Lack of Engineering Education Means Lack of Jobs

With or without a global pandemic, jobs in America fluctuate. Industries fall in and out of popularity. Employment rates bounce up and down. It's a constant ebb and flow based on myriad factors, many of which are out of the control of the general population. Though there is one area that the general population does control, and that's what type of skills are present in the American workforce. For instance, if a lot of people learn auto mechanics, we get a lot of auto mechanic businesses and a lot of people working as mechanics. We saw this in America from around 1950 through 1980, with an explosion of tens of thousands of auto shops and even more jobs available for mechanics. Currently in the nation, there is a gross lack of engineering education, which means that we also have a glaring lack of engineering jobs.

This especially impacts the economy around the climate change genre. "We need renewable energy sources!" some politician cries out on stage. "Exactly!" a few thousand people shout back in the crowd. Okay, so we need this. Well... who's going to be the one(s) to do it? Who possesses the skills necessary to build better wind turbines, or more reliable solar cells? Which Americans have mastered auto mechanics to the point they can make a much more fuel efficient vehicle that gets far better gas mileage?

There's a rush about climate change, an emergency it's called. Though when it comes to younger people actually learning engineering principles to help create tech and jobs to combat it, the world sure is taking its sweet time.

Industries Don't Build Themselves

Younger generations are often insulted as lazier and more entitled than previous generations. That's just how it goes. Though to listen to these younger twenty-somethings today, who shriek and scream about "climate change" and "renewable energy," there just might be something true in the criticisms they face. The fact of the matter is that very, very few of these young people shouting about changing the economy actually possess any skills to make that a reality. Instead, they believe that their vote has some magical, mythical power, and if only they elect the right person, the new green economy is going to build itself, perhaps coalescing out of old fossil fuel remnants. There is only an incredibly small percentage of these youth who know anything about engineering or even lower-tech disciplines and skills like PV cells. Most wouldn't even know where to begin on creating a generator that converts DC into AC for household appliances. Yet they sure do love to demand that the entire world change on their say-so.

The data is compiled yearly, and for over the past decade, young adults go to college and a majority study things like Gender Studies, Critical Theory, Sociology, Psychology, Nursing, etc. While these disciplines are fine, and some will even lead to good careers, the fact here that the entire nation will have to eventually face is that none of these disciplines teach these young people to create the sort of electrical infrastructure that they demand is built for them. Imagine that a person has an opportunity to learn carpentry, but instead they opt for learning about feminist theory. "Okay," we might all say. "That's fine." But now imagine that this person spent the next 20 years screaming in your face that it's your responsibility to build them a house because they don't know how.

A lot of studies have been done on this, and the fact is that America's colleges are operating like corporations now. Guaranteed, government-backed loans given to students, and students opting for the easiest possible majors they can take just so they can flaunt a degree as if they're educated. Well, when it comes to building an actual green economy, one engineer is more valuable than one-hundred Critical Race Theory majors. This is a message that will eventually have to get through to someone, as all of these graduates are having kids, who will soon end up in colleges. If they end up taking the same soft road, we'll be dealing with a perpetual issue of younger people demanding things but no one in America will actually know how to build them because even all the politicians will be some sort of feminist theory major.

People who learn engineering in college, especially geared toward the climate, end up opening businesses, and they need employees to hire. College would be a good pipeline, except the younger people who demand the most do the least amount of work. So, what we have is an America short on green energy engineering jobs.