I remember when I first decided I wanted to study engineering. I had a dream of designing my own sports car from the ground up. Every single component designed by me. I started my engineering education in 2007, right before I even heard the acronym "STEM".
It was an interesting time. All my classes were equally divided with freshmen, and older transfer students between 25 and 35 years of age. For the most part, classes were somewhat full, and the majors weren't high demand. I remember the colleges at the university that were high demand and had a waiting list were business, psychology, and biology, which mind you, are part of STEM. (Yes, even business, which uses calculus for many of its methods).
My introduction to engineering 101 class was for the most part, an introductory robotics course. The professor was a mechanical engineer who was doing research on robotic prosthetics for the disabled. All her work was on control systems and robotics, and she dug it into our heads that the future was in robotics and medical devices. And ever since then, I always wanted to make a robot.
Fast forward to graduation 2012. I was happy! I made it! All those hours of studying. Staying up late. Trying to solve difficult problems. Writing programs (What they now call "coding"). It was all about to pay off. I got my cap and gown from the university, and was ready to wrap it up.
I decided to take a break of two weeks or so before starting the job search again, I was applying to jobs before graduation, but nothing. I did however have an internship, but I won't talk about that here. It feels good being done with college. I felt like I could do anything in the world I wanted to. I could move anywhere I wanted to. I could work anywhere. In theory, of course.
Okay. So time to get serious with the job search. I was on every job board looking for and applying to jobs. A month passes. Two months. Three months. I got an interview at a giant aerospace company here in SoCal. Upon getting there the security guard gave me a ride to the front on his golf cart. He told me for the three positions they were hiring for, that he knew about, they were interviewing hundreds of people. Everyday. Hundreds. For three positions. Everyday. At this point, I started getting suspicious about the job market, because, I also tried applying to other things, and the results were the same. Four months pass. Five months. Ten months. I finally got a job at some other aerospace company, where I got to do some really cool stuff and research but I won't talk much about that here.
Seeing the job market was enough to realize the lasting effects of 2008's financial crisis, and the fact that "the recovery" only affected certain areas, mostly people who had interest in companies or owned real estate. So I went online, circa 2013, and searched up "the economy never recovered", and sure enough, I got many hits. I found a very interesting blog by some politician who spoke about how the economic recovery was a lie, and that the reason the unemployment was so low, was because 1. People who were no longer receiving unemployment benefits were not counted anymore, and 2. Out of all the unemployment numbers, they use the lowest one.
To get a good idea of the real unemployment numbers, one can look here:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
Whether those numbers have any truth to them, who knows. But think about all the people in the USA, would you be able to count all unemployed? All who stopped looking for work?
One thing that baffled my mind beyond belief was when the whole "Join STEM!" thing started, I believe around 2012 I started seeing more and more of this in media. It seemed to have started in movies at first, I noticed that a lot of characters would have roles as scientist or engineers, with an emphasis on computer programming and hacking, electronics and robotics, mostly the design of mechatronic type systems, like a robotic suit, for example. Then they started with the local news clips; "Kids in blah blah learning about coding and robotics". First time I saw it, I was like; "Cool, that's neat I suppose". But then it seemed like a weekly thing. Almost weekly, the local news stations had something about locals in STEM. To me, this was extremely suspicious and it angered me a bit. I would think to myself; "FFS! Why do they want more scientist and engineers! There are hardly enough jobs for all of us!". Then it dawned on me, that they were trying to flood the STEM job market to lower wages.
Who's they? I don't know. The CEO's of these mega corporations? Politicians, people with interest in companies in these fields?, etc? Who knows. Maybe it's just coincidence, and the natural flow of economics and natural selection? Possibly. Anyways, I suspected they were trying to lower wages, specially when I noticed something. The promotion of 3D printing and the, what we call in this article, the "doers". Ahh the do movement. They actually call themselves something else but I'll call them doers for the sake of this article. There is nothing inherently wrong with the doers, or the neat little kits they sold at popular book stores all over the place, with a particular spike between 2013-2015 in the sale of these neat little microcontroller kits. (Notice how they have disappeared from display in the majority of places, specially after the recent presidential election...). The issue I have is with this one particular set of books the doers were publishing. One in particular, aimed at children, wiped the titles of engineer and scientist from historical engineer and scientist, and labeled them doers. So you ask, what's wrong with that? Could it be that they are trying to create a whole new field, where no degree is required, to replace professional scientist and engineers? Trying to make it so that the "engineering process" becomes as mundane and attainable as say, making a sandwich? This is where 3D printers come in. Man did they hype up those things. You see, as an engineer, I see 3D printers as just another manufacturing method, that may or may not be suitable for the situation at hand. It may, or may not be always appropriate. Let's pretend we are designing, say, a support to hold up a white board. The white board will sit on top of our support. Can we 3D print it? Sure we can. Will the materials available fail under the weight of the board? That is a good question.
The current 3D printing materials available, at least affordably, (you could shell out a couple hundred bucks to have a part sintered out of metal, but, it might be cheaper just to have it CNC'd), are not strong enough to be useful in all situations, and this is where, as an engineer, you have to recognize that you might need to use a different manufacturing method, or a different design altogether. And in the real world where time is money, your boss does not want you to spend time inventing a neat method to make it work, like they tell us in our textbooks, but to use the quickest and cheapest manufacturing method to get it done. In this case it would be easiest to make the support out of sheet metal and bend it, or readily drawn out aluminum and modify the cut a bit. Or make it out of wood, why not. (So if you are a "doer", or just a hobbyist, and can't afford a 3D printer, no worries, you can still make nearly everything without one). But getting back to topic, I got the vibe they were making it seem like you could make anything, which you can, in theory, but people will hit road blocks. This is also dangerous, because people really will believe that if they can 3D print it, it is safe, and they may try to make parts that are important structural supports, or that are suppose to insulate heat or electricity, or support pressures or impacts, or high vibrations. These are issues which require a great deal of understanding in many areas of physics, engineering, and materials science. To imply that "you can make anything by being a doer and having a 3D printer and a microcontroller! :D" is just, deceitful, and dangerous.
There is nothing wrong with getting people into STEM, I believe it to be a collection of very interesting fields, what is wrong is claiming that there is not enough people in STEM, and that if one chooses a career in a STEM field, they will be in high demand. Which is only a partial truth.
When I was working at this particular aerospace company, I enjoyed my job. I loved what I did. Maybe it was not in the automotive field like I dreamt of when I was a child, but it was great. In my particular group of engineers, half were there on H1-B visas. When there are so many engineers here who were unemployed and unable to look for work. Worse yet, these H1B individuals were good people, looking for a better opportunity, only to be exploited over their visa status to have a lower wage than an American engineer would. Everyone loses in this scenario, except the company of course. But get this. This just wasn't a problem in engineering, this person who did nothing but secretarial work, was there on a worker visa of some sort as well. When there were people here, struggling to get a job as simple as that.
I am not the only one saying the STEM worker shortage is a lie, if one searches for it online, they will find various articles on the topic, forums where people talk about this, even articles written by engineering organizations themselves.
I do not want you to feel discouraged about majoring in a STEM field, if it what you want to do, do it. Just take note that it is extremely competitive at the moment and it doesn't guarantee you a job in engineering or science. Also note that the wages are not what they are portrayed to be. However if it is truly something you love and enjoy doing, you will be happy with your job.
And to add to that, STEM comprises many fields, civil engineering, chemical engineering, chemistry, medicine, biology, economics, etc. Not just robots and 3D printers, These are but tiny fields in all of STEM, and one of them is just a manufacturing method.
Thank you, for reading this write up.