Engineering and the Declining Middle Class

A key demographic trend that has often been overlooked and rarely debated is the declining middle class and the impact this has on engineers in general and the supply of engineers in particular. Of all the professions, engineering is the most middle class. Engineers historically have been the product of lower middle class to middle class families and communities - the sons and daughters of farmers, blue-collar manufacturing workers, and the practitioners of various trades. An interest in engineering provided these individuals with the opportunity to attend college. Engineering graduates probably provide more first-generation college graduates for a given family than any of the other professions. Engineering afforded individuals the opportunity to become an instant member of the middle class. Today it is unlikely that the sons and daughters of Wall Street investment bankers and plastic surgeons will become engineers. Social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations. Indeed, a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada, or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class than an American child born in similar circumstances.

One impact of globalization has been the decline of the middle class and the creation of a rich-poor chasm in the United States. For the quarter century that followed World War II, income growth in America was fairly evenly spread. But within the past quarter century, the wealthy have been doing dramatically better than the less well off. Since 1979 median family incomes have risen by 18 percent, but the incomes of the top one percent have gone up by over 200 percent. In 1970, according to the Census Bureau, the bottom fifth received 5.4 percent of America's total income and the richest fifth derived 40.9 percent. Twenty-five years later, the share of the bottom fifth had fallen to 4.4 percent, but that of the top fifth had risen to 46.5 percent. This can be clearly illustrated by the difference in salary potential between investment banking and civil engineering. Both professions compete for the same type of student - superior interest and performance in math and science. Given the thousandfold difference in salary potential, it is easy to understand the daunting task of the engineering profession to attract these students.

The erosion of the middle class and the creation of a rich-poor stratification have broad implications for the supply of engineers in the United States. The available supply of engineers essentially must come from either the poorly prepared (educationally and economically) or the unwilling (unwilling to pass up the thousandfold salary potential and enter a profession of lower status). The failure of the lower economic classes to move toward engineering is the most distressing. It would appear to be in the best interest of the nation and of individuals to view engineering as a profession that can move economically lower classes up the ladder. Poor preparation in mathematics and the sciences, coupled with the overwhelming burden of a college education (this period of decline of the middle class also corresponded to a period in which educational expenses increased at a rate greater than the overall inflation rate), has not allowed this group to embrace engineering. Embrace is too cavalier - nearly one in five American children lives in poverty, and more than one in 13 lives in extreme poverty. The harsh realities are overwhelming compared to embracing or ignoring the opportunities in engineering.

The current system system has two economic classes that cannot provide the nation adequate engineering manpower. Making up the deficit must come from either places like Bangalore in the form of off shoring or from a reliance on an ever-increasing number of immigrants. Both methods have major public policy ramifications for the United States