@Beaudreau – about your P.E. explanation. Not every graduating engineer becomes a PE. In fact, of my engineering class of about 50, I think less than 5 went that route. I just did a quick google search, and didn’t come up with anything definitive, but I did see one website that estimates about 20% of graduating engineers eventually become a PE (http://www.nspe.org/resources/blogs/pe-licensing-blog/80-myth-engineering-profession) – more civil engineers do versus, say, chemical or electrical engineers. There’s also plenty of web sources that talk about the myth of engineer shortages (and one really doesn’t have to look much farther than the numbers of unemployed engineers, especially older ones, to know there is some merit in calling that a myth). There was a notable gadfly, Irwin Feerst (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-11175685.html) who was directly addressing that topic in the mid- to late-1980s. So, from firsthand experience, the profession is not what it used to be. But that’s not to say an engineering education isn’t valuable.