Is harvard engineering (Biomedical especially) famous?

4thfloor
Sun, 23 Oct 2005 09:54:25 +0000

“… ultimately it can’t just be a supply-push, but rather a demand-pull that will solve the problem once and for all. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

So that begs the question: why won’t the market swell up a demand-pull that will solve this “not enough engineers” crisis the education and media establishments keep wailing about?

WingardiumLeviosa got it right, I think, when he wrote that the problem worth solving is how the US will retain its technological edge, not how many engineers the US produces. The two problems can very well be distinct. Note that the education establishment has a strong vested interest in producing lots of engineers – paying these engineers well afterwards and making that education worth their time and toil are really “not my department” for the education establishment.

It is worth looking at how the US retained its agricultural lead while shedding its large population of farmers. Yes, politicians and their friends in the media and arts/entertainment did wail with great eloquence and poignancy about the disappearance of farming communities – perhaps those were the politicians whose power bases depended on the farming communities. Looking back, agricultural edge evidently depends a great deal more than just having lots of farmers. My guess is that essential contributions to our agricultural edge are made by our strong chemical and heavy equipment industries (which are innovative not just in product development but also in buyer financing techniques), our shipping and transportation infrastructures, our reliable power-suppy and transmission grids in the rural areas, even our relativly liquid and transparent commodities futures markets.

Perhaps the argument can be made that retaining our technological edge depends less on having lots of US-domiciled engineers than on, say, having a vibrant venture-capital industry that rewards commercially viable technological innovations, having flexible labor market laws that allow both employers and employees to adjust their human capital investments quickly, etc.

Sorry Sakky and Rtkysg to take this thread in another direction. The question came up naturally in your discussions, and I think it is an interesting topic.