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<p>Well, I wouldn’t exactly take the word of a spokeswoman of the Business Roundtable - one of the leading business lobbying groups - as unbiased gospel. She says that there is a shortage of engineers and physical scientists…while leaving one key fact out. I agree, there is indeed a shortage…at the salaries that companies are paying right now. Let’s be perfectly honest - if engineers and physical scientists were being paid $200+k to start, there truly would be no shortage at all, for people would be coming out of the woodwork to become engineers and scientists. But companies aren’t willing to pay that. </p>
<p>While I’m no fan of neoclassical economics, I agree that if there truly was a shortage of engineers and scientists, then you would expect that you would eventually witness salaries being bid up, because market forces abhor a vacuum. But the fact is, salaries are not being bid up. You don’t see bidding wars for the best engineering and science graduates. That’s why many of them choose to abandon science and engineering completely, instead choosing other professions such as consulting and banking. </p>
<p>Consider the poignantly sad words of Nicholas Pearce:</p>
<p>*Even at M.I.T., the U.S.'s premier engineering school, the traditional career path has lost its appeal for some students. Says junior Nicholas Pearce, a chemical-engineering major from Chicago: “It’s marketed as–I don’t want to say dead end but sort of ‘O.K., here’s your role, here’s your lab, here’s what you’re going to be working on.’ Even if it’s a really cool product, you’re locked into it.” Like Gao, Pearce is leaning toward consulting. “If you’re an M.I.T. grad and you’re going to get paid $50,000 to work in a cubicle all day–as opposed to $60,000 in a team setting, plus a bonus, plus this, plus that–it seems like a no-brainer.” *</p>
<p>[Are</a> We Losing Our Edge? - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html]Are”>http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1156575-6,00.html)</p>