Many Americans fear that countries like China and India are training vastly more engineers and technology specialists than the U.S., threatening America's ability to compete in the global knowledge market.
These fears, however, and the commonly cited statistics-600,000 Chinese and 350,000 Indian engineering graduates to only 70,000 Americans-are largely unfounded, according to a recent study by a group of Duke researchers from the Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness. Not only are the international numbers inflated, they also mask a significant deficit in quality, said Vivek Wadhwa, executive-in-residence of Duke's engineering management program and one of the group's lead researchers.
"Government officials keep talking about competition because of a shortage of engineers in the U.S.," Wadhwa said. "That's all nonsense. Chinese and Indian graduates are not a threat. The solution is not to increase supply."
Rather than simply producing more engineers, American engineering programs can maintain their competitive edge by enhancing the quality of their graduates, said Gary Gereffi, director of the CGGC and a professor of sociology.
"In the U.S., there's a recognition of the fact that engineering graduates need to integrate their engineering skills with other skills that make them effective in the business world and global economy," Gereffi said. "At the minimum, they can have technical knowledge."
A report published by the CGGC in January distinguishes between two species of engineers. Transactional engineers "possess solid technical training, but... are less likely to generate out-of-the-box solutions or innovative results," the report reads. Dynamic engineers, on the other hand, "thrive in teams, work well across international borders... and are in high demand regardless of their location."
In this regard, the advantage falls to American programs. According to a survey of international companies conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2005, 80 percent of U.S. engineers are globally employable, in contrast to 25 percent of Indian and 10 percent of Chinese engineers.
Ben Rissing, a Pratt research scholar, added that American programs like Pratt's masters in engineering management, which integrates traditional approaches with training in business and law, help to boost the quality of U.S.-educated engineers relative to their competitors.
Additionally, Chinese and Indian engineering programs are plagued by over-enrollment, a lack of available resources for research and weak infrastructures. In recent years, both countries have undergone a massive expansion in enrollment numbers, but for divergent reasons. In China, educational reforms have caused the amount of engineering degrees awarded annually to more than triple, while rapid economic expansion in India has resulted in a shift toward technical education.
"In India, a lot of new universities are being created that don't have the same credentials," Rissing said. "To meet demand among population you get street-corner universities that have been around for a couple of years. With this kind of growth, it's really hard to maintain standards across universities."
Rissing added, however, that the centralized Chinese system will most likely "get the system right" within a few years.
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