Rapid Growth in Engineering Degree Production- Sustainable?
Keith J Bowman FACerS ?????
Constellation Professor, Materials Science, Manufacturing Engineering, Failure Analysis, STEM Equity and Engineering & Computing Education Expert
The recently published American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Data Report "Engineering by the Numbers" by Brian Yoder, shows that the rate of growth of US engineering BS recipients, 6% from 2012 to 2013, is pretty well guaranteed to continue for the next several years. The more than 93,000 reported for 2013 is 26% higher than the number of BS Engineering degrees reported for 2009. At the current rate of growth, US BS engineering degree production will surpass 100,000 either this year or next. Engineering doctoral degrees are similarly increasing at a high rate, 7% over last year, whereas MS degrees remain essentially unchanged. Although job growth for engineers appears strong, it remains to be seen whether the growth in jobs (see the Bureau of Labor Statistics) will match the strong growth in BS and PhD degree production.
High increases in the number of male engineers, as well as the numbers of white and/or Hispanic American engineers, across the past ten years have meant that gender diversity and racial and ethnic diversity in other categories have been fairly flat or declined. The fraction of African Americans and Asian Americans declined across the past decade. Contemporaneously, those reporting two or more races and "unknown" increased. One thing that can be gleaned from the first page of the ASEE report is that the fraction of women receiving MS and PhD degrees is substantially higher, at 23.9% and 22.4%, respectively, than the fraction of women receiving BS degrees, 19.1%. This situation has been evident since @2006, but it differs strongly by engineering discipline and is strongly driven by female domestic students (see " "Filtered Gender Diversity . . . by Keith J. Bowman, ASEE Annual Conference 2014). The difference by discipline in female fractions for domestic BS and PhD recipients and the foreign PhD level can be seen in the table below, which uses ASEE 2012 data and standard ASEE discipline categories. The Electrical and Computer Engineering disciplines (EE, ECE and ECompE), Mechanical Engineering (ME), Civil Engineering (CE) and Environmental Engineering (Env) all show substantially higher fractions of domestic women at the graduate level than at the undergraduate level.
The rate of growth in degree production also varies considerably by discipline. My own discipline of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) grew by 37% in BS degrees and 24% in PhDs since 2009. ME grew in BS degrees 25% and PhDs 19% over the same period. Biomedical Engineering (BME) has continued to have strong growth with 29% more BS degrees in 2013 over 2009 while Chemical Engineering (ChE) has increased by nearly 50% in BS degrees across the same years (data from 2009 and 2013 ASEE Reports).
Keith J. Bowman, ?2014
(Contents of this post represent only my personal opinion and analysis and do not represent the opinion of my employer, Illinois Institute of Technology)
Constellation Professor, Materials Science, Manufacturing Engineering, Failure Analysis, STEM Equity and Engineering & Computing Education Expert
10 年I agree foreign nationals are an important factor- but with major engineering schools in the midst of further intentional increases in enrollment (Texas A&M, UTexas, UNLV, CU-Boulder, etc.) that could ultimately reduce the interest in hiring foreign nationals and also suppress starting salaries. Growth in degree production and hiring might lead to a serious mismatch several years down the road, particularly within particular disciplines.
Director of Sustainability and Technology at Wieland North America
10 年With respect to the growth rate of degreed engineers in the US university system and the number of engineering jobs keeping pace with each other, we also need to look at the number of engineering degrees conferred in India and China. For each engineering position we post, foreign nationals typically outnumber US citizens by more than 10:1 in the applicant pool. (Men also outnumber the women by probably 100:1). I estimate that roughly 1/3 of our engineers are on H1B visas. I welcome the diversity and we have an amazing, talented team, but I think we have to look at the global picture of engineering degrees conferred and engineering job creation.