Where do engineers get the best education?
By Ed Sperling -- EDN, November 6, 2007
Electronic News/Electronic Business sat down to discuss global differences in education with Rajeev Madhavan, chairman and CEO of Magma Design Automation; A.K. Kalekos, VP of marketing and business development at CoWare; Dave Kelf, president and CEO of Sigmatix, and Richard Lucier, president and CEO of Carbon Design Systems. What follows are excerpts of that conversation.
Q: We’ve been hearing lots of different points of view about the quality of education in various geographies. Is education better in some places than others, and is it changing?
Madhavan: My own experience in India versus what’s available in this country is that competition was extremely high—basically one in 1 billion. I always was asked by my parents, regardless of whether I came in with a grade of 98 or 99, ‘So who was first?’ Here that would be considered abnormal. There is also a great affinity for math and science in India. I don’t know if that’s part of the culture, but it’s seen as a way of bettering yourself. Here, math and science are not nearly as cool as they should be. We need to encourage math and science education. We need to push our kids from the high school and middle school level. If you don’t encourage that, all of these visa issues are legitimate. We live in Silicon Valley where opportunities are probably the best. But that’s not the case everywhere in the country.
Kalekos: I think it’s fair to ask the question whether this should be a global educational system. You’re inclined to think everything else is being equalized, so why not education? In the educational system there are three things that get achieved. One is that you impart knowledge to the students—facts, the ability remember and understand equations. The second thing is you give them the ability to learn more facts on their own. The third thing is confidence that they can go out there and make it happen. In the United States, the biggest advantage has been the second and third things. It’s giving students the confidence and the ability to learn. Everywhere else—in Europe and Japan and a lot of other places—they take tremendous pride in being able to push a lot of data on the student. But at the same time, they don’t give them the ability to learn or the confidence to go out and start new businesses. There are always a few who do that, but statistically it is not the same.
Q: Isn’t also the comfort level with failure? In Silicon Valley, failure isn’t considered permanent or even disgraceful.
Kelf: You’re absolutely right. My education is European. In Europe or the U.K., if you study engineering you’re going to be an engineer. You don’t get to choose lots of electives. In the U.S., there is the ability to choose from a whole bunch of electives that might not have anything to do with the core that you’re studying. That leads to the American ability to absorb their environment, to work in teams better, and to have confidence that you can do things and make things happen. In other countries, you’re an engineer.
Madhavan: In India, you get a lot of facts. You don’t question your professor. Whatever they say is gospel and everyone is respectful. When I got into graduate school here, everyone had their legs on the table and someone just had a pit-bull battle with the professor. It was a shock, but after six months you can adapt. When someone is making a mistake, you can point out that it’s absolutely idiotic. We enable the questioning to happen. But if you look at education as a global system, I think that’s a very big fallacy. It’s a dream that cannot happen, because in a lot of third-world countries knowledge is used as a weapon. In any other country, the difference between the ‘haves’ versus ‘have nots’ is drastic. If you can control all of this questioning power, that will create a void where people can get away with a lot.
Kalekos: Nobody can build a global education system. But we are in a global market, and because of the Internet the education system is systemically becoming global, by definition. It’s not because anyone is investing in a global education system. Everybody has access to the same information. One of the points Rajeev made about the ability to question authority here is interesting. What I found interesting in this country is the open book exam. I thought that was like cheating. And yet, to the American mindset, it made sense. To find the information you need to solve the problem, look it up. That’s the learning to learn. In a global education system, it’s difficult to get people to learn how to learn. The professors in some countries don’t know it, and they don’t know how to teach it.
Lucier: I have three children in high school. One of the problems with math is that they don’t apply a vocation to math. They don’t say, ‘This is what it can mean to you. You can become an engineer, and as an engineer you can build a house or build software.’ Once it’s put in that overall context, then you can see the globalization of it. When you study French, they take everyone to France for two weeks. They get the globalization there, but in math they don’t. Some people love it and it’s a great thing to learn, but the schools don’t apply the vocation on the discipline. If they did, more people would understand how it applies and impacts their day-to-day life.
Q: Is there a difference when you hire an employee from one country versus another?
Madhavan: People are created equal and there is good talent in every part of the world. But it’s their educational opportunities that make them different. We have operations in India and operations in China. There are pockets of expertise in each of them. It may be a professor in a Chinese school was great at teaching in one area and a professor in India was great at teaching in another area. As a result of that, we have a team doing analysis work in India and a team doing routing work in China. It’s not about an analytical value proposition that one team can analyze and another cannot. It’s an opportunity they got through their education system that differentiates them. I don’t think it’s a cultural issue as much as the education each received.
Q: But typically what you learn in college is only a starting point. You may learn Maxwell’s Equations and never do anything with that knowledge. Does it vary from culture to culture?
Kelf: Absolutely. The culture is critical. I don’t think we can ever get to a global education system because all the education systems are different and the culture matches the education. One of the great things about America is it’s good for bringing people together and building teams, and it’s open to diversity—much more than any other country. The Americans have an ability to work with other countries and attract people to fit into teams here. If you try fitting into a British team as a Chinese engineer, it’s very difficult. The education in this country, and the ability to have people talk to each other and learn opens them up to diversification.
Q: Why do they work better in an American team than a British team?
Kelf: The American culture lends itself to that. It’s open, and people here talk about their lives. That doesn’t happen in England.
Kalekos: I think that’s very much in pockets. If you go to a rural community in Iowa, you will find it’s different.
Lucier: When you look at how they rank the best entrepreneurial business schools, it’s all about building a team, not about this person is from here or there. No one cares. It’s about a goal of attaining a degree of success. That’s paramount. Our education system really stresses that at a higher level. That’s somewhat reflective of the culture, instead of driving the culture.
Kalekos: But as employers we are not sophisticated enough to take into consideration macrocultural aspects. We look at the individual and make a decision about that individual for a particular position. There’s a big difference between hiring an entry-level person versus a Ph.D., where their education is very important. If it’s a customer support role, that’s yet another different skill set. When it comes to service, Americans and Europeans think more in terms of servitude than service. In Asia-Pacific, it’s providing service. That’s why we are always amazed at the level of service when we visit. People are professionally helpful—even in the most boring services. Europeans and Americans think that if I’m opening the door for you, I resent the fact that I have to do that. It’s a different mindset, and that has an effect. It’s no accident that customer support has migrated to those countries. People take a lot more pride about providing service in India. That’s a cultural difference you can see. It’s also interesting to note that some companies hire people from other countries because they know if they get an H1-B visa and then a green card, they’ll stay for five years. An American citizen might stay for 12 months.
Madhavan: Most public companies don’t think that way. It’s purely driven by the ability to fill a position today. An H1-B visa takes six months to get. It’s the most poorly handled system in the United States. They get released and they’re gone in two days. We complain there are too many H1-B visas, and on the other hand we complain we do too much outsourcing. They are opposite arguments. We have to fill engineering jobs. There are too few engineers graduating. Math and science have to be elevated in the middle school and high school levels. That solves one value proposition. But we also have to manage H1-B visas better. When I was graduating, out of 44 kids, 40 came to North America. Today, when you take a class, it’s the opposite. Even if they get into great graduate school, they may not get a visa. They basically have to lobby the government. Our system is no longer encouraging kids to come here and take up the slack what needs to be done. We have to redesign the global education, H1-B visas and the overseas aspect.
Kelf: With the lack of H1-B visas, they’re going elsewhere and we’re losing that intellectual capital in America.
Madhavan: Yes, they are absolutely one and the same problem.
Q: But if this is a global industry, do you fare better living and working in your native country for a global company?
Madhavan: I don’t think there is any difference between working for an American company in India or an Indian company here. As long as I am treated equally and I do well, I can rise up either way. In a global industry, we have to realize that just as we were willing to move to Austin, we may have to move to Beijing or Shanghai.
Q: But do you do as well if you’re from Singapore working for a U.S. company in the United States as you would working for a local company in Singapore?
Kelf: Yes. Certainly in England, people try to work for American companies because the culture of American companies is more open. Plus, they get greater choice. You can move around. Some people are up for that, some people aren’t.
Kalekos: I don’t think in five years we’re going to think about companies in that fashion. Even if it’s a good entrepreneur in China, if they’re in EDA, for example, I don’t think they can avoid having an office in Silicon Valley. If you don’t, you’re not a player.
Kelf: Yes. Large companies know no boundaries.
Madhavan: The boundary is not political. It’s where our customers are and what services we need to provide to those customers. How much of a process does it take to have an office there? In some countries it’s very difficult. In others it’s very simple. That line is getting blurred. A lot of companies in China are starting to trade on Nasdaq. It’s all becoming one global stock exchange.
Lucier: There is definitely a supply problem in engineering. If you take it to a macro level, EDA used to be a very hot growth area. Now it’s very hard to attract young talent. There’s a lot of overhead. It’s not like it was 15 or 20 years ago. There’s a lot of overhead in becoming an EDA engineer. The hardware guy is drawn to design. The software guy is drawn to the Web. The EDA person has to learn hardware, software and algorithms. It’s demanding, and one of the issues if you go back to education is that the number of programs for EDA is diminishing. The EDA engineer is aging. Our ability to recruit young talent is really a challenge.
Madhavan: Companies like Google are trying to hire out of EDA. We understand software on an extremely complex level. But these fads come and go. In 1999, a lot of my people quit to start an Internet company. EDA is a consistent and growing industry. For young kids it’s not easy to determine what’s a fad and what’s real.
Q: I think investors have the same problem.
Madhavan: It’s important to let people know that we are a real industry and continue to grow at a good pace of 8 to 10 percent a year. Some companies clearly outgrow that. Of the Internet companies, 2 percent get sold.
Kalekos: That may be, but the market cap of Google is 50 times higher than the collective cap of all the EDA companies. That speaks to wealth creation and investment opportunities. I don’t think the failure is as high as you describe it. Slow and steady has never been the model of Silicon Valley.
Madhavan: But for one Google there are 100 Internet companies that return nothing. Google has made a tremendous amount of money for investors. EDA has done the same. A lot of people have done relatively well.
Lucier: But it’s highly competitive. It makes attracting people when you have companies like Google more difficult. EDA has very complex demands.
Q: One of the shifts that has occurred, as well, is that chips are more complex and often require multiple disciplines. Is any country’s education system addressing this better than any other countries?
Madhavan: A lot of that is pioneered better in the United States, especially at the graduate level. We provide a lot of freedom in that area. But a lot of the interest for this comes at the middle school level.
Kelf: The American system does provide a great framework for that. You can choose a lot of electives where you can’t in other countries.
Madhavan: When you think about Google hiring, though, think about trying to hire a good teacher.
Kelf: There’s a difference between not having the right framework and not funding it properly.
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Not enough engineers graduating? We have to fill these engineering positions and we need H-1B visas?
This has nothing to do with education systems and engineering skills, it has to do directly with the number of engineers in the US, both citizens and permanent residents, who have been thrown out of work by the industry and refused re-employment at anything approximating their incomes before their companies bolted by downsizing, right sizing, divestitures, and offshoring of new production facilities.
It's about earnings per share, stock options, Wall Street expectations for this quarter, and executive bonuses - it's about the money, not the workforce.
William Fuller - 2008-12-2 19:36:00 PST -
I have always believed that the education system for the math and sciences are lacking in the middle school level and up. The focus is on the equations and not in applications. That is where you get the real knowledge. There is similarity with the universities, the focus is on theory and not enough bench work. Technical schools have a good framework but still needs some tweaking. Politics, in my opinion, plays a role in toying with the educational system at all levels. I hope for a change. I am positive and hope to be involved in the evolution.
Ruben Garcia - 2007-9-11 18:10:00 PST -
There are too many "engineering" schools that only have the theory, no idea of the real world.
This seems to be more prevelant in Asia than the USA, although I know of one university that gives out a BS in Computer Engineering without requiring a hardware lab.
Look for the designers trying to find a 1.23 uF cap. rated at 17.5V to find the all theory and no practice engineers.
Jim Haflinger - 2007-9-11 12:32:00 PST
