In all honesty, I still don’t have an opinion on whether we have a shortage of engineers in the US. I am constantly told that there are shortages in specific areas such as true analog experts. But overall, there are many engineers matriculating nationwide and even more on the global scale. In those US engineering programs, however, there remains a distinct imbalance between the number of males and females pursuing and engineering degree. I found a pair of dueling columns on that topic in a recent USA Today a very interesting read.

In the first column, “First, dispel all of the myths,” the author argued that despite the fact that 60% of the students earning degrees are female, that females aren’t as well represented in scientific fields. The author speculates that the shortage of female engineering students could hurt our competitiveness in technology on the global stage. And the author points out that traditional myths about why females don’t purse engineering and science just don’t hold up today.