Andy Millar:


Yet even now I occasionally hear remarkably senior people, outside and (depressingly) inside the profession, talking about "learning the trade" of engineering. Some of it you can do that, and it's needed. But for most of it the trick is learning how to keep learning - running as fast as you can to stand still. That to me is what engineering - as opposed to crafting - has always been about.

Something I tell kids, and their parents, that a career in engineering or computing is one for people who are adept at self education. They are not careers like thatched roofing where one learns the skills at a young age as an apprentice then very little changes throughout their career, and neither are they regimented careers like nursing with its official formal training courses whilst self education not only doesn't count towards career development but is positively frowned upon.


I have wondered if many schooled, as opposed to self educated people, struggle to adapt to life in the real world of engineering after leaving institutional education.

On the other hand, I do really like the fact he brings in about engineering studies not allowing time for liberal arts studies. I know many people will disagree with me here, but I think it's hugely important that engineers to know more about the word than just the logic of solving engineering problems. The more you appreciate why a problem needs solving , the better your solution needs to be. But again, this isn't new, it's been a problem with engineering degrees probably since they were ever invented.

The problem with this is that liberal arts are culture specific whereas STEM is culture neutral. People from certain cultural backgrounds have a tendency to gravitate towards liberal arts connected with their culture whilst shunning those connected to dissimilar cultures. For example, the liberal arts popular with or valued by middle age middle class white English folk might not appeal to younger people from lower class backgrounds or people of foreign origin, and vice versa.

This point about automation / robotics taking away jobs in the 21st century is one I find very "flavour of the month" for making exciting alarmist articles. (And again, to my mind shows how important an understanding of one particular liberal arts subject - history - is.) I don't know what the figures are for how many job roles that existed in, say, 1968, have now disappeared, but if someone was to say that 50% have now gone I wouldn't be surprised - it would be my guess. Maybe more. This is very, very true in engineering: when I started we had secretaries, draughtspeople, print room operators, technical authors - now we have engineers with their laptops. And those laptops have simulation tools which not only (thank goodness!) take care of much of the routine calculation that we used to do, but mean that vastly more calculations can be done, for a huge range of scenarios, then would ever have been possible. This replacement of roles isn't the future - it's happened, and will keep happening.

I think that economics is the subject rather than history, but it has to be the right type of history which is not necessarily the history taught in schools. There are plenty of historical topics and periods that are not generally taught in British schools including the history of the New World; the Golden Age of Islam; northern Europe before the Viking era; Russia before communism; the Anglo Saxon period before 1066; Japan; and anything after 1945. The history of technology and its impact on society is another conspicuous absence apart from the early industrial revolution. Economic history centres on the Victorian age and represents it as golden era of prosperity. I remember an economist criticising Messrs Cameron and Osborne with their return to Victorian values that they would not work in 2010 because there were formulated in an era where there was a large amount of heavy industry that was always crying out for workers, which did not exist in 2010.


It was Malthus who made a prediction about population growth being limited by food production. His theory has not materialised but if current trends continue then jobs (paid employment) will run out before food supplies run out. There is actually no law in economics which says that there will always be enough paid employment to go round. What has not received the attention that it deserves is that the loss of jobs due to automation systematically results in a loss of income tax and NI revenue for the government. Automation is legitimate tax evasion. Workers pay income tax and NI but computers and robots pay no tax and NI.

Whatever happened to all this leisure time we were promised through automation back in the 1960s???? 

It's called unemployment.

Moshe Waserman:

Aaran,


The US educates many international students.  

For example, Indian graduate students in computer science and engineering at U.S. universities are a key source of talent for U.S. companies. 

Some 288,000 international students study in the US and around 85,000 Indian students at Masters degree in Engineering and CS programs study in the US annually. I think there was a decline to 69,000 this year due to visa restrictions.

When some graduates stay and much return to India they become geographically distributed professional force. 

Interfacing with such graduates and being members such teams is much more successful than with local graduates of Indian universities.

Geographically distributed teams that contain US graduates overcome cultural barriers among others and have a much lower turnaround.

Some say international students are America’s “golden goose.” They provide billions of dollars to the U.S. economy every year, support the education of U.S. students and are a key source of talent that helps make American tech companies successful.

International students also strong political force as when they return to the home countries they are less hostile and more friendly "ambassadors"  out there.

Obviously, this is a political issue as well and some US parents and students protest and took legal action as they cant get enrolled in universities due to the preferable placement of international students. 

In 2016 it picked but after the elections and the new direction the numbers of international students declined by 20%. 

It is interesting that many classes that offered, and I took such classes are global in scope. The problems and exercises include third world less-developed countries and highly developed countries. Comparisons and deeper studies between different countries solutions and approaches are made. In electives, the student can avoid taking such classes if they don't want to solve engineering problems in Africa or other continents and concentrate more on the US system.  ABET accreditation provides a feedback mechanism that helps to adjust the relevance of the Engineering, Technology, and CS programs to the industry need.