[MGoelz]

Great topic. I have actually thought about this.

The demand for engineers, in my opinion, is only going to grow, at least for awhile. One of the things I have noticed is that many companies want someone with engineering experience for something that isn't an engineering position. They need someone that understands those fundamental concepts including problem solving. I believe that problem solvers are more efficient, simply because they do not become burdened by small problems. Rather, they analyze, think of solutions, and fix or it, or at least avoid creating the same issue again.

I too have noticed that many engineering positions are filled by people that are much older than I. Last semester, I had the opportunity to have an internship at Rolls-Royce. I felt so young in comparison to everyone there. Many of the workers are coming close to retirement age. If we have a demand that isn't being filled now, imagine ten years from now. This semester, I'm interning at Allison Transmission. Both Allison and Rolls-Royce make valuable use of interns. They are able to introduce young high school and college students to a professional, mostly STEM environment, while giving them the access to hundreds of engineers to gain knowledge from. One of the biggest things that seems to always need done is data entry. It sounds like such a dull, menial task, but in all actuality, if one doesn't understand the data, how can appropriate databases, charts, and reports be generated? They can not. This supports the claim that engineers aren't just hired for their degree, but for the concepts they understand.

In addition, the U.S. is falling behind in educational rigor. Many times, the students that have the motivation, the talent, and the desire to go into STEM fields are discouraged by the people around them, or by a lack of exposure. That is the disease FIRST is trying to cure. I think that if FIRST accomplishes nothing else, it has accomplished exposure and helping young adults grasp concepts of problem solving that will ultimately be carried with them the rest of their lives, whether they are aware of it or not.

Outsourcing has been used because "everyone started doing it." Really, to me, it seems like they use it as a band-aid for problems. Outsource the jobs. There. Problem solved. Ok, so it solves short-term problems, but as has been mentioned, not the long ones. For the most part, the short-term has passed, which is why many companies are bringing business back. I also feel that with the internet, with our growing abilities and speeds of communicating, we are becoming a global community more than ever before. Companies want to be global. It's safe for them and their future. A global company is a larger company. A larger company needs more workers, which makes another increase in demand. Also, I feel the U.S. has had a technological slow-down as of recent. If only, we could all become dedicated to thinking outside of the boxes that have been drawn once more. We can do that. We have chosen not to though, because not a whole lot of people want to crawl out from under the security blanket in which they have been hiding. No offense to the older generation, but this is largely in part because as humans age, we become more fixed in our opinions and ideas. With this, coupled with the low number of people my age interested in revolutionizing the world once more, we have a very large demand indeed.

This is only my perspective though. I honestly believe that the issue of supply and demand is all perspectives. Raw data only has so much value.

As far as wages are concerned, I don't know about most people, but I want to be an engineer, because those are the things I enjoy doing. I would rather live in a small apartment my whole life, barely getting by, being an engineer, solving problems, than working at some outrageously high paying job, and being miserable beyond belief. It's all about personal values. Money is important to live in today's society, but fixing society's problems is even more important, and that's what engineers are for.

I think being an engineer is a mindset more than anything. All I can close this with is that I think FIRST is doing a great job of letting students into engineers' minds to learn to think like engineers, even if it is entirely unnecessary for the career path they have chosen. I know, if it were not for FIRST, I would not even know what engineering is, that it existed, or that it happens to be what I enjoy most.