Can America’s Engineering Crisis Be Prevented?

It is 2018. Under this scenario, America loses its engineering edge. The downward spiral continues, America falls too far behind to recover, and relinquishes its engineering stronghold to the rest of the world. Clearly, this scenario is the worst case and represents a U.S. decline in world dominance as a result of lack of innovation and an inadequate technical workforce. The following negative trends from 2001 continue to plague us in this century: (1) reduced domestic student interest in critical areas such as engineering, (2) large increases in retirement from the science and technology fields, (3) rapid growth of a foreign-born technical workforce, and (4) severe pressure on state and local budgets to produce massive science and engineering workforces. In fact, massive changes recommended for traditional institutions never happen. Global competition for science and engineering talent will be so fierce that the United States will not be able to depend on an international market to fulfil its technical needs. Even though America will have a slight edge in the number of international patents, the sheer number of engineers that China and India produce will dwarf the number of American engineers. In 2003–04, the United States graduated 137,437 engineers while India and China graduated 139,000 and 361,270 respectively. In 2150, India and China will produce more than one million engineers a year while the number of U.S. engineering graduates will decline to 100,000. Therefore, the American economy will suffer because of its lack of innovation to fuel its twentyfirst century economy.

In 2018, American industries outsource most of their major engineering functions to countries abroad. Even in 1999, U.S. businesses had grown increasingly dependent on a foreign workforce to meet their technical needs. In this century, businesses will outsource 45 percent of engineering functions abroad compared with 15 percent in the early 1990s. Furthermore, universities will become more dependent on foreign professors to teach American engineering students because of the shortage of qualified professors. In fact, China and India will produce the most innovative and competitive engineers in the world. According to a Forrester Research projection, 3.3 million U.S. service-industry jobs and US$136 billion in wages will be relocated abroad over the next fifteen years. Potential outsourcing host countries will include India, China, Philippines, Russia, and South Africa. While America continues to get weaker in producing home-grown engineers, the world continues to produce this resource at an alarming rate so that American organizations that want to compete must outsource their engineering needs abroad. Around the world, well-trained English speaking engineers are willing to do the same job as U.S. engineers at much lower wages. Clearly, the evolution of advanced communication technologies and the emergence of the Internet makes this concept a feasible reality and one major reason why engineering will continue to be outsourced.

In this third scenario, there is a positive transformation concerning the educational system in engineering and a substantial increase in the nontraditional populations entering into the engineering and science fields. America’s innovation continues to surprise the world market, as nanotechnological engineering becomes an American specialty. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics report in 2006, overall job opportunities are expected to be good for specific engineering specialties; employment in professional, scientific, and technical jobs is expected to grow by 28.4 percent and add 1.9 million jobs by 2014. In fact, U.S. educational institutions will become a Mecca for transferring domestic students into global leaders abroad. The number of American students studying abroad will increase from 200,000 in 2007 to over a million in 2018. Furthermore, China’s transition to a capitalistic society will fail, and the old communistic thinking will persist while India will shift its focus to poverty and its continual lethal battles with Pakistan. Furthermore, U.S. educators will find a way to make engineering interesting to a large, diverse population of bright students, and women will outpace the male labor force. Overall, the economy will be strong, the population will be more diverse, and personal wealth will skyrocket.

Sweeping global changes are forcing organizations to rethink strategies for future market shares. If they cannot obtain the necessary human capital resources for engineering and science, they will fail in the future. Fortunately, strategic foresight can provide a tool to better prepare for an uncertain future. In the scenarios mentioned above, we saw a snapshot of the U.S. future of engineering, using worst-, moderate-, and best-case scenarios. By using this strategic foresight method, executives can take an active part in creating a successful path to the future. Clearly, many issues related to the future demands of engineering will require a collaborative effort among business sectors, government agencies, academic institutions, nonprofit groups, and other interested stakeholders. For many, outsourcing is a nightmare while to others it is maturation toward organizational efficiency. Clearly, the challenge facing contemporary businesses with engineering and technical services will be how to navigate around the unknowns in the future so that twentyfirst century organizations become more adaptable to emerging global markets. Therefore, all stakeholders, including businesses, academic institutions, and government officials need to work together in a holistic fashion so that America can continue to produce world-class innovators in engineering and science. Time is ticking away.