
design engineers with graduate degrees. (See my law journal paper,
at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/MichJLawReform.pdf pages 43-44,
for various quotes.) But if you look at the Dept. of Labor H-1B
Web page, you find that the median prevailing wage quoted by
Intel for its H-1Bs is $65K. Contrast that to the fact that the
national median salary for workers with a Master's in
engineering is $82,333 and the median for a PhD is $105,500.
(See reference to 2002 NSPE data at
http://www.soe.stevens-tech.edu/seem/UG/SalaryArticle.pdf)

SNIP

* In addition, Americans are now flocking to graduate schools.
In the past, American students "voted with their feet," skipping graduate
school in favor of going directly into industry because they knew a
graduate degree was not needed to be able to do the work in the field and
they correctly perceived that going to grad school was a losing
proposition financially. Meanwhile, the foreign students saw a PhD as a
steppingstone to a U.S. green card. Our National Science Foundation, a
government agency, saw this, and promoted bringing in foreign students,
openly pitching them as a source of cheap labor--first for the meager
graduate student assistantship salary, and then after graduation to hold
down U.S. PhD salaries. (See pp.84ff of my law journal paper cited
above.)

SNIP

... to foreign H-1B Visa workers that they do American workers. Yes, that is part of the law, but they ignoring something that's been going on for well over a decade, which explains the discrepancy you cite here that shows they DON'T get paid the same.

The reason why they are significantly lower than comparable American workers is that many exploit the loophole of hiring from contracting firms instead of hiring H-1B employees directly. They contract for a "service" not an employee too.

These contracting firms JUST hire H-1B VISA people, so therefore there is no measuring stick of the "prevailing wage" at their firm for American workers, since there are none. Therefore they can chop their wages quite a bit down from what they might have to pay American workers for the same work, and take away most of their benefits that an American worker might get. Then the contracting company gets the benefit of the cheaper labor without having to worry about breaking this rule.

So don't let those Rethug apologists for H-1B Visa program get away with that argument. I've seen that happen in the trenches.

Similar things happen to try to help big companies get excused from checking up on illegals too, when companies like Wal-Mart contract out janitorial services to illegals through contracting agencies.

doesn't explain how they work.

"H-1B law requires that employers pay H-1Bs "prevailing wage,"
but the law and associated regulations are so riddled with loopholes
that they are useless. All the big (and small) firms exploit these
loopholes quite vigorously, in much the same manner as they exploit
loopholes in the tax code. See pp.88-92 in the law journal paper
cited above."

Both before when I was a permanent employee at Sun and seeing mid level managers joke about hiring this way to keep their budgets low, and later on when I came back there as a contractor, and saw H1-B Visa people be kept on to do cheap maintenance of stuff I'd done for contract work earlier. It's all about what's CHEAP!

about jobs going overseas or otherwise going to foreigners because Americans are not qualified to take them, they're missing the point. Jobs are going to go to those who will work the cheapest. Period. Yes, it's also true that they are the ones who are cutting funding for education from grammar school to graduate school. That needs to change. But it will make no difference if someone in China or India is going to do the same job for one fifth the pay. What can be done to keep jobs here? I don't know. But even beefing up our educational system isn't going to help we have a well-educated work force whose jobs have gone overseas somewhere.

plummer or fireman and you don't have to sit in a windowless office or a cubicle.

In my office, virtually every one applying for a job for the last twenty years (and maybe longer) has been an immigrant, (some with green cards, some who have obtained their citizenship).

I think our pay is low when you consider the education and engineering license requirements and the responsibilities of our job.

Especially at graduate level there is a disproportionate number of foreign students. The good thing about that is many stay in the US.

engineering class three years ago, and got a really good job in industry and worries constantly about losing his job now. He was one of a handfull of American students in the program.

An American college program should not look that way. We have no children smart enough to do this type of educational preparation? Apparently not. We have our rhetoric instructors at undergraduate level complaining because kids can't read or write when entering college. But those same colleges train our teachers. What is freaking wrong with this picture?

It is not a really high status job. The hours are huge.

Engineers do not make money in line with the smarts of the people doing engineering. If you are tyhe best engineer at a firm you will still make less money than upper management.

The American engineers who do graduate become consultants, get into management, become a trader, go to law school, etc.

Bottom line: Smart American kids can make more money elsewhere.

Luckily we import our engineering class like we have imported doctors.

... also, it is easy to outsource an engineering job, much less easy to outsource a management, legal or similar job.

I don't blame American kids for not going into engineering, the days of American dominance in those fields are over and it's not the kids' fault.

need, and could easily accept more U.S. students -- if they chose to. One advantage of accepting foreign students is that they often come with their own funding sources.

because that's how industry now works -- managers are continually having to identify who they might lay off in the event of a budget shortfall. My husband, an engineer, has worried about losing his job for the last twenty years. And for the last ten he's worried about having to lay other people off.

I think the main thing is for your son to stay flexible, stay networked, keep his resume updated, and be ready to move if something happens. But he shouldn't get discouraged and blame himself because the market out there is very tough. Almost anybody could get laid off at any time.

engineering jobs to be had here? When GM is closing plants here to open them in INDIA or CHINA Where would a new PHD with $200,00 in student loans go to work?

many from Great Britain. So it looks like a two-way street out there.... I have a hunch some of the problem is that we have two many of one kind of engineer and too few of another.

PhD's to update their training when it is so much cheaper to lay off the older guys and hire a newly minted PhD

Employers would rather hire a brand new PhD on a visa.

Graduate school in sciences is generally paid for by the school.

which is a reason universities like to accept them

Graduate school in sciences paid by the schools....if you choose carefully

I can only speak for myself as I am in a Masters program in reproductive physiology and focusing on cloning and stem cells.

I stopped trying to add up my total student loans about 2 years ago. My guess when all is said and done ... I'm in the hole easily $50K when my MS is done, not withstanding costs for a PhD after that. But a PhD may over qualify me for any work, so I just don't know anymore

My 12 month assistantship covers tuition only and provides me with a $1000 mos stipend. Everything else is my responsibility. No books, no health insurance, nada. I've been lucky with health, but have had to finance any medical and dental costs that came up...

I pay ~$500 mos for my apartment, and that's very good for post-Katrina Baton Rouge. So I'm stuck in a very crappy place can't afford to move.
Then take into account student fees, books, parking, gas to travel to the lab, and food. I've come to love mac & cheese, ramen, spaghetti, and hot dogs as main staples.

There's no way I could be here regardless of what the university gives me for a stipend without taking out loans.
We have seen funding slow to a trickle, and the state of LA is broke, that will now add to all of us more time it will take to finish the program, meaning even more loans to support myself since my stipend can only be funded for 2 years.

So actually, I can easily see someone having 200K in student loans when finishing up graduate work.

My fiance (he's in CT) tells me almost every night, remember why I'm here, that this is for a better future.
Unfortunately, the way things are going, I don't know if there will be a better future in the sciences.

My best friend, a civil engineer, assures me that the need for halfway competent civil engineers far exceeds the supply. Awesome gig. In addition to checking the plans for people wanting to add another room, he gets to ride all the rollercoasters for free, gets a badge that lets him skip the line at the local airport, and gets to supervise all of the building implosions. With overtime.

My step-father, a chemical engineer, swears that there's not enough to go around. The amount of money he has been offered to work in other countries, for instance, is obscene. Like a million a year in Arabia, plus dedicated bodyguards and chauffeurs for both he and my mother. He didn't take the job, because he was making damn good money anyway, and wanted to finally retire. (Why didn't she marry this guy when I was young!)

I have another friend, an electrical engineer, who works for the government at an "undisclosed location." He also makes darn good money, with federal government benefits, to boot. He promises me that electrical engineers are highly, highly sought after, even the bad ones. Of course, the other two engineers also tell me that electrical engineering is probably the most difficult of the engineering fields, and that they are all a little weird :)

I suppose my evidence is purely anecdotal, and doesn't take into account aerospace, mechanical, or other industrial-types, but I feel fairly confident that for at least SOME kinds of engineers, the work is out there.

(For the record, I'm an English teacher. When I hang out with these people, I just nod my head and pretend to understand the chemical reactions of rust, or smile politely whenever the civil engineers in the room laugh uproariously at a description of what seems to be mud drying. I also don't read the trade magazines or want ads, so I may be way off base. Again, purely anecdotal.)

I've been in the computer field 20+ years, the last 13 or so hiring various consultants. We used to get so many resumes of American Phds who could not get jobs in the sciences so they resorted to programming. Well we all know what happened there...outsourcing and H1Bs. I see very few Americans period now.

I'm so sick of the hype to students to do well in science and math. These skills are not rewarded. College is not even much rewarded any longer. It entitles young adults to go out and fight for trivial jobs.

There is an defacto effort to keep our peeps blindfolded....this case is part of the confirmation...

expensive lab equipment? Among the home schoolers I know, science is the biggest challenge to teach.

science museum.

They have better equipment than most high schools I've seen. Community colleges often offer classes for homeschooled students, as well.

Science could work in a home environment, if you had an experienced tutor or instructor. Schools are so worred about accidents and lawsuits that you rarely get to do any interesting experiments, anyhow.

a community college either.

We have to drive 45 minutes each way to get there, but it's worth it.

If not a community college, high schools often allow homeschool groups use of their labs and libraries.

I personally don't think lack of access to a science lab is a good enough reason not to homeschool. I learned as much in my fist semester college lab as I did throughout middle school and high school.

my son. I was surprised to see someone above mentioning 6th graders taking pre-algebra. My 6th grader just finished a course in advanced college algebra II, which we combined with lessons from a grad. school geometry book.

I try to instill in him the value of hard work, but I also tell him often that when he enters the work force he should never to let an employer take advantage of him and he should learn how to make himself indispensable.

Math and science degrees aren't worth what they used to be. Whoever said that Universities always pick up the tab for grad school students is wrong. A grad student might be able to get part of his or her tuition covered by working as a TA or lab assistant, etc, but it's rarely enough to cover the expenses. It wasn't even close at my school.

Sorry, there was a man too. But I didn't look to see who it was. I was concentrating on sewing.

PhDs are rare enough across the world, let them go where they are needed - Americans probably have jobs abroad too. Americans with expertise in computers travel to other countries to help them set up their networks - there's nothing wrong, at this level, with this, it benefits everybody.

Expecting the US to stay in this little box is absurd. The route to poverty.

...companies do not want to pay them decently. They want CHEAP Ph.Ds and engineers. And they get those from India and China.

We have THOUSANDS of engineers and PhDs out of work in the US! Companies should HAVE to hire them first, and ONLY if they can PROVE that they can't find any HERE, should they be allowed to import or export those jobs ANYWHERE.

It's all about MONEY - NOT lack of skills or lack of education. That's a crock!

Our company is suffering with less engineering expertise and it's hurting the company - yet they just laid off all but 10 of their American engineers. There are several hundred in China and the Philippines :eyes:

For some reason they would rather have more lower quality engineers that pay for high quality engineers. American companies are traitors to the flag - you should see all the technology they are shipping off to China :(

...this is why we are losing our edge in the sciences and technology. NOT because of any lack of education, but rather because the corprats want the cheap, lower-quality labor they can get from overseas (insource, outsource, whatever). I've heard story after story of how incompetent the cheaper engineers are. Sure, they have degrees, but little experience. And, the requirements for them to attain those degrees abroad are not as stringent as they are in the US. So, they're really not as qualified and not as skilled. American engineers have to 'clean up' after them quite often because the job wasn't done right the first time.

No wonder we're losing our edge. It's got nothing to do with lack of education or skills in the US - it's just greedy corprats who want it done on the cheap - then sometimes it has to be done over. Penny-wise, pound-foolish. And it's costing us our future.

It's so depressing and annoying explaining the same thing to them over and over and over again - then when I think someone has some idea of what they are doing - they now are more valuable and they get a better job either within or in the company across the street paying 50 cents more an hour :eyes:

You have no idea how much money we waste and how many customers we lose because we cannot coordinate all the different cultures and schedules and personalities and languages and turf wars and it goes on and on. Most of our customers are over here but these clowns don't see the importance of meeting a schedule since the customer is so far away. And even the best engineers seem to get obsessively caught up in the details and often miss the big picture - something American engineers are very good at.

I'm hating American companies quite a bit lately :(

Could that be a factor? Maybe the "Just do it" culture caught up with us. Maybe the fact that the machine tool trade school I attended as a younger man, was auctioned off and closed down, like many other schools. Maybe our money has gone toward punitive rather than educational funding. Maybe education just isn't valued in this country. I mean, just look at the president.

And maybe with the price of real estate so high, there is a sense of futility.

Reduce funding for agencies who actually pay for scientists already well-trained and in the system... Don't forget that scientists and generally a well-educated public with good reasoning skills is seen as the enemy by most politicians... Because they don't buy BS that easily...

Overseas in places like India:
1) Government susidizes most people's college degree (at least at an undergrad level) in addition to high school and earlier. Now we're even trying to pull the plug on public schools here.
2) Students can therefore not worry about paying for their education. Just picking a career specialty that they would be good at and that there's a market for their skills. Technically qualified Indian students have it MADE when both of these questions' answers work to their favor. It's a no-brainer for most of them to study computer science.
3) Many I've talked to here note that in order to get separated from the rest of the students there to land a job here, you need a graduate degree over the B.A. or B.S. Even if they have to pay for it, they've had their undergrad degree paid for already, so they're paying roughly the same amount or less than an American getting an undergrad degree here would.
4) When money isn't a barrier for smart students to go to college, you have just about all of the smartest kids able to get through a tech degree that want to, and therefore have a lot bigger pool of qualified students for PHD's there. They have motivation to do so as well and the cost relatively speaking is a lot less.

Here in the States:
1) Kids are faced with the uncertainty of even going to college, let alone getting into a tech field about what careers won't be outsourced (or have H-1B visa'd people come in to lower the salary levels). The increasing costs of a technical degree at a decent University make it increasingly a "bad" investment.
2) Kids here have to pay for a bachelors' degree in most cases, compared to places like India or China. That weeds out tons of kids that might be really smart and able to do tech careers from poor families. That lowers the size of the pool for graduate school, even if they had the financial resources (or scholarships) to enter a graduate program.
3) With expenses these days, both for cost of living as well as families that many people have at the time they go to grad school, in many cases PHD's are just not a viable option.
4) Given that unless someone has a lot of family money, they aren't likely to get a post graduate degree, I'm guessing that a big majority of those people that pursue graduate degrees would focus more on business like their parents who have that family money probably had in raising their fortunes as business leaders. Therefore those going to grad school are going to tend more to be MBA's rather than getting Comp Sci. PHD's for that reason as well.

I still would argue that given the right opportunities, our kids here can be every bit as smart as kids overseas. They just don't have the same opportunities given the cost-benefit analysis of investing in such careers compared to everyone else.

I suppose that you could make more money but if the company is making cuts, which so many are these days, wouldn't it be harder to get a new job? Graduate degrees tend to make people overqualified for most jobs.
Sometimes I wish that I had a PhD. A 4 year degree in a science subject doesn't pay well at all. It seems that all jobs requiring graduate degrees though are very specific. It is difficult to know what one's advanced degree should be in and what one should research in order to get an actual job.

enjoy research. But you're right -- the more education you have, the fewer jobs that would suit your qualifications.

Many engineering students don't decide until their senior year whether they want to pursue graduate studies or not. One way to help you decide is to take whatever opportunities you have as an undergraduate to get involved in high level research. If you enjoy it, you might want to continue on to grad school. If your main objective is to make money, however, there are lots of more lucrative things you could do with your engineering degree -- follow it up with an MBA, or a law degree (they always need patent lawyers) or an M.D. Or just take a job in industry and see what happens.

If you are capable of going for a doctorate in engineering, then there are easier and more reliable ways for a clever person to make money.

You do it because you enjoy it, or don't do it. Putting yourself through it because you think there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is a whole lot of aggravation and lost time for nothing. You might as well bet on ponies.

Involvement in undergraduate research hooked me, but I could have done a whole lot better financially a whole lot younger by doing other things.

So "Is it a benefit?" In terms of personal satisfaction, absolutely. Careerwise, though, it disqualified me from more things than those for which it qualified me.

He's going to Law School in the fall. Oh well...

is very good preparation for engineering school. Or medical school, or veterinary school, or a chemistry or physiology or microbiology degree..............

We are headed for a future full of preachers and not much else in the US.

But why worry? All anybody needs is enough readin' to be able to read all the words in the bible, and enough math to count change back from a dollar. Science isn't biblical, so it's not necessary.

sarcasm off

THEY are the ones who deserve the finger being pointed at them and I no longer care which finger you choose to point with.

Anyone who supports offshoring is against America. It's hurt our economy. It's hurt our reputation. It's hurt our national security. And it's hurt our future.

Still, it's nice to see some peoples' anti-offshoring posts get responses. Maybe I'll learn something; none of the ones I post get responded to... seems I'm just as much a... never mind.

When I enrolled in a physics Ph.D program in 1988, I had been fed tales of
a bright future by my undergrad advisers. By the time I finished five years
later, it was clear that I and my cohort had been lied to, as we were faced
with a huge glut of new Ph.D physicists with which to compete for the few
available jobs at our level. The academic system just churns them out,
because it is to the benefit of the system to have graduate students,
both to get the research work done and to justify their programs.
Whether or not the students are employable at the end of the process is a concern
far down on the list.

For my own part, a couple of bad breaks post-doctoral (including trusting the
wrong employer and getting royally screwed) pretty much put me out of the
running. I eventually got a BS-level engineering job that pays well and that
I actually enjoy most of the time.

Last time I checked, the word was getting around and science Ph.D enrollments
were declining, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the academy. Well,
they can stick it. There still is no shortage of domestic Ph.Ds; never was, probably
never will be. Just greedy employers who don't want to pay for that level of
expertise, and politicians who want to posture about a "commitment to science
and innovation" that doesn't exist, when there is no end of technical challenges
that need to be taken on to produce a livable future. Did I mention that I once
dreamed of working on solar energy?

become "retreads" in engineering programs, some take other paths to use their PhDs. And some get their real estate licenses. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! lol)

Unfortunately it seems like almost everyone has that one employer by whom they are "royally screwed."

and including the post-doctoral employment gig from hell.

The only difference between your story and mine is that I did get to do some work relating to photovoltaics prior to abandoning engineering for paying work.

That business of encouraging promising undergrads to go on to grad school is like some kind of damned conspiracy among professors just shy of tenure who need warm bodies and working minds to finish the next funded project.

I thought the repugs worshipped the free market above all else. Why would they intervene on the supply side? If there are not enough advanced engineers out there, then they will be paid more, which in turn should attract more students in the future. Seems simple. Why do they hate America?

They need to be birthed, get shots, be sure they are fed, clothed, schooled for 12+ years, transportation....


THEY AREN'T PRODUCING during this period.


It is much more cost-efficient to 'outsource' - once the worker has passed the dependance threshold they come here and WORK....

That's what workers do, and that's how smart Corporatists like them.

After completing a Ph.d. in electrical engineering, taking one short-term consulting job, and then spending a year substitute teaching in high schools, I started to enjoy the "interviews" I would get out of responding to the mandatory "wanted" ads that employers have to run in order to show there are no qualified US applicants.

Eventually, I decided to abandon engineering for law, and found a position with an IP firm. Shortly after accepting that offer, I got a call from a major technology company following up on my response to their H1-B help-not-wanted ad. The funny thing about it was that I happened to know the precise research position they wanted to fill.

Why?

Because I had been a teaching assistant in the relevant course taken by the Indian material science graduate that they had hired the previous year to manage the project. He and I were good friends, and I knew what he was working on. At first, I played dumb with the interviewer, while he asked hilariously obscure questions about my coursework, research work, and specific techniques, in order to find a way to disqualify me from the position. As he was beginning to tell me that maybe I didn't have what they were looking for, I had a few questions of my own. I asked him whether he knew Dr. X, who was the project manager at the Z lab. The interviewer was surprised, and said that, yes, in fact they were looking for someone to work with Dr. X. I said, "Okay, now, you take a look at Dr. X's transcript, and you find the lab course that qualified him for the position. Then, take a look at the course for which I bought the equipment, installed it, and taught the lab part of the course, and you explain to me how in hell I'm not qualified to work for the guy *I* taught to do what *you* have him doing?"

Then, having already accepted a non-engineering job elsewhere, I told him exactly what he could do with his "interview".

Within four years, that program was shut down, everyone was laid off, and I've been happy and busy for more than a decade.

As posted elswehere in this thread, that stuff about encouraging young people to seek education in math, science, and engineering is utter horsehockey. It's a great way to develop good thinking skills that can be applied elsewhere, and a source of unending satisfaction to the geek mind, but a surefire route to being "overqualified" for the actual peon engineering jobs available, or having the wrong "specialization" for H1-B job descriptions taylored to the applicant.

Please do not follow-up to this posting unless you have two years experience working a V8ZGY Model R Spectrum Analyzer, one year lab work in poly-methyl-methacrylate synthesis, and fluency in Mandarin Chinese.