The Countries With The Most Engineering Graduates [Infographic]

[Al Bhatti]

July 29, 2010

Desperately seeking math and science majors

Applied Materials had to fly in 100 interviewers just to screen all the job applicants for its new Solar Technology Center in Xi'an, China, last year. The company wanted to fill 260 high-tech jobs. It got 26,000 resumes. A fraction of those applicants were invited to interview. The final selectees, board member Andy Karsner tells me, "were top-of-their-class, English-speaking engineers. They're the best of the best."

Now some of the most advanced research in this high-value, fast-growing field is being done in China -- instead of in the U.S. with American engineers. Why should we care? Because it's graduation season, when we see how starkly the direction of the American educational system differs from the way that faster-growing economies are headed.

Those Chinese solar researchers are the cream of an engineering crop that included an estimated 10,000 Ph.D. graduates last year. This spring the U.S. will graduate about 8,000 Ph.D. engineers, an estimated two-thirds of whom are not U.S. citizens. About 150,000 students who majored in engineering, computer science, information technology, and math will collect bachelor's degrees. The Chinese government claims that in recent years the number in China has been well north of 500,000 and rising fast; even if overstated, as some believe, the real number is much larger than America's, and the quality of those graduates is improving.

Americans should be alarmed, not because we have to beat the Chinese on every statistic, but because those facts threaten the heart of our great economic story. Until the past decade most Americans lived a little better every year. From the nation's beginnings, the engine of that improvement has been technology that makes millions of workers more productive. That's why you learned about Whitney's cotton gin and the McCormick reaper in elementary school. A stagnant living standard has terrible consequences, one of which is that the country eventually stops attracting and keeping the world's best and brightest, triggering a downward spiral that grows ever harder to break.

The spiral may be well under way. Instead of staying in the U.S., our non-U.S. Ph.D. graduates increasingly judge home to be a more attractive option. Anand Pillai, a top talent executive at India's giant HCL Technologies, says that his best young recruits used to insist on being sent to the U.S. for a time, but now many of them resist going: "They see such great opportunities at home."

Its next turn could be the worst. As math and science talent accumulates abroad, companies do more of their hiring there, reducing demand in the U.S. That's partly why undergraduate engineering majors are a shrinking proportion of the total, down from 6.8% to about 4.5% over the past 20 years. Employers then claim they can't find engineers in the U.S. -- so they have to hire abroad.

The fastest-growing college majors in America as of 2007, says the U.S. Education Department, were parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies, as well as security and protective services. That's not a great omen for technology breakthroughs. If the next great technological advances in energy, the environment, medicine, and information are made elsewhere, American workers will have a much tougher time earning good pay in those key industries.

When the National Academies (experts in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and research) raised this alarm in a landmark 2005 report, a chorus of quibblers sidetracked the discussion by arguing that China's engineering graduates weren't up to the same standard as America's, so the statistical comparisons weren't valid. Five years later it's clear that the National Academies were prophetic. For America's great economic story to continue, we need to reverse the downward spiral now, before it picks up speed. That means changing our culture -- hard but doable. As our graduates collect their diplomas this spring, we should send the next classes a message: that as an economy we want more science and math majors, and as a society we prize them.

The rise of engineers in China is leaving the US behind - Jul. 29, 2010

 

[بلندر]

Do u still he is really a representative of SIT? He is a False Flagger full of OGHDE

I just want to say the mentality of Sharif student ... and that why I quote his post .... I knew him more than you ... I was reading this site since 4-5 years ago ....

 

[Hack-Hook]

Well @Abii I must disagree with you that all Azad university degrees are useless . many of student team we send oversees to participate in competitions are from Azad University . and many of the young engineers who participate and acclaimed in khawrazmi festival are from Azad university.

It really depend on the person and which university you study at.

 

[Abii]

Well @Abii I must disagree with you that all Azad university degrees are useless . many of student team we send oversees to participate in competitions are from Azad University . and many of the young engineers who participate and acclaimed in khawrazmi festival are from Azad university.

It really depend on the person and which university you study at.

Tell me something. What differentiates an American/European/Canadian/Japanese university to one in the developing world? Research, relationship between the university and industry, field experience of professors, modern teaching methods, industry events/experience throughout the term of the education etc... A university's main goal is first and foremost to create employable and useful workers. In the West, and most of the developed world, industry and universities are ran side-by-side. Industry will finance universities where the government can't and they work with the schools to develop a curriculum that'll meet their needs (instead of just teaching students physics and math from a text book, students learn actual useful information directly transferable to the workplace). Industry also takes in a certain number of students every year and gives them paid work experience, while they're completing their education (co-op work for example). By the time a kid graduates from an engineering program in the West, provided that he actually put in some effort, he'll have work experience on his resume, a solid education that DID NOT just rely on text book physics and math and a very good basic understanding of what he needs to do and what the industry demands. His instructors were almost certainly field workers and he got to talk to them throughout the 4 years. He got to work with modern equipment, both inside the university and out on the field, through actual paid work experience that could have been as long as a year.

Now let's go back to university education in Iran, specially Azad. What is the main goal of these universities? What is their work placement rate? What are their budgets? What modern methods are they using? What percentage of the professors are actual field workers? What modern equipment do they have? Do they have any direct contact with the industry? What percentage of the students spend time out on the field working while they're completing their education? Do they learn only from textbooks? Are most classes/exams based on learning useless advanced math and physics problems that have almost NO RELEVANCE out in the real world, or on real world type courses? Even when I was studying accounting, I had to spend months at an ACTUAL firm and gain work experience. This was before graduation and I was interviewed for the job. Every day I wore a suit and went to office like every other employee at the firm, but I wasn't an actual employee (even though it was paid work). Companies hire students, at a reduced rate, because they know they're not completely useless. They have trust in the system, because the education universities provide are designed to fit the real world. And this is universal to all universities here, not just something offered by a few. How many second year engineering students in Iran can go and work for some oil company? Heck, by the time these kids graduate, all they know is advanced math and physics. Don't get me wrong, any Iranian kid will spank his/her Western counterpart when it comes to physics and math. But how is that relevant to the real world??

I also look at the education my brother is getting and the education my cousins are getting. My brother has had roughly 2 years of co-op experience, working for 2 different mid-sized firms. He's also had to do research inside the university, for which he was paid an hourly salary and later received a grant by the federal government. He's good at advanced math and physics, but he won't win any competitions. His goal is to be able to work for one of the top oil companies in North America after graduation. Now my cousins that are studying engineering in Iran, or my uncle who got his "lisans" in Iran, are math and physics geniuses. They'll spank anyone. But tell them to bring you a ladder and they'll go bring you a spoon. They never got and never will get any work experience while getting their useless degree, let alone work for mid-size and large firms. By the time they graduate, they don't even know the first thing about industry. Their first day on the job is essentially a moment of realization that almost none of their education was relevant, that is IF THEY CAN FIND a job! That's a big if. In Iran, university education isn't for creating employable adults. It's a right of passage no different than high school. It's something you do. Being good at advanced math and physics is the ultimate goal and outside of the research world, there's very little need for a math wiz. It's very easy to spend 4 years teaching kids math and physics off of a textbook and turning them into junkies that get high on figuring out complex math problems. It's MUCH harder to create employable adults, specially when there's little industry in the country and no growth either. All the things essential to creating employable adults with useful skills are not there.

 

[Hack-Hook]

@Abii my field is medicine and I can't talk first hand about engineer but my brother get his master in civil engineering in Iran and I knew he had worked for some companies to gain experience. As I said it depend on student and university .
You talked about Azad universities well many of its branches are just an apartment that converted to be classes but not all of it branch are so some of its branch are better equipped than our governmental university . maybe not as equipped as Sharif or amir kabir university but better than university of cities like qazvin which is an international university.

About the gap between university and industry there is no denying about it but the situation is a lot better than what it was several years ago.

 

[Arminkh]

one of most ridicules joke I ever read...

Number of likes on my comment disagree with you. But you are entitled to your opinion.

First of all let me stop you there when u said some allegedly passed F-35 engine design information to Iran first of all he was caught before he even got on the plan and secondly even if some how he did that engine is not going to copy or even fix so easily because we U.S make those and have years and years of experience on those thong we can't even make it right just right now so what makes you think a country that just starting using technology can do it ...? Look at those copycat Chinese all they do is copy or hack somebody's computer and they can't even build a reasonable jet engine come on men really if you have said the Russians I would agree with you but Iran nooooo a big no no ....lol


Amen so true lol

That is exactly what "allegedly" means. Each side is claiming something and nobody knows what happened. However, it doesn't defy my logic that there was intention to do so.

Everything starts from somewhere. Yes Chinese do copy. Japanese used to copy too back in 60s. Their cameras were copies of German models and their cars at best resembled low quality western ones. Now people in US and Canada bend backwards to buy their products. Same happened to Korea when they started. I remember the days when Samsung products were considered cheap, low quality products even in Iran. Same will happen to China. Mark my word. in 20 years, Chinese products will be considered of highest quality and another developing country like India or even Iran will become the "low cost/low quality" producer of the world.

Copying is the only way to learn and after you learned, you can start using your own creativity to create something new. That's how you learned to walk, write and talk, right? Or maybe you are a kind of genius who could do all of those when you were born.

Nobody is laughing at Chinese J-20 anymore. And before you know it China will have its own capable jet engine. So will Iran.

 

[Arminkh]

Some interesting statistics from World Bank for those who just relay whatever they hear about Iran having the worst brain drain in the world. In the excel file in page below, you can see that countries like UK, Ireland, Italy and ... given their population are not doing any better.

Research - Brain Drain

The other data available is from IMF which is not as through as above but even that shows Iran to be the 6th not first and shows UK having 10th rank in the world which is consistent with what I see here. I see more new immigrants from UK here than Iran.

 

[Aramagedon]

Iran Ranks 15th in World in Producing Science, 7th in Nanotechnology

Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Sorena Sattari announced that the country ranks 15th in the world in producing science and now stands 7th in nanotechnology.

VP: Iran Ranks 15th in World in Producing Science, 7th in Nanotechnology

"In the past 1.5 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has ascended three steps and is now standing among the 15 pioneering science production nations in the world," Sattari said.

Noting that Iran now ranks 7th in advanced nanotechnology, he said, "We have plans to rank 5th in this field."

Sattari also announced that 1,500 knowledge-based companies are now active in different Iranian provinces.

Also in December, a report dubbed Science-Innovation Atlas of Islamic States and sponsored by Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO), showed Iran stands first among the Islamic states in terms of registering inventions.

Based on the report presented in the 7th meeting of Islamic ministers of educations in Morocco, Iran was ranked first among the 57 Islamic countries in terms of science and research.

50 percent of the Islamic countries studies and papers are produced by Iran and Turkey.

The report said that Tunisia, Malaysia, Turkey and Iran have provided most of their research and development expenses from Gross Domestic Production (GDP) revenues.

Tunisia, Jordan, Turkey and Iran are the four Islamic countries which have the highest number of researchers per 100,000 people.

Nanotechnology Now - Press Release: "VP: Iran Ranks 15th in World in Producing Science, 7th in Nanotechnology"


2011 Ranking:

Iran's growth rate in science and technology is 11 times more than the average growth of the world's output in 2009 and in terms of total output per year, Iran has already surpassed the total scientific output of countries like Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Austria or that of Norway.


Science and Technology Improvements in Iran

Some interesting statistics from World Bank for those who just relay whatever they hear about Iran having the worst brain drain in the world. In the excel file in page below, you can see that countries like UK, Ireland, Italy and ... given their population are not doing any better.

Research - Brain Drain

The other data available is from IMF which is not as through as above but even that shows Iran to be the 6th not first and shows UK having 10th rank in the world which is consistent with what I see here. I see more new immigrants from UK here than Iran.

Very informed post.