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The world needs engineers. For many of us geeks, we have an engineer in our life (or are one ourselves) and have been exposed to the impact engineering has on society and industry in the United States. For many folks in the U.S., especially teens, the glorious and productive field of engineering is not something they have been exposed to, and it's creating a gap between the jobs available and the amount of qualified engineers looking for them. The problem isn't lack of interest, the problem is lack of exposure.
Intel Corporation, always on the cutting edge of educational initiatives in the United States, is once again working towards affecting the educational system through direct intervention. They don't just sit back and conduct surveys, they create programs to involve and engage students and invest tons of money in their efforts. It all starts with a survey, as it always does. The latest survey was to find out how much teens knew about the field of engineering and what would inspire them to pursue it.
One of the most critical points to creating more engineers is nurturing that interest at an earlier stage than college or technical school. It's important to rakethe brains of high school students across the coals of engineering. While some teens like myself (that is, when I was a teen) happened to be constantly exposed to engineering (my father, the mechanical and electrical engineer) many teens have no idea what the profession offers to society, and more importantly - to them. Teens need reasons to show interest in something, and while the field of engineering isn't always glamorous, it is essential and it is interesting.
According to a recent study by researchers at Indiana University and the University of Virginia, there is a real problem with students dropping out of STEM programs (science, technology, engineering and mathematics.) It also showed that the decision to enter a STEM program was made during high school, unfortunately these decisions might have been made without proper education, which might account for the drop out rates. The study even states that the flow of students into STEM programs might be misguided, as they aren't 100 percent sure what educational track they are entering into.
There are many facets to engineering, from design to implementation to things such as robotics and advanced theory and invention. Once teens were exposed to this information, about what engineers actually do and specifically how much money they earn on average, more than half of surveyed teens showed interest. That is, they at least will now have engineering in a consideration state, rather than something they would have never thought of. Of course, the field of engineering takes something not all teens have - intelligence. I guarantee if you look at the intelligence quotas of surveyed teens it was the more intelligent ones seriously considering engineering as a career.
The reality is that the money has a lot to do with it. In a world where unemployment is high and the working world is in turmoil, salary has a lot to do with many life decisions. Entering college, many students want to have some sort of faith in the reality that they will leave college with a job that provides them the ability to not only live well, but pay off loads of student loans. According to the survey, about 60 percent of teens are influenced by the potential earnings. That makes sense. They were also interested after hearing about some of the more impacting results of engineering (especially when attached to news stories) such as: playing a role in rescuing the Chilean miners who were trapped in 2010, delivering clean water to poor communities in Africa, designing the protective pads worn by athletes and constructing dams and levees that protect entire cities.
"The results of this survey show the importance of providing teens with opportunities to gain knowledge about engineering," said Intel CIO Diane Bryant. "We need to offer teens real-world, hands-on engineering experience and interaction with engineers, like that found in robotics programs and science competitions, to improve the likelihood that they'll get hooked on the subject and pursue it in college."
Intel has proven they are doing just that through being long time sponsors of two of the world's largest annual pre-college science and engineering competitions, the Intel Science Talent Search which collects 40 high school seniors in Washington, D.C., to showcase their original scientific research and compete for $630,000 in awards and prizes. The other competition is the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair where over six million young scientists compete for over four million dollars in awards and scholarships.
There is also the annual FIRST Robotics which is full of Intel volunteers and helps to highlight some of the more creative aspects of a career in engineering. Who doesn't like robots? As well, Intel fully supports the Presidential Jobs Council’s initiative to graduate 10,000 more engineers each year from U.S. colleges and universities by doubling the number of engineering internships offered in 2012. They are following this up with a new program to send Intel executives to college campuses to speak about the benefits of engineering careers.
The direct results of the survey are handily provided via this neat-o infographic. Along with robots, everybody loves infographics!
So what can we, as parents and educators, do to help kids find their path in engineering? Well, first we need to better identify those that have the skill-set and interest in STEM careers, rather than just flowing them into a program when they hit college, wasting their time and the resources of the schools. We need to inform teens as to what engineering is all about, improving their understanding of what exactly goes on in an engineer's life. An important factor in that is not dumbing down what engineers do and what they are responsible for. My father told me the gritty details of re-manufacturing a circuit board to specific specifications, the tedium involved and how success is a badge of honor when faced with difficulty.
We can help give engineering a face, rather than a clouded image of pocket protector wearing geeks locked in a field of cubicles armed with soldering irons and protractors. The Intel outreach programs are a great outlet for this, as well as events such as FIRST. We can also provide more education on the great and emotional impact of engineering, such as saving lives (as previously mentioned) and creating clean energy.
In the end, creating interest in engineering is paramount to keeping our society from becoming the future society of Idiocracy, a society of fools without the means to create a competent standard of living. Engineers are needed for the advancement of society as a whole, for invention and re-invention - to keep the world running.
Additional information (from the the press release):
Photo Credit: Anton Olsen
