Re: Outsourcing jeopardizes U.S. chemical industry, expert says

Straydog wrote:


On Mon, 8 May 2006, Threeducks wrote:

Thomas Bartkus wrote:

We have one of those guys on our faculty as an adjunct.

20 years? 10 ? Who do incoming freshmen talk to
when choosing their majors?


Who knows?


They don't. They walk down the sidewalks and think "what sounds to me like a 'cool' job?" and, they talk not with parents or experts, don't read books or articles about careers, but their peers in their peer group. Grad students don't talk to faculty, they talk to each other. Post docs don't even have frank discussions with their faculty, they talk with other post docs who know just as little as they do about real life. I know this from guys (grad students and postdocs) who came on SRC the last 13 years and ask questions and I wonder why it did not occur to them to ask the faculty in their own departments the same questions. THEY would be in better positions to advise their students than us.

I spent a lot of time with my recently graduating student discussing jobs and his future over the last 3-4 years. I tried my best to do the things that no one else did for me when I was getting ready to fly on my own.


Our university is hardly doing a bang up job recruiting

engineering students.


Are they doing a bang-up job building and expanding and enriching its endowment? Like all the other "pro-growth-forget-quality" campuses?

I'm not sure I'd call it that, but they are in the build buildings and the students will come mode.

Who can show them that chemistry/science will
provide rewarding careers when compared to a business major? By offering
their own prosperous work history as a practical example?


The kids we get in our engineering program are there because they made their own decisions to be there. Our recruiting is so bad it's essentially non-existent. Therefore, I can rest easy at night knowing that I didn't snooker anyone into doing something they didn't want to do.


Well if you ever do want to, then write letters to "The Discovery Channel" or something and ask them " How come you never have any programs on engineering?"


Or do you, like our own congress, just piss and moan about lazy Americans
who shun science careers? Offering nothing but lame rationalization to
explain the situation to a compliant and lazy media.


Actually, I don't complain at all. I strongly believe that students should focus on things they can do exceptionally well, and that they should make their own decisions. If no one wants to do science or engineering anymore, so be it.


What a shitty attitude!!! :-| or >:-(

I have learned over the years that you can't make someone do something well if they hate what they are doing. People have to want to to science or engineering. If they don't want to do it, fine, I don't want them to. Besides, fewer scientists and engineers means more jobs for the people that already have degrees. Despite lower enrollments, we will always have some S&E enrollment. When the job prospects improve, so will the enrollment. Students, smart ones at least, tend to follow the smell of money.

Well, that's what I'm told, right from the guys who are doing the
hiring. I don't know why they would tell me they would need more ChE if
they didn't. They also hire our graduates, so I haven't seen the
"produce more, but we aren't going to hiring any of them" phenomena.


Do they tell you what their actual numbers are in the applicant pools AND how many of those that they hire? That is the real indicator, not what they SAY. Its the number of applicants per job offered, not the position announcements. Its also a fact in lots of corporations that authorization to announce a position AND authorization to recruit are BOTH separate events from authorization to hire!!!!

Nope.

I don't think I ever mentioned anything specifically about specialty
chemicals, although that is were some of the industry in the US has gone.



I would still be interested in hearing where the *growth* in
science/engineering careers are. Particularly chemistry and chem. E.


I think all industry in general is contracting.


Commercial manufacturing, yes. Financial services, no. Services in general are expanding.

What we are seeing a lot of

is the boomers all retiring and leaving positions open. 10 years from now, I don't think the job market is going to be all that great.


The jobs are going to be in LDCs, if anywhere.

Obviously there are

a lot of jobs coming up in oil/gas, but who knows how long that is going to last.

Obviously there are always opportunities for good people in any field of
endeavor. Are science and engineering positions in the US growing as fast
as job seekers enter the workforce? Are those positions as lucrative as
careers in marketing or accounting.


My mother is an accountant and after 25 years she doesn't make what I made my first year as an assistant professor in ChE. My wife has a degree in business and was making about $27K/year when we met.


Yeah, but if you look at the Forbes 400 richest people in the USA, most of them have "dumb degrees" in those areas, too. Only 2/3s of the richest people even finished college.

And how many college baseball players ever end up in the majors (not many)? While some people with "dumb degrees" or no degrees end up super rich, most do not. Most people with 4-year business degrees are making rather crappy salaries. These great jobs/salaries people talk about are for the elite of the MBA/business world, not the masses.

My school experience is rather dated.
But I do remember that chemistry was not only more academically rigourous,
it was also more expensive. More credit hours and tuition compared to
accounting,


Its now a sold 5 year program at the undergraduate level.

for example. The saving grace is that if you can do chemistry,

you can *always* fall back on accounting if you can handle the boredom ;-)

I already know about highly educated eastern Europeans, Indians, and Chinese
fleeing from a lack of opportunity and looking towards the US.


Not so much anymore. A lot of students who would have come to the US 5 years ago are staying at home because they now have jobs for scientists and engineers. While it is difficult for a US citizen to land a PhD level job, if you are a foreign student, it is 10 times harder. No one is interested in processing an H1B visa in anything related to chemical engineering.


For how many is their english good enough to _write_? (journal articles, grant proposals) and _speak_ (in teaching so as to not piss off the students?).


I haven't seen a foreign student yet who could write when they first came over. Most require significant tutoring before they can produce anything resembling a coherent thought in writing. It's pretty aggrevating, but eventually (after a few years...) they figure it out.
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