[p2p-research] Fwd: Article : "Running Out of Engineers"

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 8:05 PM
Subject: Article : "Running Out of Engineers"
To: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Cc: "Michel Bauwens\"" <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>


Hi Paul,

I m not sure if it was you who mentionned some time ago some article about
engineers ( in their 50 ies )
finding difficulties finding jobs in the US.

Perhaps the following article may be of interest :

http://www.truth-out.org/running-out-engineers66481

 Running Out of Engineers

Friday 31 December 2010

by: A. D. McKenzie  |  *Inter Press Service |
Report*<http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54009>

Paris - As Brazil looks ahead to hosting the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the
2016 Summer Olympics, the country is struggling to line up the technical
workers necessary for these projects, officials say.

"We need to triple the number of engineers in the next few years," says
Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro, former state secretary of education of São
Paolo.

Speaking at a conference here, Guimarães said Brazil needed around 360,000
engineers and technical workers for the global sporting events as well as
for oil and gas exploration. The country has a severe shortage of such
workers.

Brazil is not alone in this situation. Shortage of engineers in both
developed and developing countries is a growing concern as it threatens
national progress, says a report published by UNESCO, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Agency.

"Developing countries are the most affected," says Tony Marjoram, editor of
the report and senior programme specialist in UNESCO’s Division of Basic and
Engineering Sciences.

"Wealthy countries can hire engineers on the international market, but this
leads to brain drain in the poorer countries as many of their engineers go
abroad to work," he told IPS. "That’s if they’re still producing engineers
in the first place."

The UNESCO study, titled ‘Engineering: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities
for Development’, is the first international study of the field, with
contributions from some 120 experts around the world. It highlights "the
critical roles" of engineering in both international and local development.

In Brazil, for instance, the government of former president Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva recognized that the lack of technical workers was affecting the
economy in the long term.

Experts have traced the dearth of technical skills to the educational system
where only about 35 percent of students complete high school, according to
Guimarães. The government has instituted measures, such as scholarships, to
keep students in school longer and to enable thousands to attend colleges.

In the past, Brazilian students performed especially badly in maths and
science, on basic-skills tests such as those administered by PISA (Programme
for International Student Assessment). Such results tend to rule out
engineering as a career.

The situation is not much different in the rest of Latin America, says the
UNESCO study.

"One of the reasons cited for Latin America lagging behind in its
development is that practically all economists of the region have placed
their hopes on the role of the market and have ignored the fundamental role
played by research and engineering in the development process," the report
says.

It added that "interest for the engineering profession for high school
students is minimal" in Latin America.

Still, the spectacular role played by engineering in the October rescue of
33 Chilean miners who had been trapped underground for 69 days has
heightened the profile of the sector and may make it more appealing to
students, says UNESCO’s Marjoram.

"The rescue showed engineering at its best," Marjoram told IPS. "One of our
problems is that engineers don’t know how to promote themselves, but that
event revealed what can be achieved."

Marjoram said that universities and technical schools also need to change
the way engineering is taught to make it more attractive to students,
especially to groups under-represented in the profession.

"One of the reasons for the decline in engineering’s popularity among
students is the perception that the subject is boring and hard work, jobs
are badly paid considering the responsibilities involved, and engineering
has a negative environmental impact, and may be seen as part of the problem
rather than the solution," he said.

Educational programmes could instead focus on the uses of engineering in
sustainable development, environmental protection and poverty reduction.
Such a focus might attract more women and minorities, Marjoram said. There
are few female students in engineering programmes at universities across the
world. In the West, engineering classes are often more that 80 percent male,
according to professionals in the field.

"I was the only woman in my year when I did engineering in 1976," says Amira
Hanna, an Egyptian-born, Australian-educated engineer. "I found this very
surprising. I couldn’t understand why in a Western society there were so few
women doing courses leading to engineering. Things weren’t easy then and
they are still not that easy."

For many countries, the challenge is to make the sciences attractive to
girls and this requires commitment at all levels, from governments down to
primary school educators, Hanna told IPS in a telephone interview from
Melbourne.

In Tunisia, the government says it plans to double the number of graduates
in engineering from the current 3,000 per year, in order to sustain economic
growth in the country, and to meet the needs of companies.

Kamel Ayadi, a civil engineer and former secretary of state in the Tunisian
government, said that engineering was one of the "few main professions to
emerge" after Tunisian independence was attained in 1956.

However, from being an "extremely attractive" profession, engineering has
now experienced "a disturbing decline in interest" among the younger
generations in the past years, Ayadi said.

In Nigeria and many other sub-Saharan African countries, engineers have not
been actively involved in policy matters, according to Felix Atume,
secretary general of the Federation of African Organisations of Engineers.

"Political leaders, it seems, hardly take into consideration the key role
that engineers and engineering can play in development," he said, citing
examples of governments’ embarking on "massive projects to provide
infrastructure" but without engineering input.

"The result is that huge sums of money are spent but the desired results are
not achieved," Atume said in the report.

"It is indeed sad that African engineers have little or no voice in their
governments…engineering is overlooked and development is stalled even when
huge resources are committed," he added.

"The cumulative effect is that many young people in Africa are no longer
interested in joining the engineering profession. They are turning to law,
economics, accountancy and marketing."

In contrast, the United Nations estimates that about 2.5 million new
engineers and technicians will be needed in sub-Saharan Africa alone if the
region is to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal of improved access
to clean water and sanitation.

Visit IPS news <http://www.ipsnews.net/> for fresh perspectives on
development and globalization.

*All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by
permission or license.*



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