September 17, 2007
John. F. Kennedy and the "engineer gap"
JFK was well known for the so-called “missile gap,” which was a central aspect of his 1960 presidential campaign. In short, Kennedy claimed that the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower had allowed the Soviet Union to pull ahead of the U.S. in missile technology. (This was before the Democratic Party was taken over by a bunch of politically correct, Michael Moorish peaceniks---but I’ll save that one for another time.)
After becoming president, Kennedy brought attention to another gap: the engineer gap. When he presented his 1963 budget to Congress in October 1962, JFK sounded the alarm over the Soviet lead in math and science education: “Soviet institutions of higher education are graduating 3 times as many engineers….as the United States….The Soviets are maintaining an annual flow of scientific and technical manpower more than twice as large as our own.”
JFK was primarily concerned about the U.S. “engineer gap” as it related to national defense. As we all know, over the long run, the Soviet engineers couldn’t save the Soviet Union from communism.
Today, however, the United States faces an engineer gap with a variety of countries that are either capitalist or quasi-capitalist. (China’s government, while still nominally Marxist, is best described as an authoritarian “state capitalist” system.) In 2005, Fortune magazine reported that on an annual basis, China and India produced 600,000 and 350,000 engineers, respectively, while the United States produced only 70,000.
These figures were later disputed by critics who charged that China and India were padding their numbers by including graduates who would be called “technicians” in the United States. Nevertheless, a subsequent study by Duke University found that each year India produced about the same number of engineers as the United States, and China produced them at about 2.5 times the rate of the U.S.
These statistics won’t remain static. As the economies of China and India continue to improve, more Chinese and Indians will have the resources to pursue engineering and scientific studies at the university level. Therefore, while we can debate about the actual magnitude of the current numbers, there is no doubt that China and India are pulling ahead of the U.S. when it comes to engineering brainpower---the force behind industrial technology and manufacturing might.
What are the reasons for our current “engineer gap”? Some are all too eager to blame teachers and the school system. As I noted in a previous essay, our educational system isn’t perfect; but teachers aren’t primarily to blame. They really do want your kids to learn. The major reasons behind the engineer gap lie outside the educational system:
Math and science aren’t perceived as "cool." This wasn’t always the case. Both Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein enjoyed minor celebrity status in their day.
That was before the dominance of corporate-driven mass media. Today the media glorifies brain-dead rappers who can’t distinguish between “this” and “dat,” dingbat teeny-bopper singers with eating disorders, and professional athletes. None of these role models convey the message that smart is cool.
We watch too much television. I have railed about this one before, so I won’t repeat myself here. But you can’t learn differential equations with American Idol blaring in the background.
Corporate America sends the wrong message. Increasingly, U.S. corporations are shipping technical jobs overseas in pursuit of the lowest possible wages. If they aren’t actually relocating R&D to China, then they are importing cheap technical workers under the H1-B visa program. (And most corporate leaders are screaming for even more cheap engineers from abroad.)
Why would an American high school student take AP physics when her father’s company is sending engineering jobs abroad? As recently as ten or fifteen years ago, America’s corporate leaders still cared about nurturing homegrown technical talent. Today, they view engineers much like a commodities trader might view hog futures---buying them as cheaply as they can, wherever they can.
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So there you have it. The “engineer gap” is a very real problem; and it has serious implications for America’s future as a world power. Fixing the engineer gap won’t be easy---but it is an issue that we must face, sooner or later.
