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MAINTAINING FLEXIBILITY IN AN AGE OF STRESS AND RAPID CHANGE 67 different fields are sufficiently alike that the difficulty of "plugging in" to a project effort in a different field is minimized for a practicing engineer. These three mechanisms have enabled demand for engineers to be adequately met, in general, in the present era. There have occasionally been temporary shortages of engineers in specific fields; in recent years this has been the case in electronics and computer engineering. But, thus far, these shortages appear to have been rectified within a reasonable period of time, and before damage was done to either the domestic or international competitive strength of companies entering new areas of technology development. Is the Quality of the "Product" Adequate? The initial output of the engineering manpower supply system is, of course, the engineering graduate. Whether this human "product" is adequate to meet the needs of industry is a subject of varying degrees of debate from one industry to another. Clearly, in those fields where change is the most rapid and productivity is the most critical, the pressure for high-quality entry-level engineering employees will be most intense. Currently in the high-tech fieldsâ particularly computers and manufacturing automationâthe issue of quality in engineering graduates is being examined closely. The question of quality has essentially three facets: (1) whether engineering graduates come equipped with enough knowledge in their area of specialization; (2) whether, by contrast, graduates possess adequate breadth of multidisciplinary skills; and (3) whether these new employees are sufficiently oriented toward work in the "real world"â that is, whether they write and communicate well and are quick to learn how they fit into the organization and how to work productively on a project team. Different facets of the contemporary graduate are criticized by different industry groups at different times. Perhaps the only consistent criticism is in the third area, and to some extent the first, in that (based on informal surveys by panel members) new hires often require a considerable period of in-house training before they are capable of functioning productively, confidently, and autonomously in their jobs. Related to this is a criticism by some employers of the large math/science component in the educational background of their new employees. The objection is that the resulting theoretical orientation is impractical for a young engineer on the job in many types of engineering work. In a less obvious sense, another output of the engineering supply system is the engineers who move into new areas and new disciplines
