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Engineering Technology Education in the United States (2017)

Chapter: 4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent

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Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
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Chapter 4

The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent

This chapter presents information about the size and the composition of the engineering technology (ET) workforce as well as the earnings, job roles, skills, hiring patterns, and other characteristics of those employed in this sector. To the extent possible, we also discuss the employment pathways of these workers.

The federal government has produced large and detailed standardized labor market surveys for many years, and these datasets, along with information from our survey of employers, form the basis of our analysis. (Details of the methodology used in the committee’s survey of employers and the demographics of respondents appear in Appendix 4A. The survey instrument is in Appendix 4B.) The federal datasets used for the employment analysis are the American Community Survey (ACS), the March supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG), and the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES). As with the educational surveys described in Chapter 3, each of these datasets has strengths and weaknesses. The March CPS provides data on this workforce going back to the early 1970s (the occupational categories of earlier versions of the CPS do not sufficiently match later categories to ensure that the identification of engineering technicians and technologists is reliable). Although CPS will be used for most analyses in this section, data from ACS, NSCG, and OES are used to report detailed occupational subfields.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
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SIZE AND COMPOSITION OF THE ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY WORKFORCE

Occupational data from the relatively small CPS and the much larger ACS (both household surveys) as well as the large OES (an employer survey) all indicate that approximately 400,000 workers were employed as engineering technicians and technologists in 2013 (Table 4-1).

All of these surveys ask respondents—whether the workers themselves (CPS, ACS, NSCG) or their employers (OES)—to describe the nature of the job done by the worker. For all but NSCG, these descriptions are then analyzed by staff at the US Census Bureau and assigned to a specific code within the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. The SOC system does not distinguish between the job duties of engineering technicians and technologists; instead, it lumps them together under a category called “Engineering Technicians, Except Drafters,”1 which includes eight detailed occupations (Table 4-2).

NSCG uses employment codes from the Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System, which collapses the eight detailed SOC jobs into two broad classifications: “Electric, electronic, industrial, and mechanical technicians” and “OTHER engineering technologists and technicians.”

In an effort to get a sense of how many of these approximately 400,000 workers might be working as technicians rather than as technologists, the committee looked at survey respondents’ degree attainment. Using this approach, CPS and ACS both agree that around 80 percent of these workers have 2-year degrees or lower educational attainment, while the remaining 20 percent have at least a 4-year degree. In Table 4-1, the former are labeled technicians and the latter technologists. NSCG only surveys graduates of 4-year degree programs, and it uses a different coding system to determine job type. Because OES does not collect educational attainment information it is not possible to separate those who might be technicians from those who might be technologists. Thus, for this dataset, the two job types are combined in Table 4-1.

This presentation of the data needs to be interpreted with caution. For one thing, it assumes those with 2-year degrees cannot be working as higher-skilled technologists. For someone with many years of on-the-job experience, or with additional technical certificates beyond a 2-year degree

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1 An ongoing revision of the SOC system, due to be complete in 2018, is considering whether to create separate coding for engineering technicians and technologists (N. Kannankutty, National Science Foundation, personal communication, January 21, 2015).

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-1 Comparison of Estimates of Engineering Technician and Technologist Employment in 2013 from Various Datasets.

CPS ACS NSCG OES
Engineering technicians & technologists 360,400 434,854 435,650
Engineering technicians 302,402 355,861
Engineering technologists 57,998 78,993 404,465
Technician share of total 0.839 0.818

SOURCE: Calculations from noted datasets.

earned at a community college, this may not be true. For example, one of the former 2-year ET graduates who spoke at our December 2014 workshop, Jason Bauer, worked for 10 years at Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc., beginning as an electro-mechanical maintenance technician and rising through the company in various positions, eventually becoming an operations manager.

A further complication is that someone with a 4-year degree may have earned that degree in a field unrelated to ET but ended up doing work related to ET after earning one or more certificates or a 2-year degree in the field (e.g., someone changing careers). Such a person might more appropriately be classified as an engineering technician. In other words, our assumption that someone with a 4-year degree is working as a technologist may not be correct either. Unfortunately, none of these databases captures information about field for those with 2-year degrees, and only ACS and NSCG collect information about field for those with 4-year degrees. (The latter informa-

TABLE 4-2 Engineering Technology Subfield Estimates, OES, 2013

Population Estimates
Aerospace engineering and operations technicians & technologists 10,540
Civil engineering technicians & technologists 69,830
Electrical and electronics engineering technicians & technologists 141,150
Electro-mechanical technicians & technologists 15,540
Environmental engineering technicians & technologists 18,020
Industrial engineering technicians & technologists 68,520
Mechanical engineering technicians & technologists 46,090
Engineering technicians & technologists, except drafters, all others 65,960
Total 435,650

SOURCE: 2013 OES.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

tion is presented in Table 4-12 in the section “Career Pathways and Hiring Patterns.”)

The most significant outlier among the datasets is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) NSCG. This survey suggests that there are slightly more than 400,000 technologists, which is significantly more technologists than are identified in either CPS or ACS, which put the figure at about 58,000 and 79,000, respectively. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that those coding occupations for the NSF include a large number of engineers and perhaps other types of technicians into the “engineering technician” category—people who the Census Bureau would not have identified as engineering technicians.

Of the various federal datasets, only OES provides employment estimates of distinct subfields within ET (Table 4-2). The OES data suggest that these workers are heavily concentrated in electrical and electronics engineering technology occupations, to an even greater extent than were degrees concentrated in this subfield (see Table 3-3, Chapter 3). Civil, industrial, and mechanical engineering technicians and technologists also are well represented in the OES, while all other categories employ fewer than 20,000 workers.

TRENDS IN EMPLOYMENT, INCOME, AND AGE

Figure 4-1 presents employment trends from 1971 to 2015 for engineering technicians and technologists and (for comparison purposes) for engineers using data from CPS. The combined engineering technician and technologist population grew steadily over this period from almost 447,000 in 1971 to almost 666,000 in 2002 (following a peak of more than 821,000 in 2000). The engineering workforce grew even faster over the same time span, from almost 1.2 million in 1971 to 2.16 million in 2002. The abrupt decline in the employment of engineers (and more modest decline in the employment of engineering technicians and technologists) around 1994 may be due to a major redesign of the CPS survey instrument in that year (see Polivka and Miller, 1998, for details).

Official occupational categories changed occasionally over this period. Typically these changes are extremely minor and are used to account for the emergence of specific new types of jobs. A more notable reassessment of occupational codes was implemented after 2002, with important implications for the information technology (IT) workforce. These new categories

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
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FIGURE 4-1 Employment of engineers and engineering technicians and technologists, 1971-2015. SOURCE: Calculation from the 1971-2015 March CPS.

reassigned some workers previously categorized as engineers and engineering technicians and technologists to other fields, resulting in an abrupt decline in employment after 2002. One of the most common reassignments was to a computer or IT occupation.2 Because this decline is a statistical artifact, resulting from the reorganization rather than any changes in the workforce itself, the post-2002 data are distinguished by a dashed line in Figure 4-1. Under the new occupational definitions, approximately 2,000,000 engineers and 379,000 engineering technicians and technologists were employed in 2015.

The federal surveys peg the average engineering technician and technologist annual earnings at between $48,000 and $57,000 (2015 dollars) in 2013, with CPS providing a figure somewhat lower and OES a figure somewhat higher than that central tendency (Table 4-3). CPS data suggest that technologists enjoy a greater premium than do technicians relative to ACS.

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2 Detailed occupational transfers are found in “Conversion factors for the 1990 and 2002 Census occupational and industry classifications,” Tables 5 and 6, available at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsoccind.htm.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-3 Average Annual Earnings for Engineering Technicians, Engineering Technologists, and Engineers in 2013 (2015 Dollars)

CPS ACS NSCG OES
Engineering technicians & technologists (combined) $48,345 $54,050 $57,202
Engineering technicians $45,785 $53,227
Engineering technologists $57,496 $57,757 $80,670
Engineers $86,792 $101,967 $94,933 $94,013

SOURCE: Calculations from noted datasets.

Engineers on average earn considerably more than both in all surveys. As was true for employment data (Table 4-2), NSCG earnings data are much higher than are those from the other federal data sources.

Table 4-3 suggests an earnings premium for technologists (compared with technicians) of 25 percent (CPS) or 9 percent (ACS). Looking at a single year’s data can be misleading, however. CPS is a longer-running survey than is ACS, which makes it ideal for understanding long-term trends in the ET workforce. But the sample size in any given year in CPS is much smaller, which means that estimated earnings differentials in a given year have a much higher variance. A comparison of technician to technologist earnings in CPS over a longer time period, from 2006 to 2015, shows a much narrower gap in earnings. During that period, the average annual earnings differential was just 1.5 percent ($52,670 for technicians vs. $53,448 for technologists), with some individual years having high differentials and some having much lower differentials.

Inferences about earnings need to be drawn carefully. Because no adjustments or controls have been made to these data, the similarity in salary between technicians and technologists could reflect differing characteristics between these populations. For example, if the technician population tended to be older or more experienced than was the technologist population due to fewer promotional opportunities and lower educational requirements in prior decades, their age (i.e., seniority) and experience may enable them to have earnings that are comparable to a younger cohort of technologists. It also is important to remember that these data show only occupation, and we know that the majority of individuals with an ET degree are not working as technologists (see Table 4-14 in the section Career Pathways and Hiring Patterns). For instance, if the most productive technologists are employed as engineers then we would expect to observe relatively lower earnings for

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

technologists, because the data would be capturing the lower-wage portion of the stock of ET degree holders who are occupationally classified as technologists, not engineers.

The real annual income of engineering technicians and technologists has remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years, with a consistent average of approximately $50,000 (2015 dollars) (Figure 4-2). This contrasts with the steady growth in real annual earnings for engineers, which grew from an average of slightly more than $70,000 in the early 1980s to about $86,000 in 2015 (both 2015 dollars). Although weak real wage growth over the past several decades is a widely cited phenomenon, it is typically not considered to be as substantial a problem in skilled occupations.

Given recent interest in income inequality and wide variation in the educational attainment of the engineering technician and technologist workforce, changes in the income distribution are as important to consider as variations in the average income level are. Figures 4-3 and 4-4 present the distribution of real (2015 dollar) incomes for technicians and technologists separately for the 4 decades between 1974 and 2015. Figure 4-2 and Table 4-3 suggest that technicians and technologist have comparable earnings, so it is

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FIGURE 4-2 Annual earnings (2015 dollars) of engineering technicians, engineering technologists, and engineers, 1971-2015. SOURCE: Calculated from the 1971-2015 March CPS.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
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FIGURE 4-3 Income distribution for engineering technicians for the period 1974-2015 (2015 dollars). SOURCE: Calculations from 1974-2015 March CPS.
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FIGURE 4-4 Income distribution for engineering technologists for the period 1974-2015 (2015 dollars). SOURCE: Calculations from 1974-2015 March CPS.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

no surprise that the distribution of those earnings looks similar as well (Figures 4-3 and 4-4). The distribution of the 2004-2015 period is not as smooth as earlier years, however, for either technicians or technologists because of a smaller sample size. The steady level of total inflation adjusted earnings might have obscured changes in the distribution of earnings over time, but this does not appear to be the case for engineering technicians. For technologists, there is a very modest drift to the right over the 40-year period, with more recent cohorts appearing to earn slightly more than did earlier cohorts.

Figures 4-1 through 4-4 show steadily increasing employment for engineering technicians and technologists but relatively stable real annual income. The performance of this workforce is largely comparable to the engineering workforce, although engineers have experienced somewhat stronger employment growth and modest real annual income growth. This suggests that in both cases growth in supply and demand has remained relatively balanced, perhaps with somewhat stronger demand growth for engineers. If demand for engineering technologists grew faster than did supply, wages and salaries would grow as employers competed for scarce available workers. This does not appear to be the case. It is critical to separate the question of whether supply or demand is growing faster during a particular period from the question of labor “shortages.” The two issues are often conflated. The issue of shortages is discussed later in this chapter.

Unlike the relative stability of real annual income, data from the CPS indicate that the average age of engineering technicians and engineering technologists has shifted dramatically over the past 40 years (Figure 4-5). Less dramatic, but still significant, is the factor of aging in the engineering workforce.

In the period between 1974 and 1983, the average age of technicians and technologists was 35.4 years. By the period between 2004 and 2015, the average age was 43.5 years (Figure 4-5). The increase in average age also is apparent for engineers. The distributions of ages also tend to have a higher concentration of older technicians and technologists (Figure 4-6) and engineers (Figure 4-7) for later employment periods.

The age distribution data presented in Figure 4-6 are useful because they help us think about the age density of each worker cohort, by decade, separate from the issue of the changing size of the engineering technician and technologist workforce. In contrast, Figure 4-8 presents actual age frequencies of engineering technicians and technologists over the past 4 decades, thus reflecting both the age distribution and the total number of these workers. We see that the overall engineering technician and technolo-

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
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FIGURE 4-5 Average age of engineering technicians, engineering technologists, and engineers, 1971-2015. SOURCE: Calculations from 1971-2015 March CPS.
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FIGURE 4-6 Age distribution of engineering technicians and technologists. SOURCE: Calculations from the 1974-2015 March CPS.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
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FIGURE 4-7 Age distribution of engineers. SOURCE: Calculations from the 1974-2015 March CPS.
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FIGURE 4-8 Age frequencies of engineering technicians and technologists. SOURCE: Calculations from the 1974-2013 March CPS.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

gist workforce has aged over the past 40 years faster than could be mediated by taking on younger workers. In addition to the aging of this workforce, the workforce itself has been reduced. The number of workers over the age of 50, for example, is roughly comparable from 1994 to 2003 and again from 2004 to 2013, despite the fact that workers over the age of 50 comprise a much greater share of the total engineering technician and technologist workforce in the latter period.

Figure 4-9 displays comparable frequency distributions for engineers. The engineering workforce also has exhibited persistent aging over this period, although the trends are not as stark as in the engineering technician and technologist workforce. In the 2004–2013 period, the distribution of engineers across the age range is relatively uniform, whereas engineering technicians and technologists tend to be older. Nevertheless, the engineering workforce in the past decade is still older than the same workforce was in the 1970s and 1980s.

One possible explanation for the increasing age distribution is the flattening of occupational hierarchies in engineering and engineering-related occupations (see Kuehn and Salzman, 2016; Lynn et al., 2016; Lynn and Salzman, 2010). Engineers have increasingly taken on managerial responsibilities without transitioning from a technical to a management classifica-

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FIGURE 4-9 Age frequencies of engineers. SOURCE: Calculations from the 1974-2013 March CPS.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

tion. As this occupational transition for older workers has declined over time, the average age of the engineering technician and technologist workforce will naturally increase.

Even so, younger workers are still not entering the field at rates comparable to older cohorts, driving the age distribution to the right. The increasing average age of engineering technicians and technologists raises questions about the need for increased production of these workers to replace aging workers. Caution is required, however, in making direct inferences from an aging workforce to replacement demand in the future. Freeman (2007) demonstrates that, historically, aging occupational groups typically are not associated with a strong eventual resurgence in demand for younger workers. The reason for this is relatively straightforward: Workforces that are declining in size and importance in the economy demand and attract fewer workers, so that the average wage increases until the labor market achieves a new steady-state equilibrium. Workforces where employers expect future growth typically recruit younger workers before the day of reckoning comes, and they exhibit declining average ages until they achieve their own, higher, steady-state equilibrium.

Although this empirical work shows that occupational groups generally age when they are declining, not when they are on the verge of future growth and replacement demand, a specific occupational illustration may be helpful. Analysis of data from the March CPS indicates that between 1983 and 2013 textile manufacturing occupations declined from more than 1 million to approximately 100,000 due primarily to international competition. Over this same 30-year period, the average age of a textile worker increased from about 38 years to about 48 years. Without future growth prospects and no reason to expect increasing death or retirement rates, the industry achieved a new employment equilibrium by reducing the intake of younger workers. These dynamics are not restricted to workforces, of course. Human populations follow the same patterns, with shrinking populations generally characterized by increasing average ages until a new equilibrium is reached (e.g., Japan), and with swiftly growing populations characterized by declining average ages (e.g., Nigeria).

Freeman’s (2007) study of the behavior of aging workforces does not guarantee there will not be strong replacement demand for young engineering technicians and technologists in the future, of course. Something unexpected may change in the field that employers are not currently considering in their hiring practices. An example from the oil and gas extraction industry involving petroleum engineers is illustrative. In the 2000s, an aging petro-

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

leum engineering workforce and a retirement bubble came at exactly the same time the industry was facing growing demand due to drilling opportunities in the Bakken shale formation. As a result, petroleum engineering wages were bid up and a large cohort of young graduates was hired to replace the previously aging workforce (Lynn et al., 2016).

If an aging workforce is paired with strong new sources of demand, then employers will likely seek new graduates to replace an aging workforce. But, typically, an aging workforce does not seem to be a portent of strong future demand for young workers, and it is certainly not a reason in and of itself to expect growing demand.

WORK ROLES, SKILLS, AND JOB PERFORMANCE

As noted earlier, the federal government, through the system of SOC codes, has described the work done by engineering technicians and technologists, mainly for the purposes of interpreting data from employment surveys. These descriptions do not distinguish the job duties performed by technicians from those performed by technologists. In order to understand more about the potential differences in work performed by the two groups, the committee included questions about work roles in its survey of employers. The survey asked employers to review a list of job duties and indicate which were done most frequently by those with a 4-year degree in ET (Table 4-4) and which were performed mainly by those with a 2-year

TABLE 4-4 Most Frequent Work Roles for Employees with a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Technology, Percent (N=115).

Percent
Troubleshooting and repairing equipment/technologies 74.8
Conducting quality control checks 67.8
Collecting and analyzing data 69.6
Testing or maintaining equipment/technologies 69.6
Building or setting up equipment/technologies 64.3
Designing new products or systems 53.9
Producing technical drawings 50.4
Managing the work of other technical staff 47.8
Creating mathematical, simulation-based, or physical models 40.9
Conducting experiments 25.2
Don’t know 5.2
Other 3.5
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

degree (Table 4-5). The results suggest that bachelor’s degree holders have quite wide-ranging responsibilities, including those related to design, while the work of those with an associate’s degree is more restricted. Employers indicated that the work of engineering technicians centers on testing and maintaining equipment; troubleshooting and repairing; and conducting quality control checks.

The committee survey, conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), also asked employers to indicate the skills those with an educational background in ET should have in order to operate in today’s economy (not distinguishing in this case between 2- and 4-year degree holders). Respondents were given a list of relevant skills/knowledge and picked the first, second, and third most important. Answers were weighted, with five points given to a first-place vote; three points to a second-place vote; and one point to a third-place vote. The points for each skill were then summed and divided by the total number of points generated for all skill items. Three skills dominate the rankings (Figure 4-10): the ability to communicate and work in teams; the ability to problem solve or troubleshoot in new or unfamiliar situations; and knowledge of a specific engineering discipline. The first two areas are cited frequently as increasingly important components of the professional skill set for all workers in the 21st century (e.g., NRC, 2012; OECD, 2005).

Greater than 80 percent of employers said they have methods in place to communicate clearly with higher education about their employment needs. The most popular method for conveying skills and knowledge needed by

TABLE 4-5 Most Frequent Work Roles for Employees with an Associate’s Degree in Engineering Technology, Percent (N=47).

Percent
Testing or maintaining equipment/technologies 66.0
Troubleshooting and repairing equipment/technologies 66.0
Conducting quality control checks 55.3
Building or setting up equipment/technologies 48.9
Collecting and analyzing data 38.3
Producing technical drawings 38.3
Conducting experiments 23.4
Don’t know 12.8
Designing new products or systems 8.5
Managing the work of other technical staff 6.4
Other 6.4
Creating mathematical, simulation-based, or physical models 0.0
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
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FIGURE 4-10 Relative importance of skills/knowledge needed by ET graduates, by percentage (N=114).

prospective employees, according to respondents, was relationships with educational institutions’ career services personnel (Figure 4-11). Many employers also rely on the participation of industry advisory boards to communicate employment needs.

The majority of employers we surveyed indicated that their employees with an ET education had the right mix of skills/knowledge to do their jobs; 87.5 percent of 112 respondents indicated satisfaction with these workers. ET educators, responding to a similar question, likewise believed that their graduates had the skills to meet the needs of employers (Table 4-6).

The committee’s two surveys also probed perceptions about the differences in work performed by engineers and engineering technologists. More than one-half of employer respondents either did not know what the differences were or believed there was too much variability in performance to discern differences (Table 4-7). Small and roughly similar percentages of respondents believed that ET graduates perform better than engineers do when given applied work. Eight percent of respondents indicated no difference in the work performed by the two types of employees. Land’s 2012 survey of companies known to hire ET graduates also examined employer views of these differences. Although some of the roughly 200 employers participating in the survey indicated they did assign job roles based on

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
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FIGURE 4-11 Methods used to communicate skill needs to educators (N=184).

TABLE 4-6 Educator Views on the Degree to Which Their Graduates are Meeting the Skill Needs of Employers, by Percent

Graduates of 2-Year Programs (N=86) Graduates of 4-Year Programs (N=70)
Extremely well 33.7 48.6
Well 52.3 47.1
OK, but could be better 11.6 2.9
Not so well 2.3 1.4
Not at all 0 0

the degree held, the majority (67 percent) said there was no difference in roles and responsibilities assigned based on degree. A similar percentage of respondents indicated they saw no significant differences in the capabilities of engineering and ET degree holders when performing similar roles. Land (2012) notes that the survey sample consisted of companies with existing relationships with 4-year ET programs, a fact that “may well have influenced the results” (p. 63).

ET educators believed much more strongly than did employers that their graduates are better equipped than are engineers to do applied work. A full 80 percent indicated this to be the case, with a significant majority of these

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-7 Employer Views on the Differences in Work Performance Between Employees with 4-Year Degrees in ET and 4-Year Degrees in Engineering (N=111)

Percentage Selecting Answer Choice
Engineering technology graduates perform better when doing applied work, while engineering graduates perform better in the use of higher-level science and mathematics. 14.4
Engineering technology graduates perform better when doing applied work, while engineering graduates perform better in doing engineering design. 18.0
Engineering technology and engineering graduates are essentially the same in terms of work performance. 8.1
There is too much variability in the work performance of engineering technology and engineering graduates to answer this question. 25.2
Don’t know. 34.2

respondents indicating that the comparative strength of engineering graduates is in preparation to do higher-level mathematics and science (Table 4-8). Almost 20 percent of these educators believed that the two sets of graduates have similar skills or that there is too much variability among the educational programs to answer such a question.

Awareness of Engineering Technology Education

Employer opinions about work roles, skills, and job performance need to be seen in light of the somewhat surprising finding that nearly one-third of those who initially responded to our survey indicated they had never heard of a postsecondary academic program called engineering technology (Table 4-9).3 This same gap in knowledge held true even for firms in manufacturing, and for some sectors within manufacturing, such as pharmaceuticals, the number who had heard of ET was much lower. One of the employer groups least likely to have heard of the discipline was “small employers,” that is, those with fewer than 100 employees. Only 52 percent of this group were

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3 Respondents who indicated no awareness of ET education did not answer any survey questions that depended on knowledge of ET.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-8 Educator Views on the Differences Between the Skills/Knowledge of Graduates with 4-Year Degrees in ET and 4-Year Degrees in Engineering, by Percent (N=51)

Percentage Selecting Answer Choice
Engineering technology graduates are better prepared to do applied work, while engineering graduates have more preparation in higher-level science and mathematics. 60.8
Engineering technology graduates are better prepared to do applied work, while engineering graduates are better prepared to do engineering design. 19.6
Engineering technology and engineering graduates are essentially the same. 5.9
There is too much variability among engineering technology and engineering programs to answer this question. 11.8
Don’t know 2.0

TABLE 4-9 Employer Awareness of ET Education, by Percent

Percentage Aware
All Respondents (N=249) 70
All Manufacturing Employers (N=117) 70
Chemical Manufacturing (Pharmaceutical) (N=25) 48
Large Employers (more than 20,000 employees; N=32) 78
Mid-Size Employers (5,000 to 20,000 employees; N=45) 80
Small Employers (fewer than 100 employees; N=29) 52

aware of the field. The background and experience of those filling out the committee’s survey could have impacted these results. The survey instrument did not collect job-title information from respondents, but many of NACE’s employer members are involved in college recruiting.

Employers’ lack of familiarity with ET education may be explained in part by factors discussed in Chapter 1, such as the field’s inconsistent terminology as well as its close and sometimes confusing relationship to engineering. Some industry sectors, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, may simply not hire many with a background in ET, which presumably would contribute to their lack of familiarity with the field.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

CAREER PATHWAYS AND HIRING PATTERNS

College graduates often do not work directly in their field of study and instead apply their knowledge or follow their interests to different occupations. The question of where ET graduates work is perhaps of greater significance than where technicians work because the former are more likely to have similar academic coursework and skills as engineers do and therefore more closely resemble them. As a result, a large share of ET graduates may, in practice, be classified as engineers.

Table 4-10 presents the occupational distribution of the ET graduates in the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Survey 2008/2009. These graduates work in a wide variety of occupations in their early careers, suggesting that an education in ET is valuable to employers in many different fields. What is striking about Table 4-10, however, is the relatively low share of ET graduates who are working as engineering technologists and the high share who are working as engineers.

Keep in mind that these estimates are based on only about 220 unweighted individual observations; thus, the data should be interpreted with caution. Based on what the committee has learned throughout this project, there may be some confusion on the part of survey respondents about what it means to be an “engineering technologist,” and this may introduce even more uncertainty in the B&B results. In addition to the 29 percent of the sample employed as engineers who may be doing work comparable to engineering technologists, other technical workers may be doing work that is similar to ET but assigned to other occupational sectors. Despite these caveats and concerns, the share of ET graduates who are working as engineering technologists is still surprisingly low, based on this admittedly small sample. If this is not entirely due to the small unweighted sample size and misclassification, it may reflect the graduates’ difficulty in finding jobs in ET fields. Graduates may eventually move into ET positions, but it could take them time to connect to these jobs.

Perhaps even more surprising than the low share of ET graduates who are working as engineering technologists is the high share of engineering technologists who have degrees outside of ET. This is true not only for recent graduates, as captured by the B&B (Table 4-11), but also for the broader (and larger) population of degree holders captured by ACS and NSCG (Table 4-12). In all three datasets, the plurality of technologists have a degree in engineering. ACS and NSCG suggest that 30 to 40 percent of those working as engineering technologists do not have a 4-year degree in any science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-10 Early Career Occupational Distribution of 4-Year ET Graduates, Weighted Results

Number Percent
Agriculture occupations 2 0.01
Air transportation professionals 2 0.01
Artists and designers 1,254 8.28
Business managers 2,466 16.28
Business occupations (non-management) 253 1.67
Business/legal support (non-secretarial) 903 5.96
Computer/information systems occupations 867 5.73
Construction/mining occupations 17 0.11
Engineering technicians (“technologists”) 222 1.47
Engineers 4,465 29.49
Fitters, tradesmen, and mechanics 331 2.19
Food service occupations 122 0.81
Healthcare professionals (non-nurses) 31 0.20
Life scientists 63 0.42
Other educators 283 1.87
Other healthcare occupations 530 3.50
Personal care occupations 101 0.67
Physical scientists 0 0.00
PK-12 educators 187 1.23
Postsecondary educators 17 0.11
Protective service occupations 27 0.18
Sales occupations 299 1.97
Social service professionals 36 0.24
Transport support occupations 3 0.02
Unemployed or not in labor force 2,662 17.58
Total 15,143 100

SOURCE: Calculations from the 2008/09 B&B. All unweighted values are rounded to conform to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reporting standards.

These data suggest that the population of those who are working as engineering technologists may include a large number of individuals who start in a related field, such as IT, and then enter the ET workforce by acquiring the required skills on the job. Alternatively, given the growing importance of sub-baccalaureate qualifications, graduates in entirely unrelated fields with weak job prospects may have transitioned to the ET workforce by acquiring certificates in that field. This is speculative, however, as none of these federal datasets provides a way to track individuals’ accumulation of nondegree training or certificates.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-11 Majors of Early Career Engineering Technologists with Bachelor’s Degrees, Weighted Results

Number Percent

Architecture and related services

941 16.37

Business, management, marketing, and related support services

118 2.05

Communication, journalism, and related programs

121 2.11

Computer and information science and support services

31 0.54

Education

0 0.00

Engineering

1,761 30.64

Engineering technology

222 3.86

History

118 2.05

Homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, and related protective services

470 8.18

Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities

219 3.81

Multi/interdisciplinary studies

1 0.02

Philosophy and religious studies

39 0.68

Physical sciences

289 5.03

Psychology

258 4.49

Science technologies/technicians

98 1.71

Social sciences

921 16.03

Theology and religious vocations

6 0.10

Visual and performing arts

134 2.33

SOURCE: Calculations from the 2008/09 B&B. All unweighted values are rounded to conform to NCES reporting standards.

TABLE 4-12 Field of Degree of Engineering Technologists

ACS NSCG
Architecture 0.84% 1.31%
Arts and humanities 11.09% 7.23%
Business/management 16.16% 11.01%
Computer science/information technology 4.76% 5.57%
Education 4.18% 0.91%
Engineering technology 4.98% 11.68%
Engineering 23.00% 38.72%
Health 1.57% 0.60%
Life sciences 15.87% 3.65%
Mathematics 0.99% 2.19%
Other professional fields 6.02% 3.90%
Physical sciences 7.78% 5.78%
Social sciences 2.76% 7.46%
STEM (includes health) 58.95% 70.09%
Non-STEM 41.05% 29.90%

SOURCE: Calculations from the 2013 ACS and the 2013 NSCG.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

The B&B survey is of particular interest because it reports on ET graduates at the time that they make their initial connections to the workforce. However, other datasets that include workers of all ages also can be used to assess these issues. Table 4-13 summarizes the occupational distribution of all ET bachelor’s degree holders using the 2013 NSCG. The broad job categories most commonly held by those with a 4-year ET degree, as well as a category for all other jobs, are included.

According to NSCG, a small share (about 12 percent) of ET graduates report working as engineering technologists. This is larger than the share presented in B&B (about 1.5 percent; Table 4-10), but the number of graduates is still fewer than those who report they are working as engineers or in computer and IT occupations. The single largest occupational category for ET graduates is managers (23 percent of the total). This category includes engineering managers as well as other types of managers.4 The second largest category is engineer (Box 4-1).

The NSCG data provide a snapshot in time. However, we also would like information about how the types of jobs held by those with ET degrees change over a worker’s career. Generally speaking, engineers enjoy rapid earnings growth early in their career, either due to the wage structure they face in a given firm or to movement between firms in pursuit of a strong (and better paying) job match. This period is followed by flatter wage growth and movement into management positions for more senior engineers or those with management skills (Biddle and Roberts, 1994; Brown and Linden, 2008). We know less about whether engineering technicians and technologists follow this pathway or a similar pathway. The pathway to management positions for technicians and technologists may be closed, particularly in a work environment that also includes engineers who may be groomed for promotion to management. Alternatively, promotion of technicians and technologists may include transitions to an engineering position, with on-the-job experience substituting for formal training in engineering. The fluid identity and work of engineering technicians and technologists opens a wide number of potential career pathways that need to be assessed in the data.

___________________

4 NSCG uses different occupational categories from those used by other labor market surveys, although most (including all engineers, engineering technologists, and computer and IT occupations) closely match SOC categories. For this report, respondents are considered to be in a “manager” position if they report they are some sort of science and engineering manager, “top-level” managers, administrators, “mid-level” managers, or in some other management-related occupation. Respondents are considered to be in a “sales” position if they report they are in a sales or business services occupation. Everyone else is included in an “other” category.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-13 Occupational Distribution of Those with Four-Year ET Degrees

Number Percent
Computer and IT occupations 35,977 9.70
Engineer 58,864 15.87
Engineering technologist 44,903 12.11
Manager 86,081 23.21
Other 126,461 34.10
Sales or business services 18,604 5.02
Total 370,890 100.00

SOURCE: Calculations from the 2013 NSCG.

Using data from NSCG for four 10-year age groups, Figure 4-12 presents the share of ET bachelor’s degree holders working (1) in computer and IT occupations, (2) as engineering technologists or engineers, (3) in management, (4) in sales, or (5) in other occupations. Engineers and engineering technologists are not broken out separately because of the high share of ET degree holders who report they are working as engineers.

The career pathways of ET bachelor’s degree holders share many important characteristics that we typically expect to see for engineers. Between the ages of 25 and 34, 39 percent of these ET graduates work as engineers or engineering technologists. Almost 52 percent work in technical fields more broadly (i.e., including computer and IT occupations). This share declines quickly for 35- to 44-year-olds at the same time that employment in mana-

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
Image
FIGURE 4-12 Major occupational categories of ET degree holders by age. SOURCE: Calculations from the 2013 NSCG.

gerial occupations increases. In the 45 to 54 and the 55 to 64 age groups, ET degree holders diffuse into a wide variety of occupations, with the highest share employed in “other” occupations. There are some important differences between the job trajectories of engineering technologists and engineers, as can be seen in Figure 4-13. Notably, later in their careers, those with engineering degrees are much more likely to move into management and much less likely to be working in other nonengineering and non-STEM fields.

Tables 4-10 through 4-13 and Figure 4-10 raise concerns that confusion about occupational categories may be hampering our understanding of how ET graduates connect to the labor market. An alternative to expecting respondents to reliably report whether they are working as engineering technologists, engineers, or in some other job is simply to ask them whether their ET degree is related to their current employment. This information, also from the B&B, is reported in Table 4-14. In this case, more than one-half of ET graduates report that their job is closely related to their studies, and three-quarters say it is closely or somewhat related. Although this is a lower level of self-reported relatedness of degree and job than for engineering graduates, it nevertheless exceeds that of all other graduates with 4-year degrees.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
Image
FIGURE 4-13 Major occupational categories of engineering degree holders by age. SOURCE: Calculations from the 2013 NSCG.

Interestingly, more than one-half of those with degrees in the field who say they are not working as engineering technologists still report that their work is related to their degree. The small sample size of the ET population in the B&B sample, as noted previously, merits caution in interpreting these data.

In attempting to reconcile the data in Table 4-14 with those from Tables 4-10 through 4-13 and Figure 4-10, we arrive at a seemingly contradictory conclusion: ET graduates report that their jobs are highly related to their degree even if the information they supply on employment surveys does not classify them as engineering technologists. However, it need not be contradictory. Presumably a wider range of STEM and technical jobs utilize skills acquired over the course of an ET education. Moreover, managers in organizations where technical work is done could easily make use of their ET education even though they are not working as engineering technologists.

Understanding why as many as one-quarter of ET graduates may not be working in jobs related to their field of study is critical for making inferences about whether shortages are a problem in this labor market. The topic of shortages is dealt with in detail in the next section.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-14 Early Career Job Relatedness for ET, Engineering, and Other Degree Holders, Weighted Results (Unweighted N=~220, Technologists; Unweighted N=~5,750, Engineers)

Number Percent
Engineering technology graduates
Closely related 6,607 53.86
Somewhat related 2,663 21.71
Unrelated 2,997 24.43
Engineering graduates
Closely related 43,794 59.21
Somewhat related 22,423 30.32
Unrelated 7,749 10.48
Other graduates
Closely related 546,781 44.96
Somewhat related 326,724 26.86
Unrelated 342,725 28.18
Engineering technology graduates not working as technologists
Closely related 6,538 54.28
Somewhat related 2,511 20.85
Unrelated 2,997 24.88

SOURCE: Calculations from Baccalaureate and Beyond Survey 2008/09. All unweighted values are rounded to conform to NCES reporting standards.

SHORTAGES

Economists are often skeptical of claims about labor market shortages; to a large extent, this is because of how they conceive of the problem of a shortage. A shortage is defined as a situation in which the number of workers who supply their labor at a given market wage is less than the number of workers demanded by employers at that wage. In this situation, economists would expect dissatisfied employers to bid up wages in an attempt to attract scarce workers. These higher wages would draw more workers into the market, lead some employers to reduce their quantity demanded, and thereby push the labor market back into equilibrium. In other words, market actors do not face any incentives to maintain shortages, so shortages should be fleeting problems.

Studies of the labor market for scientists and engineers seem to confirm this intuition with evidence that these skilled workers are responsive to wage signals (sometimes with a lag, because it takes time to earn a degree), and they adjust their entry into specific STEM fields based on relative job

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

prospects. Because STEM skills are quite specific and often are not transferable across fields, analysts have instead raised the opposite concern: gluts or surpluses would form if scientists could not easily transition to other fields when demand for their services weakened.5

Despite skepticism about the prospect of persistent shortages, economists have recognized two versions of the shortage problem that are more likely to occur: “dynamic shortages” and “social demand shortages.”6 Dynamic shortages emerge after positive labor demand shocks or negative labor supply shocks, when the market is not able to adjust immediately to its new equilibrium. Although we would expect market forces to raise wages and eliminate the shortage eventually, workers are technically in “shortage” while that adjustment process takes place. In the skilled labor market, the typical justification for dynamic shortages is that it takes time to train new workers, leaving a large number of job vacancies open until the new workers come online. Substitutability across occupational fields can smooth the transition process.

A social demand shortage is a situation in which the market itself is in a state of equilibrium—that is, no more workers are demanded by employers at a given wage rate than are available—but some sort of social objective is not being achieved that requires more workers. For example, consider the case where there is no indication that the labor market for aerospace engineers is out of equilibrium or in shortage. However, some individuals believe that the United States should be exploring the Moon, asteroids, and Mars much more energetically, through both public and private efforts, than is currently the case. Insofar as we accept this to be true, we can claim that a social demand shortage for aerospace engineers exists, but it is not a proper shortage in the economic sense. No indicators generated from labor market data can inform analysts that a social demand shortage exists. It is a wholly subjective (and often political) judgment that is beyond the scope of economic analysis.

Dynamic labor shortages may be more plausible in the market for engineering technicians and technologists than in other STEM fields. Many of these workers, particularly at the technician level, are educated at community colleges and therefore may be more tied to their communities than other workers are. Indeed, students often attend community colleges because they

___________________

5 The most prominent example of such a glut is the case of biological scientists, detailed by Stephan (2012).

6 Both terms were used initially by Arrow and Capron (1959) and more recently have been summarized by Barnow et al. (2013).

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

are geographically immobile, at least relative to those who attend 4-year-degree-granting schools. Younger 2-year-degree or -certificate earners may be resource constrained, while older students may have families and other obligations that tie them to their community and make community college the best option. This introduces labor market rigidities that could prevent rapid readjustment to new demands. Community colleges also often develop their curriculum in response to and sometimes in partnership with local businesses. A large increase in demand for engineering technicians and technologists may occur in a region without a preexisting program at a community college, and the development of such programs to supply businesses with these workers may take time.

As noted earlier, the reason an individual works in a job that is not related to his or her field of study may shed light on whether shortages are a problem in a particular labor market. Graduates may be working outside their field for a number of reasons. Some obstacles to working in a related occupation, such as family-related reasons or difficulties finding a related job in the same geographic region, may prevent labor supply from responding to changes in demand and thus introduce the prospect of a shortage. Others, such as the inability to find work in field or higher-quality job opportunities out of field, suggest the prospect of a surplus of workers over jobs available (or at least ample competition for the skills of ET graduates).

Because supply and demand curves cannot be directly observed, economists use a number of indirect approaches to assess whether a labor market is experiencing a shortage. One approach is to try to identify institutional barriers—such as salary or quantity regulations—that would prevent a market from reaching equilibrium as well as to find evidence that such barriers prevent workers and firms from being responsive to price signals. This is particularly relevant for medical or other highly regulated labor markets. Otherwise, the case for dynamic shortages is best made by identifying wage increases that lead to adjustments in the number of workers in a given occupation. Such an adjustment would indicate that firms are competing over scarce labor resources without an immediate increase in supply to meet increasing demand and generally tight labor market conditions.

Different industries and regions of the country naturally have different wage structures, so pinpointing regions that are exhibiting higher-than-usual engineering technician and technologist wages will be a misleading indicator of labor market shortage. It is likely that engineering technicians in Brooklyn, New York, might earn more than technicians in Bismarck, North Dakota, earn because of a higher cost of living, but North Dakota is more likely to

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

be facing a shortage as a result of recent growth in the oil and gas extraction industry. A better approach would be to identify high engineering technician and technologist wages relative to some reference wage, such as for engineers, workers of the same education level, or all workers.

To test this approach, the committee used the 2000 and 2010 OES to assess the possibility of state-level labor shortages. First, we calculated earnings differentials between detailed engineer and engineering technician occupational categories as a percentage of the engineering technician annual income level in each state. Six detailed categories were considered for each state: aerospace, civil, electrical and electronic, environmental, industrial, and mechanical engineers and engineering technicians and technologists. Because we expect engineers to earn more than technicians and technologists do, a small earnings differential for a given subfield in a state is indicative of high engineering technician and technologist earnings relative to engineers. Although this interpretation of observed earnings differentials is the most natural, other explanations are possible. Earnings differentials may reflect a loose engineering labor market rather than a tight market for technicians and technologists. Similarly, co-occurring shortages in both labor markets may mask the shortage in the market for technicians and technologists. These possibilities are worth keeping in mind.

The state and occupational subfield of the lowest 10 percent of all earnings differentials (and therefore the highest relative technician and technologist earnings) are presented in Table 4-15. Industrial engineering technicians and technologists are much more likely to have high relative earnings than

TABLE 4-15 State and Field of the Highest-Earning Engineering Technicians and Technologists Relative to Their Engineer Counterparts, 2000

Engineering Technician and Technologist Category States in the Bottom Decile of the Total Distribution of Engineer Wage Premiums Over Technicians and Technologists
Aerospace AZ, CO, IL, MA, MN, WI
Civil AK, CT
Electrical and Electronic DE, GU, MT
Environmental SC
Industrial AZ, IA, KS, LA, MA, MI, MT, NY, PA, VA, WA
Mechanical AK, MT, OR, PR

SOURCE: Calculations from the 2000 May OES. GU = Guam. PR = Puerto Rico.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

are those in any other subfield, while the environmental and civil subfields maintain broader gaps between the earnings of technicians and technologists and engineers. Potentially of greater interest is the repeated presence of Montana (three cases) and Arizona, Alaska, and Massachusetts (two cases each) in the list of cases with relatively high engineering technician and technologist earnings. Montana, Alaska, and perhaps even Arizona may struggle with labor mobility and attracting technicians and technologists, driving up earnings before the market adjusts. This seems less plausible in the case of Massachusetts, although other explanations (such as labor market regulation or rapid growth in science- and engineering-related sectors of the economy) may be more relevant.

Any state with an earnings differential that is substantially lower than the average is a candidate for a local labor market shortage, should there be a sudden increase in demand. Further analysis is required to determine what is actually driving the wage differential (Katz and Murphy, 1992). The next step would be to identify whether engineering technician and technologist employment in candidate localities and subfields substantially increased after a given interval of time, relative to the average change in employment. If this is the case it would suggest that a scarcity of workers drove up wages, which resulted in drawing additional workers into the market. This pattern of a lagged employment response to wage signals has been identified in the market for physicists (Freeman 1975), petroleum engineers (Lynn et al., 2016), and computer scientists (Salzman et al., 2013).

In Figure 4-14, the earnings differentials for states and engineering subfields discussed above are plotted against employment changes for technicians and technologists from 2000 to 2010. Recall that relatively low earnings differentials imply relatively high technician and technologist wages because they represent a lower earnings premium of engineers over technicians and technologists. Figure 4-14 suggests a weak relationship between earnings differentials and changes in employment. To the extent that there is a relationship, it appears to be positive, which is unexpected if a shortage of engineering technicians and technologists is anticipated. A positive relationship suggests that as the earnings gap between technicians and technologists and the reference group of engineers widens (i.e., as the relative earnings of technicians and technologists are reduced), employment growth over the next decade increases. This would be the case if, for example, demand for engineering technicians and technologists increased over this period. (This positive relationship also was apparent when we examined the employment change between 2000 and 2005.) It might also be the case if more ET gradu-

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
Image
FIGURE 4-14 State and subfield earnings differentials in 2000 vs. percentage change in technician and technologist employment, 2000-2010. SOURCE: Calculation from the 2000 and 2010 OES.

ates are being hired into positions labeled “engineer” because of the demand growth for that type of worker.

Two potential narratives are suggested by Figure 4-14. First, we could conclude that in the engineering technician and technologists labor market, supply and demand have kept pace with each other, resulting in stable growth in the workforce without strong real income growth or shortage problems. Under this narrative, the observed dispersion of earnings differentials is due to idiosyncratic differences across states and fields rather than shortages. For example, civil and environmental engineers may consistently earn more than do their technician and technologist counterparts because of the nature of the work, while certain states may have wider income distributions than do other more egalitarian states. Perhaps the technicians and technologists work on very advanced tasks that allow them to command higher wages than usual, or the local community college system generates highly productive graduates.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

The second narrative is that shortages of technicians and technologists exist and they are persistent. Employment does not respond to earnings differentials, and large gaps in earnings can persist without the market adjusting to a new equilibrium. This narrative probably requires an institutional or regulatory explanation for persistent shortage. Normal labor market frictions are an insufficient explanation of why employment growth remains retarded after a decade has passed. Occupational certification and licensing restrictions and fees, the robustness of the local community college system, unionization rates, and the activities of local Workforce Investment Boards could all introduce or remove barriers to labor market adjustment. Exploration of these possibilities would require additional research7 and is beyond the scope of the current project. The preponderance of the literature in labor economics and the analysis presented here militates against the assumptions in the shortage narrative in this case.

To reiterate, the discussion of shortages here is relatively speculative. The analysis explores at a first approximation what we would expect to see in the case of a shortage. Even at a first approximation, there are no obvious signs that a shortage exists.

For another perspective on the shortage issue, the committee examined federal estimates of expected future job growth. Table 4-16 provides employment projections for engineering technician occupations produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS; 2014). Estimates for all occupations are also provided as a reference point. In addition to projecting employment changes, the BLS estimates how many job openings there will be in each occupation between 2014 and 2024 due to both replacement demand as well as growth. It is critical to note that the BLS does not project shortages per se. It estimates equilibrium changes in employment. Nevertheless, projected increases in employment can indicate future demand growth, which may result in shortages if supply is not as responsive as the BLS anticipates it will be. Generally, though, the BLS data show employment growth in engineering technician occupations is expected to be weaker than employment growth nationally. The only exception is environmental engineering technicians, who are expected to experience 9.7 percent growth from 2014 to 2024. Industrial engineering technicians, electrical and electronics engineering technicians, and “other” miscellaneous engineering technicians are projected to have declining rates of employment over this period. With the exception

___________________

7 For example, state licensing information is collected at the Career One Stop website by the US Department of Labor, and notifications about Workforce Investment Board activities and programs are publicly available.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-16 Employment Projections for Engineering Technician Occupations, 2014-2024

Title Employment, 2014 (thousands) Employment, 2024 (thousands) Percentage Change in Employment, 2014-2024 Job Openings Due to Replacement and Growth (thousands)

Total, all occupations

150,540 160,329 6.5% 46,507

Aerospace engineering and operations technicians

11.4 11.8 3.6% 3.2

Civil engineering technicians

74.0 77.6 4.8% 21.6

Electrical and electronics engineering technicians

139.4 136.6 –2.0% 34.1

Electro-mechanical technicians

14.7 14.8 0.7% 3.7

Engineering technicians, except drafters, all other

70.1 69.9 –0.2% 17.1

Environmental engineering technicians

18.6 20.4 10% 6.4

Industrial engineering technicians

66.5 63.5 –4.5% 16.3

Mechanical engineering technicians

48.4 49.3 2.0% 12.8

of environmental engineering technicians, there is no evidence in the BLS projections of strong impending demand growth that might result in future shortages.

The committee included questions related to the possibility of shortages in its surveys of employers and educators. Compared to those who perceive a shortage of talent, slight majorities of employers indicated there is a sufficient supply of 2- and 4-year graduates with ET degrees (Table 4-17). It is notable that about 40 percent of employers did not know whether or not there were sufficient numbers of workers with 2-year degrees. When these results were filtered to include only the 49 employers who said they hire ET graduates at the associate’s degree level, the percentage of unsure respondents dropped to 16 percent; of this group of 49 employers, 65 percent believed that the supply of workers with 2-year degrees was sufficient.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-17 Employers’ Views on the Adequacy of the Current Supply of Graduates with 2- and 4-Year ET Degrees, by Percent

Yes No Don’t Know
Sufficient supply of applicants with 2-year degrees (N=102) 31.4 26.5 42.2
Sufficient supply of applicants with 4-year degrees (N=113) 49.6 40.7 9.7

Employers who indicated there was a current shortage were mostly midsize manufacturing firms, particularly in the electronics industry, located in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions. Nearly 75 percent (N=19) of employers with between 100 and 5,000 employees reported a shortage, as did 27 percent (N=7) of employers with between 100 and 500 workers and 35 percent (N=9) of employers with between 1,000 and 5,000 workers. The largest employer sector to indicate a shortage was computer and electronics manufacturers, where 26 percent (N=7) did so. Finally, 53 percent of the respondents who see an insufficient supply of ET graduates with associate’s degrees were located in either the mid-Atlantic states (N=7; Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania) or the Great Lakes region (N=6; Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin).

Few data regarding possible shortages drill down into specific subfields of ET. OP-TEC, the National Center for Optics and Photonics Education funded by the National Science Foundation, has surveyed employers of photonics technicians, who may have a 2-year degree in photonics or in electronics with a photonics specialty, to assess the demand for such workers in the United States.8 Based on extrapolation from the responses of 333 employers, OP-TEC (2012) estimated that the industry needs to hire 1,600 new photonics technicians per year, while it asserts the education system is able to produce only about 300 degreed photonics technicians annually.

We also asked ET educators whether they believed the supply of graduates with 2- and 4-year degrees was sufficient to meet the needs of the marketplace. Unlike employers, educators were of the opinion, by roughly a two-to-one margin, that the supply of graduates was falling short of the need (Table 4-18). Merely one-quarter of the respondents believed that the sup-

___________________

8 Although the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) does offer accreditation to photonics engineering technology programs, no such programs are currently accredited, according to the board.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4-18 Educators’ Views on the Adequacy of the Current Supply of Graduates with 2- and 4-Year ET Degrees, by Percent

Graduates with 2-Year Degrees (N=86) Graduates with 4-Year Degrees (N=70)
There are more graduates with these degrees than the job market can support. 3.5 1.4
The number of those with these degrees matches the availability of jobs. 25.6 30.0
There are not enough graduates with these degrees to fill available jobs. 60.5 64.3
Don’t know 10.5 4.3

ply of graduates was adequate. These results may reflect the understandable optimism on the part of educators about the employability of their graduates.

We asked employers to look beyond the current situation and say whether they foresaw future shortages of workers with 2- or 4-year ET degrees. Employers who hire those with 2-year degrees were evenly split, at 40 percent each, on whether there would or would not be a future shortage (Table 4-19). With respect to employees with 4-year degrees, slightly more employers believed that there would be sufficient numbers of these workers in the future than believed that there would not (Table 4-20).

TABLE 4-19 Employer Views on the Adequacy of the Future Supply of Workers with 2-Year ET Degrees, by Percent (N=44)

Percent
Sufficient 40.9
Not sufficient 40.9
Don’t know 18.2

TABLE 4-20 Employer Views on the Adequacy of the Future Supply of Workers with 4-Year ET Degrees, by Percent (N=106)

Percent
Sufficient 45.3
Not sufficient 34.0
Don’t know 20.8

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

THE IMPACT OF AUTOMATION AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Existing studies of the impact of technological development on the American labor market are in many ways inadequate for assessing the significance of these trends for engineering technicians and technologists. Most of the relevant economic research is highly aggregated across industries and occupations and is focused on the question of whether technological change is biased toward the interests of skilled or unskilled workers (e.g., Berman et al., 1994; Doms et al., 1997). In some prominent cases, technological change is inferred from wage and employment trends for high-skill workers (if both employment and wages are increasing it implies a positive demand shock) without even using any data on changes in production technology itself (Berman et al., 1998; Card and DiNardo, 2002; Manning, 2004).

The consensus is that so-called skills-biased technological change plays a nontrivial role in the polarization, or “hollowing out,” of the workforce, with relatively increasing employment opportunities for both high- and low-skill work and declining opportunities for middle-skill work (see, e.g., Autor et al., 2003). However, Holzer (2010) notes that findings of job market polarization are sensitive to how skill levels are defined. This may be particularly relevant for engineering technicians and technologists, who may be seen as straddling the boundary between high- and middle-skill workers. Even aside from the ambiguities of categorizing the skill levels of technicians and technologists, the unique role that these workers play in facilitating and maintaining new technologies makes it difficult to generalize previous, already highly generalized research.

The committee included questions in its surveys about the impact of new technologies—additive manufacturing, advanced digital manufacturing, and complex control systems, among others—on the skills needed by those with ET degrees. Employers (Figure 4-15) expressed a clear expectation that these technologies will impact the skills and knowledge needed by their workers. Nearly 64 percent of respondents believed that such technologies would impact workers’ skill requirements substantially or by a fair amount. Similarly, substantial majorities of educators of 2- and 4-year ET students noted that the presence of these new technologies is changing the skills their students need to succeed (Table 4-21). Nevertheless, most educators believe that the changing technological landscape either is not affecting the employability of their students or is making it easier for them to be hired (Table 4-22). This suggests that these educators see technological change as a net plus for the employability of graduates.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
Image
FIGURE 4-15 Employers’ views on how much the integration of new technologies is affecting skill requirements for workers with ET degrees (N=224).

TABLE 4-21 Educators’ Views on How Much the Integration of New Technologies Is Affecting Skill Requirements for 2- and 4-Year ET students, by Percent

2-Year ET Students (N=86) 4-Year ET Students (N=70)
Substantially 26.7 31.4
A fair amount 47.7 41.4
Very little 16.3 24.3
Not at all 2.3 0.0
Don’t know 7.0 2.9

TABLE 4-22 Educators’ Views on How Much Technological Change Is Affecting the Employability of 2- and 4-Year ET Graduates, by Percent

2-Year ET Students (N=86) 4-Year ET Students (N=70)
Making it harder for graduates to find work 2.3 0.0
Making it easier for graduates to find work 43.0 57.1
No difference in employability 36.1 30.0
Don’t know 18.6 12.9

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

APPENDIX 4A

Methodology for Survey of Employers and Demographics of Respondents

The project’s survey of employers was conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) under contract to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Established in 1956, NACE connects more than 6,300 college career services professionals at nearly 2,000 colleges and universities nationwide, more than 2,700 university relations and recruiting professionals, and the business affiliates that serve this community. NACE has a long-standing research and survey program that gathers information about the employment of the college educated, forecasts hiring and trends in the job market, and tracks starting salaries, recruiting, and hiring practices.

For the NAE engineering technology (ET) survey, NACE sent a link to the survey instrument, hosted on the website SurveyMonkey, to its approximately 1,000 corporate members. NACE corporate members are midsize to large companies spanning virtually all major industry sectors. Recipients of the survey link were mostly those responsible for college recruiting. A total of 245 NACE members opened the survey link. NACE also sent the survey link to employer groups that are part of the Employer Associations of America (EAA). These associations predominantly represent small manufacturers. Only nine responses were received from this source. For purposes of analysis, responses from EAA members were combined with responses from NACE members. The survey was open from October 8, 2014, until January 15, 2015.

Because the bulk of survey items were about ET education, the survey included a screening question intended to allow those who were not familiar with ET to skip questions related to the focus topic. Out of the total of 254 respondents, 246 answered the screening question, which asked whether the company hired employees with either a 4-year ET degree or either of two types of 2-year ET degrees: the associate of science (AS) and the associate of applied science (AAS). A total of 124 companies (50 percent) hired ET majors at either the bachelor’s or associate’s degree level. Forty-nine companies (20 percent) hired workers with associate’s degrees.

The screening question also asked whether respondents hired employees with 4-year engineering degrees, and 244, or greater than 99 percent, indicated they did. The fact that nearly all survey respondents said they hire engineers provides some assurance that the NACE sample was generally representative of firms engaged in work requiring engineering-related skills.

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

Respondents who indicated they hired no employees with either engineering or ET degrees or who indicated they hired those with engineering degrees but not those with ET degrees were diverted to items near the end of the survey that did not require specific knowledge of ET.

Demographically, respondents represented a fairly broad range of employer types and employer locations. In terms of size, approximately 30 percent of respondents met the Small Business Administration definition of a small employer (500 employees or less); another 23 percent were employers with a workforce that exceeded 10,000 employees (Table 4A-1). Nearly one-half of the respondents were manufacturers, with the largest single group representing the computer and electronics sector (Table 4A-2). Finally, respondents were distributed fairly evenly across the United States. Table 4A-3 shows that although the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states accounted for about 42 percent of respondents, there was representation from other areas of the country as well.

TABLE 4A-1 Respondent Firms by Employees Population

Employees Firms Percent
Fewer than 100 29 11.6
Between 101 and 500 49 19.5
Between 501 and 1,000 28 11.2
Between 1,001 and 5,000 59 23.5
Between 5,001 and 10,000 20 8.0
Between 10,001 and 20,000 26 10.4
More than 20,000 32 12.7
Don’t know 8 3.2
Total 251 100.0
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

TABLE 4A-2 Respondent Firms by Industry Sector

Firms Percent
Accounting Services 4 1.6
Agriculture 1 0.4
Chemical (Pharmaceutical) Mfg. 26 10.2
Computer & Electronics Mfg. 33 13.0
Construction 10 3.9
Engineering Services 15 5.9
Finance, Insurance & Real Estate 14 5.5
Food & Beverage Mfg. 10 3.9
Government 4 1.6
Information 17 6.7
Management Consulting 7 2.8
Messaging & Warehouse 0 0.0
Misc. Mfg. 42 16.5
Misc. Prof. Servicesa 13 5.1
Misc. Support Services 2 0.8
Motor Vehicle Mfg. 8 3.1
Oil & Gas Extraction 12 4.7
Recreation & Hospitality 5 2.0
Retail Trade 2 0.8
Social Services 1 0.4
Transportation 7 2.8
Utilities 11 4.3
Wholesale Trade 10 3.9
Total 254 100.0

a “Professional services” predominantly consists of engineering services firms.

TABLE 4A-3 Respondent Firms by Geographic Region

Firms Percent
Far West 26 10.2
Great Lakes 50 19.7
Mid-Atlantic 56 22.0
New England 15 5.9
Plains 21 8.3
Rockies 6 2.4
Southeast 35 13.8
Southwest 45 17.7
Total 254 100.0

Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

APPENDIX 4B

NAE Survey Instrument for Employers of Engineering Technology Graduates

On behalf of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) is conducting an online survey of its employer members to learn more about workers with engineering-related education and skills.

The results from this survey will inform an ongoing NAE study funded by the National Science Foundation. Your participation is critically important to the success of the NAE project.

The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete, and your participation is entirely voluntary. Your specific responses will be completely confidential, and any information that could be used to identify you will not be shared with NAE staff or the committee that is involved in overseeing the study. In addition, any information that could be used to identify you will be destroyed within one year of the conclusion of the NAE study. Finally, you will not be personally identified in any public reports or presentations of survey results.

By clicking the “SUBMIT” button at the end of the survey, you are declaring that you have read and understood the information above and agree to take part in this survey. If you so choose, you may end participation in the survey at any time.

  1. What is the name of your company? [text field]
  2. What is your job title? [text field]
  3. In which states are the engineering-related divisions of your company located? Check all that apply. [drop-down list of states]
  4. Which of the following industry sectors best characterizes your company?
    1. Natural resources and mining (“natural resources” includes agriculture, forestry, and fishing and hunting)
    2. Construction
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
    1. Manufacturing (includes manufacturing related to food, textiles, apparel, wood, paper, printing, petroleum, chemicals, plastics, nonmetallic minerals, metal, machinery, computers and electronics, transportation, furniture)
    2. Trade, transportation, and utilities
    3. Information
    4. Financial activities (includes finance and insurance, real estate and renting and leasing)
    5. Professional and business services (includes professional, scientific, and technical services; management of companies and enterprises; administrative and support and waste management and remediation services)
    6. Education and health services
    7. Leisure and hospitality
    8. Other services, except public administration
    9. Public administration
    10. Other
  1. How many people are employed by the divisions of your company that do the bulk of engineering-related work?
    1. Fewer than 100
    2. Between 100 and 500
    3. Between 500 and 1,000
    4. Between 1,000 and 5,000
    5. Between 5,000 and 10,000
    6. Between 10,000 and 20,000
    7. More than 20,000
    8. Don’t know
  2. Which of the following best characterizes the type of engineering-related work conducted by your company?
    1. Manufacturing
    2. Design
    3. Maintenance
    4. Research and Development
    5. Field Services
    6. Sales
    7. Other
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
  1. Have you heard of a post-secondary academic program called “engineering technology” that graduates students with either 2- or 4-year degrees?
    1. Yes
    2. No
  2. In your company, do you hire people with any of the following degrees? Check all that apply. [check-box format for each answer choice: yes, no, don’t know] [Note: If “no” and/or “don’t know” to all choices, skips to Q22 and also skips Q27]
    1. Bachelor of Science in Engineering, 4-year degree [if this and/or b are the only answer(s) checked, skips to Q22 and skips Q27]
    2. Associate of Science in Engineering, 2-year degree [if this is and/or a are the only answer(s) checked, skips to Q22 and skips Q27]
    3. Bachelor of Engineering Technology, 4-year degree [if checked, to Q9]
    4. Associate of Applied Science in engineering technology (AAS), 2-year degree [if checked, to Q10]
    5. Associate of Science (AS) in engineering technology, 2-year degree [if checked, to Q10]
  3. Which of the following job roles would typically be assigned to an employee with 4-year engineering technology degree? Check all that apply. [randomize answer choices a-j for each survey participant]
    1. Designing new products or systems
    2. Managing the work of other technical staff
    3. Creating mathematical, simulation-based, or physical models
    4. Conducting experiments
    5. Conducting quality control checks
    6. Producing technical drawings
    7. Collecting and analyzing data
    8. Building or setting up equipment/technologies
    9. Testing or maintaining equipment/technologies
    10. Troubleshooting and repairing equipment/technologies
    11. Other
    12. Don’t know
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
  1. Which of the following job roles would typically be assigned to an employee with a 2-year (AS or AAS) engineering technology degree? Check all that apply. [randomize answer choices a-j for each survey participant]
    1. Designing new products or systems
    2. Managing the work of other technical staff
    3. Creating mathematical, simulation-based, or physical models
    4. Conducting experiments
    5. Conducting quality control checks
    6. Producing technical drawings
    7. Collecting and analyzing data
    8. Building or setting up equipment/technologies
    9. Testing or maintaining equipment/technologies
    10. Troubleshooting and repairing equipment/technologies
    11. Other
    12. Don’t know
  2. Thinking about recruitment of new staff with expertise in engineering technology, is the supply of skilled applicants sufficient for your needs today?
    1. Sufficient supply of applicants with 2-year degrees [choices: yes/no/don’t know]
    2. Sufficient supply of applicants with 4-year degrees [choices: yes/no/don’t know]
  3. Thinking about your current staffing needs related to engineering technology, what are the TOP THREE most important skills/knowledge that new applicants need to have? [randomize answer choices a-h for each survey taker]
    1. Knowledge of basic science and mathematics
    2. Knowledge of a specific engineering discipline (e.g., mechanical, electrical, civil)
    3. Knowledge across more than one engineering discipline
    4. Ability to see problems and solutions from a systems perspective
    5. Knowledge of the engineering design process
    6. Ability to work with tools and machinery
    7. Ability to problem solve or troubleshoot in new or unfamiliar situations
    8. Ability to communicate and work in teams
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
    1. Other
    2. Don’t know
  1. Thinking about your current workforce, do your employees with educational background in engineering technology have the right mix of skills/knowledge to meet your needs?
    1. Yes [goes to Q15]
    2. No [goes to Q14]
  2. What one area of skill/knowledge would you most want your engineering technology employees to have that they currently do not? [randomize answer choices a-h for each survey taker]
    1. Knowledge of basic science and mathematics
    2. Knowledge of a specific engineering discipline (e.g., mechanical, electrical, civil)
    3. Knowledge across more than one engineering discipline
    4. Ability to see problems and solutions from a systems perspective
    5. Knowledge of the engineering design process
    6. Ability to work with tools and machinery
    7. Ability to problem solve or troubleshoot in new or unfamiliar situations
    8. Ability to communicate and work in teams
    9. Other
    10. Don’t know
  3. In your opinion, which of the following statements best characterizes the difference in work performance between employees with 4-year degrees in engineering technology and 4-year degrees in engineering?
    1. Engineering technology graduates perform better when doing applied work, while engineering graduates perform better in the use of higher-level science and mathematics.
    2. Engineering technology graduates perform better when doing applied work, while engineering graduates perform better in doing engineering design.
    3. Engineering technology and engineering graduates are essentially the same in terms of work performance.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
    1. There is too much variability in the work performance of engineering technology and engineering graduates to answer this question.
    2. Don’t know
  1. As you consider your strategic needs for the future, how much will the skills/knowledge you require of workers with engineering technology degrees change?
    1. Substantially [goes to Q17]
    2. A fair amount [goes to Q17]
    3. Very little [goes to Q18]
    4. Not at all [goes to Q18]
    5. Don’t know [goes to Q18]
  2. Please tell us the one, most important new skills/knowledge workers with engineering technology degrees at your company will need in the future. [open response]
  3. [Q18 only for those answering yes to Q8 d and/or e] As you consider your strategic needs for the future, do you anticipate that the supply of skilled workers with 2-year (AS or AAS) engineering technology degrees will be sufficient?
    1. Yes [goes to Q22]
    2. No [goes to Q19]
    3. Don’t know [goes to Q22]
  4. Which of the following best describes why you believe the supply of engineering technology workers with 2-year degrees will not be sufficient?
    1. The overall number of such workers will be fewer than needed
    2. The number of workers will be adequate, but their level of skill/knowledge will not be
    3. Neither the number of workers nor their skill/knowledge level will be adequate
    4. Other [open response]
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
  1. [Q20 only for those answering yes to Q8 c] As you consider your strategic needs for the future, do you anticipate that the supply of skilled workers with 4-year engineering technology degrees will be sufficient?
    1. Yes [goes to Q22]
    2. No [goes to Q21]
    3. Don’t know [goes to Q22]
  2. Which of the following best describes why you believe the supply of engineering technology workers with 4-year degrees will not be sufficient?
    1. The overall number of such workers will be fewer than needed
    2. The number of workers will be adequate, but their level of skill/knowledge will not be
    3. Neither the number of workers nor their skill/knowledge level will be adequate
    4. Other [open response]
  3. How much, if at all, is the increasing integration of new technologies (e.g., additive manufacturing, advanced digital manufacturing, complex control systems, optics and sensors) into the workplace changing the skills/knowledge technically trained employees need?
    1. Substantially
    2. A fair amount
    3. Very little
    4. Not at all
    5. Don’t know
  4. Does your company have ways to inform educational institutions of your employment/skill needs (e.g., industry advisory board, industry-faculty consulting partnerships, industry sponsorship of capstone projects, relationships with career services personnel)?
    1. Yes [to Q24]
    2. No [skips to Q25]
    3. Don’t know [skips to Q25]
  5. Which of the following methods does your company most rely on to communicate your employment needs to educational institutions? Check all that apply.
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×
    1. Industry advisory board
    2. Industry faculty consulting partnerships
    3. Industry sponsorship of capstone projects
    4. Relationships with career services personnel
    5. State or national skills standards
    6. Other
    7. Don’t know
  1. Which, if any, of the following types of work-related experiences do you offer students? Check all that apply.
    1. Apprenticeship (paid vocational programs for certification)
    2. Internship (paid or unpaid, at your company, coordinated with the academic curriculum)
    3. Cooperative work experience (semester- or quarter-based work experience as an alternative to campus-based learning)
    4. Summer technical work experiences (paid or unpaid) independent of the college/university
    5. Other
    6. Don’t know
  2. In recruiting and hiring new talent, do you prefer candidates who have participated in the types of student work-related experiences, such as apprenticeships, internships, and co-ops?
    1. Yes, strongly
    2. Yes, but it is not a priority
    3. No
    4. Don’t know
  3. What challenges and opportunities does your company face identifying, hiring, training, or retaining those with engineering technology degrees at the 2- and 4-year degree level? (200 words maximum)
  4. What other information, if any, would you like the committee overseeing this project to have that was not covered in the previous survey questions? (200 words maximum)
Suggested Citation:"4 The Employment of Engineering Technology Talent." National Academy of Engineering. 2017. Engineering Technology Education in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23402.
×

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Next: 5 Findings and Recommendations »
Engineering Technology Education in the United States Get This Book
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The vitality of the innovation economy in the United States depends on the availability of a highly educated technical workforce. A key component of this workforce consists of engineers, engineering technicians, and engineering technologists. However, unlike the much better-known field of engineering, engineering technology (ET) is unfamiliar to most Americans and goes unmentioned in most policy discussions about the US technical workforce. Engineering Technology Education in the United States seeks to shed light on the status, role, and needs of ET education in the United States.

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