Decline in Engineering students?
Apparently the number of people enrolled in Engineering and Sciences are decreasing, although the number of jobs are increasing. That brief article mentions that getting people interested in things like robotics will bring people back into the field. However, I think the problem lies little deeper than that.
As a society, it feels like there really isn’t any respect or appreciations for technical work done by scientists and engineers. Many of the things that we do don’t lead to instant millionaires or a feature-length movies. People are more interested in becoming a movie star, a singer, a lawyer, or politician more than getting into business of creating new and better things for everyone to use. Big part of this problem is the mass media, where every single technical problem can be reduced to a buzz word and a gizmo which has features like infinite resolution with absolutely no errors or noises. There’s something wrong with a society where relationship of two celebrities are more important than the next scientific breakthrough. There are many mentions of North American competitiveness and technological edge being eroded, but with people’s attitude so dismissive about science and engineering, what else can you really expect?
I really don’t have any idea as to how this can be easily fixed, as it requires a change in attitude… but at least people are starting to acknowledge that the problem exists. Only if people would start listening to these warning signs.
PakG1 Said,
March 20, 2005 @ 9:53 pm
I don’t think people will listen to the warning signs so long as we have the perception (whether the perception is true or not) that we’re at the top of the world technologically and economically.