Decline of the Engineering Profession
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Decline of the engineer
Fears of Singapore heading towards becoming a high cost, low-tech city are not unfounded. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Jun 14, 2008AFTER more than 10 years of building schools, a young friend, who is a civil engineer, has put away his hard hat to become a teacher in a secondary school.
It was a big career switch for him and a loss to the profession. He had graduated from Purdue University, one of the top engineering schools in America.
Another friend, an electronics engineer, distanced himself from his computers and became a professional photographer.
These are two cases that I am personally aware of in the decline of a profession that was once considered the cornerstone of Singapore’s development.
Many engineers have moved into the more profitable financial sector or sales and service jobs that are in greater demand.
It’s happening in the legal profession, too. The number of lawyers in Singapore has been in gradual but steady decline in the last few years.
“The attrition rate of lawyers is high, and the supply is not sufficient given the rising demand here,” said a recent report.
This professional decline is propelled by globalisation and the state’s move into a service economy. It is beginning to worry parents who sacrifice much to send their children for higher education.
Some engineers, I am told, are planning to get on the casino bandwagon. Two mega gambling resorts are due to begin operation here in 2010.
With more than a million foreigners working here in low-level work, this decline is leading Singaporeans to wonder whether the city is losing sight of its high-tech strategy.
Retired civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow, for one, is worried that the country may be heading towards a high cost, low-tech economy like London and losing its competitiveness.
Britain’s economic decline set in because ‘their best and brightest from Oxbridge, instead of going into engineering and running factories, went into the (financial) City of London’, he said.
“City of London ... they are not creators of wealth, they are just shuffling assets around the place,” Ngiam said.
This had allowed the United States to overtake Britain because “while some of their best went to Wall Street, their best still go into engineering,” he added.
If Singapore were to follow suit “I think we are done for”, said the bureaucrat, who helped to pioneer Singapore’s economic development
Recalling the 1970s, Ngiam said: “I used to tell everybody, what I want is 1,000 engineers, 5,000 technicians from the polytechnics, and 10,000 Institute of Technical Education workers. ‘You give me that, I grant you a job’.”
That has worked only too well. At the peak 40% of the university graduates were engineers.
Local institutions were meeting domestic demand with “a steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering and technical manpower each year”, a minister said.
And according to the Ministry of Manpower, the engineering-related sector still provided the largest number of job vacancies over the past two years.
In 2006, a third of the 3,639 top ten professional job vacancies were in engineering, it said.
And of the top 50 chief executives in Singapore, a third were engineers by training. An official said there are more than 50,000 practising engineers in Singapore, 50% of whom are women.
It is not known how much of these rosy statistics were made up of foreigners.
And as casino gambling and tourism catches hold, the profession’s future has become cloudier. Singaporeans will likely gravitate towards better paying jobs, irrespective of their training.
Interest in engineering courses has already been dropping.
Five years ago, 30% of the 16,000 polytechnic applicants chose engineering as their first-choice course. Last year, only about 15% of 18,000 students did so.
Foreigners are, however, making up for the drop. One economist said: “We may be facing a future where many of the developers of technology and their managers will be foreigners.”
Singapore is in transformation and there are few sacred cows that cannot be slaughtered.
This means Ngiam has a good reason to worry about the future of the engineer.
In his first major speech, new Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said: “More education does not necessarily mean more growth, as most politicians and economists unthinkingly suppose.”
At a time when Singapore is planning a fourth university, Ng countered the argument that having more universities stimulates economic growth,
Tertiary institutions, he said, should maintain a “focus on quality”, rather than “expanding education thoughtlessly”.
Some economists fear the government may be tempted by quick GDP growth at the expense of building on its high-tech strategy when it imports such a large number of cheap migrants.
Years ago, under different circumstances, Singapore had vowed not to allow itself to be addicted – like the Europeans – to cheap foreign labour.
After years of strong economic – and population – expansion the country is where Europe is, having an army of low-skilled workers from abroad.
Nearly a million foreigners came, not to mention another 700,000 permanent residents.
They wait on tables, build our homes, clean our streets and perform numerous tasks that keep the country going.
The biggest change, however, is in government strategy, in the view of some commentators.
Whatever professional skill was needed in the past, the emphasis used to be to train Singaporeans.
Today, this need has all but gone. Instead to save time and money, the government is turning to the world to tap its readily available supply of professionals.
One side effect isn’t pretty. While foreigners arrive in large numbers, more of Singapore’s homebred talents are leaving to settle abroad.
i think with globalization it is all the more important to develop the only resource that we have i.e. singaporeans.
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Tell this to the hard headed PAP ministers...they don't need hard hats
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in my opinion, engineerin train profession are not amon the best paid profession. many engineer has to compete with foreigners and boses are employing thousands of foreigner engineer to cap the salary ceiling. PAP wake up before it is too late.
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Hoho, it is already too late. So many engineering grads are already jumping ship over to other lucrative positions
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All these lamentations are useless. Just accept, adjust and move on. Singapore is like a rich man with too much money until he doesn't know what to do with it. You want anything, buy. Very easy one. We all just stand opposite side road diam diam.
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Hmm..we don't have astronauts too...
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There's little you can do about it, and it has little to do with the PAP. When the only ambition some people have is to get rich, they go for the courses that get them flexible qualifications in the simplest way. Naturally they will cross the fence to wherever the grass is greener.
That is not to say that there aren't passionate engineering students around. The big guns are elsewhere however and that's where they'll go.
And over the last few years more options have been made available at local universities and polytechnics, so the proportions will naturally shift. -
Man, this article is hitting a gong in my head. It’s very true. Engineering, i can say from my personal experience, is definitely on the decline. I have been a student of engineering throughout my life (i still am) and i have been in engineering profession for more than 5 years.
Some of the things i noticed:
1. Starting salaries are suppressed and have remained the same for the past 10 years that i know of: $2700 for a fresh degree grad and $1700 for a diploma grad. I don't see the situation improving either as companies (& government?) want to keep costs low and keep importing cheap external labor.
2. The starting salary being paid to degree graduates and Masters Post-graduates seems to have lost competitiveness compared to the starting salaries being offered in emerging countries like India. I know a few students from India who completed Masters at NUS being offered only $3000 (what’s more, some of them even have 3 years of experience). Some of them have returned immediately after graduation, telling me that they can earn better pay back in India. I was actually stunned by this. Can't imagine the salary levels here loosing competitiveness with some "third world" country. Hopefully the day won’t come when we have to benchmark our salaries against someone in "Bangladesh".
3. There doesn’t seem to be any respect for the engineering profession. Everywhere, i read, see and hear about finance and business and such but nothing much about engineering. When have you ever seen a successful engineer being interviewed in the papers or in the television, when have you seen articles highlighting the achievements of engineers and their contribution to our society. Once in a while some media attention is given to engineering not out of respect but out of propaganda. Heck, even property and insurance agents get more coverage and are glamorized than engineers. (no offense to the agents though).
4. As someone mentioned, a lot of engineers are jumping ship. I have always been passionate about engineering, i just hope i don’t have to jump ship myself.
5. There was an article mentioning the highest paid engineer, doctor, lawyer, accountant etc in Singapore. I think it was published in the straits times during the time when the ministers were debating about pegging their pay to the industry standard. The highest paid engineer was earning something like 25% of what the highest paid lawyer or accountant was earning and that engineer was the CEO of ST or some big firm. Imagine, the highest paid engineer earns only one fourth of other professions and you got to be a CEO for that too. Shows the wide disparity in salary levels.
Of course, what i have mentioned can be debated as someone might have had a different experience. But i think, discounting a few exceptional cases, whatever i have mentioned holds true for the general engineering population in Singapore.
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from my observation, most of my peers now view engineers are more senior, better paid technicians. it explains for the decline in popularity.
and why would you want to seek a dull job as an engineer, which offers only a fairly decent salary, not too much, not too little, when you are hearing all around you of bankers and financial managers who are retiring as millionaires in their 40s?
in other words, there is fewer incentives for people to take up engineering as oppose to less technical vocation such as financial consultants, bankers, etc.
and it doesn't help much with the current negative trend of employing cheaper foreign engineering "talent", at the expense of local engineers.
look around, why are so many middle age engineers out of job, since looking at the rate of influx of foreign engineers, singapore is clearly still in need of engineers?
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On the other hand, most engineering grads don't want to dirty their hands. They prefer to be deskbound engineers
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Originally posted by googoomuck:
On the other hand, most engineering grads don't want to dirty their hands. They prefer to be deskbound engineers
Can't blame them. Imagine having to work as a quasi-blue collared worker (most type of engineers) for the rest of your life with no hope of retiring due to the pitiful pay and high cost of living. Can't see what future holds for 60+ year old engineer with white helmet in a dirty or sunny environment. -
I just recycle the following sentences that I had posted some months back: What do sons and daughters of MPs study? Yeo Choo? Tong's daughter? Lee Hsien Loong's son/ children? What do MPs know that commoners don't? Don't parents want the best for their children? Do engineers mix with people of lower status (workers)? Can network with powerful people? Feathers of the same type flock together? What type of environment engineers work in as compare to other professionals? Which jobs obsolent fast?