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Keeping U.S Leadership In Engineering by Pradeep Kholsa

Interesting statistic:

A decade ago, close to 40 percent of total engineering work hours were based in the U.S. Current predictions are that by 2010, only about 10 percent of those work hours will be in the U.S.

I would like to see more supporting evidence for those figures. I am confident the projected direction is correct I just wonder about the supporting evidence for the actual percentages. I do not believe the engineering graduate statistics quoted in the next sentence:

The reasons are that India and China are graduating 10 times more engineers per year than the U.S., and the cost of an engineering work hour there is about 20 percent of that in the U.S.

See: USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates

Even if the U.S. has a smaller percentage of the world’s engineers, it will be able to compete because its engineers will be the managers of complex global interactions. In the final analysis, it’s the quality of engineer that counts, not the quantity.

I think both count. Large numbers of relatively unskilled engineers don’t matter much. But take large numbers of skilled and knowledgeable engineers and add experience and you will get many that grow into leaders. So the larger the number of those engineers you have, and the more opportunities for them to grow, the larger number of leading engineers you will have.

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