Motivation, Mentors Needed to Encourage Future Engineers

By Ann Steffora Mutschler -- Electronic News, 2/10/2006

With China threatening to unseat the U.S. in its semiconductor and high tech leadership, intense focus is being paid to maintaining superiority, with education of the next generation of engineers high on the list of priorities.

During President Bush’s State of the Union address, he outlined agendas that if funded, would double R&D at universities at a cost of $10 billion over the next 10 years and roughly $900 million in government spending in the first year, along with a commitment to clean up the immigration policy to make it easier for foreign students to attend universities and stay once they have degrees.

Dovetailing Bush’s address last week, a group of academic and industry executives were challenged by Electronic News’ editor in chief Ed Sperling during a panel discussion at this week’s DesignCon tradeshow on this critical topic.

One part of the problem in educating future engineers is the educators themselves and the quality of education. Carl Guardino, president and CEO of Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG) noted statistics that show two of three middle school math and science teachers in the U.S. do not even hold a degree in math.

While Dr. Belle W.Y. Wei, dean of San Jose State University’s College of Engineering agreed, she said for the students, degrees in science and math are the bare minimum, but are not enough.

Perhaps a larger issue is that, “young people are not inspired,” she said. “This is the problem.”

Still, reminded panelist Jim Hogan, industry veteran and private investor, more money is needed for programs to get students hooked into the real world, such as internships. He said his experience as a NASA intern led to his work at Cadence Design Systems Inc., where he was instrumental in building the company to the leadership position it holds today.

Exposing students is key, he said. “We live in an insular society. By sending students to Asia for instance, they begin to understand global competition,” Hogan offered.

It is currently estimated that 250,000 to 400,000 students are coming out of schools of higher education in China annually, with even more completing programs in India. With this in mind, how does engineering education in the U.S. stack up against the growing education enterprises in other countries?

Timothy G. Saponas, worldwide higher education manager at Intel Corp. believes it is not an apples to apples comparison, that U.S.-educated engineers still have a leg up.

The bigger issue, he says, is that more than half of U.S. students are not U.S. born and it is silly to let these students go back to their respective countries with a stellar education. “We should be stapling a green card to their diploma,” Saponas said, quoting Intel chairman Craig R. Barrett.

Another way Intel aims to engage students at an early age is through its Science and Engineering Fair, along with feeder fairs at high schools around the country, as well as employees serving as mentors to students.

“There needs to be more mentorship to excite students,” he added.

Another aspect to the motivation factor is a perception that there is a lack of entry-level positions for engineers. Why bother with an engineering education if there are no jobs to go to?

“Since the bubble burst following the dot com explosion, a lot more money is going to startups,” noted Hogan, who himself funds some of those startups. As such, there is a definite need for engineers with at least a master’s level education, he said.

San Jose State’s Wei agreed. “There is a definite perception issue. While the days of traditional 30-year employment with one company are gone, engineering graduates are known to have analytical problem solving skills that can be applied to a variety of disciplines, which are very attractive to employers.”

Guardino chimed in as well, “A recent Wall Street Journal article quoted a study that found despite belief to the contrary, engineering pay is not declining, and that there are plenty of jobs.”

Even the feared “outsourcing” trend is not impacting that since that dynamic happens in other countries as well. Take a look around Silicon Valley where foreigh chip companies including Sony, Toshiba, Renesas, Hynix, Samsung, Infineon and many others employ thousands of engineers.

“Just as many jobs are in-sourced by foreign companies,” he concluded.