The numbers speak for themselves. Going into this video I was not expecting the results that I found. 75% of engineers don’t work in engineering! I knew this anecdotally. But to see it written directly in my face was a shocker. There should not be this many engineers without good jobs, or this many people going to college to get degrees that won’t lead to jobs. No matter what people tell you, having and education is nice, but having employment is even better. I still think that an engineering degree or a STEM degree is your best shot at getting employment, so if you choose to do any degree do a STEM degree. This video got me on the rails, I think that our government investments into education could be put to way better use if we had a perfect match of supply and demand when it comes to engineering jobs. But we just keep printing more engineering degrees and there is no reason for the universities to slow down since so many people covet them. I definetly think we need to tell students to look into trade schools or different employment paths because sinking money into an engineering degree with an outcome of 20-30% unemployment is ridiculous.
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Links to Articles:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/most-with-college-stem-degrees-go-to-other-fields-of-work/2014/07/10/9aede466-084d-11e4-bbf1-cc51275e7f8f_story.html
https://www.census.gov/dataviz/visualizations/stem/stem-html/
https://interestingengineering.com/what-percentage-of-engineering-graduates-actually-work-in-their-respective-fields
https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market/college-labor-market_compare-majors.html
https://www.ospe.on.ca/public/documents/advocacy/2015-crisis-in-engineering-labour-market.pdf
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/02/18/41-recent-grads-work-jobs-not-requiring-degree
https://www.roevin.ca/blog/2019/november/determining-salaries-skilled-trades-2020-what-you-need-to-know/
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Main Notes:
75% OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES END UP DITCHING ENGINEERING AFTER GRADUATION.
Why do most Engineering not end up working in Engineering?
There are a few explanations:
Students say they can’t find a job in their field of study.
Employers say there is a lack of qualified workers.
Who’s right?
The next logical step would be to say, well, are we graduating too many engineers?
According to newyorkfed.gov engineers across the board see an unemployment rate of about 2-4%, so they are finding jobs. But about 20-30% of them are underemployed.
You’ll notice that approximately 50% of the engineers who are employed in decent jobs, are likely not working in engineering. Now for them this might not be so bad because maybe they wanted to work in a different field, or maybe they found a job that is more interesting to them. But then what happens to all the other degrees, well the engineers end up taking those jobs because there aren’t enough engineering jobs.
The Ontario Society of Professional Engineers did a survey asking 4th year engineering students if they intended to work in engineering after graduation. 92% of respondents said that they would definetly or probably be working in engineering. But as we already know from looking at the statistics, only about 25-30% of them will end up working in engineering at all.
I’m not sure who’s to blame here. Is it the fact that Universities are not providing students with the job ready skills that employers want? Is it the fact that the employers are unwilling to spend the time and the money on training a new hire. Is it that the economy is not producing enough engineering jobs? Or are we simply just printing too many degrees and the rate of job creation can’t keep up with it. I think that it is a mix of all of these factors, but I’m inclined to think that the biggest proponent is simply too much demand for engineering degrees.
An engineering degree costs about $100,000 in Canada, which means that the large number of Engineers who are underemployed are not putting Government Funding for universities to good use. There is a big mismatch between supply and demand for engineering degrees.