USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates | The Curious Cat Science and Engineering blog explores: innovation, technology, research, education, economics, gadgets, health care and scientific inquiry.

How accurately the data reflects the situation is something that must always be considered: data is a proxy for something. All models are wrong, some are useful – George Box.

A very interesting report has been published by Duke’s Pratt Engineering School: Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate by: Dr. Gary Gereffi and Vivek Wadhwa – Primary Student Researchers: Ben Rissing, Kiran Kalakuntla, Soomi Cheong, Qi Weng, Nishanth Lingamneni. I strongly recommend reading this report. Report Appendix with data:

Typical articles have stated that in 2004 the United States graduated roughly 70,000 undergraduate engineers, while China graduated 600,000 and India 350,000.

The report puts the 2004 figures, based on their operational definition of a engineering degree at:

USA: 222,335
India: 215,000
China: 644,106

The fact that there are fewer equivalent degrees in India and China doesn’t amaze me. Tripling the degrees in America does surprise me. If I understand the report this is due to including IT and computer science degrees (that are included in China and India counts) and including subbaccalaureate degrees (also included by China and India). In practice, US data includes some IT and CS degrees as engineering and some not (depending on how the school classifies them I believe).

These massive numbers of Indian and Chinese engineering graduates include not only four-year degrees, but also three-year training programs and diploma holders. These numbers have been compared against the annual production of accredited four-year engineering degrees in the United States. In addition to the lack of nuanced analysis around the type of graduates (transactional or dynamic) and quality of degrees being awarded, these articles also tend not to ground the numbers in the larger demographics of each country.

These types of distinctions are exactly the type of additional information that can be very important to consider when drawing conclusions based on data. While agree that looking at the percentage of the population is worthwhile, I think the report may over emphasis this measure. If looking at how much engineering ability China and India are bringing online what is most interesting is the absolute measure of that capability. However, this is a minor point and overall this is a great report. I wrote about this some previously (Worldwide Science and Engineering Doctoral Degree Data and Engineering Education and Innovation). I wonder what the percentages are for countries like Korea, Singapore and some in Europe?

Today, almost one-third of the globe’s science and engineering researchers are employed by the United States. Thirty-five percent of science and engineering articles are published within the U.S. and the U.S. accounts for 40% of the globe’s research and development (R&D) expenditure.

An import figure and one that will be interesting to track going forward, my belief is it will have to go down (even if the totals increase in the USA they will not increase as fast as China and India and probably not as fast as the world overall – but that is merely speculation). And the report closes with:

The challenge for the United States over the next decade will be to retain its role as a global pacesetter in the education of engineering and scientific talent and thereby to sustain its legacy as a preeminent technological innovator.

Well put.

Links to stories on the report:

About That Engineering Gap… by Vivek Wadhwa (one of the report authors), Business Week online.
Fears Of China And India Swamping U.S. Engineers Could Be Overblown, Study Says by Sheila Riley, Investor’s Business Daily.
U.S. Engineers Undercounted, Red Herring
Study: Tech outlook rosy by David Ranii
US ‘ahead in producing technologists’ by Amy Yee

20 thoughts on “USA Under-counting Engineering Graduates”