Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Maybe Finland has smarter students?
(OP)
Finnish Engineering Students Protest High Numbers
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's 40,000 engineering students walked out of their classes Wednesday to put pressure on the government to reduce the number of engineering places.
The students argue there are too many of them competing for too few jobs now that the technology boom has ended.
The boom in the latter half of the 1990s and the rise of Finish mobile phone maker Nokia sparked a surge in the number of places for engineering students at Finland's polytechnics.
"When the (technology) bubble burst, not a single step was taken backwards. The same numbers (of engineering students) are still taken in even though there is no work for them," said Sampo Hakli, chairman of the Finnish Union of Engineering Students.
Finland's engineering student intake has tripled over the last 15 years, with roughly a third studying information technology.
The walkout, large by Finnish standards, aims for numbers to be cut by 1,000 annually for the next five years.
Graduate unemployment is perceived as being a political problem in Finland, which has a relatively high number of college educated young people.
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's 40,000 engineering students walked out of their classes Wednesday to put pressure on the government to reduce the number of engineering places.
The students argue there are too many of them competing for too few jobs now that the technology boom has ended.
The boom in the latter half of the 1990s and the rise of Finish mobile phone maker Nokia sparked a surge in the number of places for engineering students at Finland's polytechnics.
"When the (technology) bubble burst, not a single step was taken backwards. The same numbers (of engineering students) are still taken in even though there is no work for them," said Sampo Hakli, chairman of the Finnish Union of Engineering Students.
Finland's engineering student intake has tripled over the last 15 years, with roughly a third studying information technology.
The walkout, large by Finnish standards, aims for numbers to be cut by 1,000 annually for the next five years.
Graduate unemployment is perceived as being a political problem in Finland, which has a relatively high number of college educated young people.





RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
They're engineering students. The solution should be apparent to their problem-solving characters.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
The "IT" departments I have seen are full of "engineers".
What do they do? I'm not sure. What does "IT" mean? I'm not sure.
The point is not the major but that these engineering students realise something is up. I thought it was interesting.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Information Technology is a broad umbrella and somewhat nebulous term referring to those whose primary job is to work with computers. It may be simply help-desk work or system administation, or network management. It could also be report generation, programming, database management, or software engineering.
The term used to be Data Processing.
Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
It sounds like the number of new students is mandated by the government. If this is the case, they have a good gripe. There is probably more to this than there appears on the surface but I dont know how their government works but I have a suspicion that the number of students is set by the government.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
I believe in Finland university is paid for by the government. Leading to high population to university graduate ratio. I'm sure the government or university could reduce the number of students.
I think in the US the students would have to protest to the universities. In Canada a university has to be accredited by the Canadain Council of Professional Engineering to award an engineering degree. In this way the number of students graduating can easily be controlled.
I'm sure there is a way within the states that this could be achieved as it is for Doctor's , etc.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
The medical schools also have individual limits on how many students they can accept.
In other fields in the US, the limits also are based on the school's resources, etc., and not by the US government. So a US student is totally given the responsibility to decide which major to choose, with only their own awareness of the job market to guide them...not some government agency dictating the numbers.
In Finland, it appears that a huge momentum of new students was the result of a boom in the technology sector which slowed faster than the intake of students - which may have been due to a lack of understanding on incoming Freshmen as to the change in job markets.
In the US, in the mid-80's, there was a similar "bust" in the oil industry where some universities entire geology and oil exploration departments simply dried up and vanished due to NO students entering a field that was bust....wonder why the Finn students didn't see this either.
QCE - you're right that it is an interesting subject - why they (the students) didn't respond with the market.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Ciao.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
If the youth of Finland (or any other country for that matter) are applying for courses where there will be no jobs at the end of it, then the problem seems to be in the students hands (or brains), not the government's.
corus
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
In my part of the world - much more could be done in helping high school students choose appropriate fields of study. Perhaps this is also the case in Finland.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
My salary is nowhere near what I was told it would be when I was a student!
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
flamby:
Funny how knee-jerk ignorant America-bashing comes off as insightful to so many. I don't know any engineers who expect the government to protect our jobs. Most of us expect our government to continue to allow the job drain to persist.
http://www.EsoxRepublic.com-SolidWorks API VB programming help
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Why would we our should we American engineers lower our wages? Engineers here are already underpaid. I would expect foreign engineers to get a boost in salary and live like kings and queens in their homelands.
You forget, we are engineers...that is a profound statement...we make everything work, from hospitals, to courthouses, to sky scrapers, to the most rural village well providing safe drinking water.
We need to be in control of our profession so that we engineers and the world can benefit.
Engineering in the states is trying to evolve into a commodity based service. It can not be permitted to evolve into a global commodity unless that is what we engineers want. A good question to ask is how do we regain control of our profession. I don't have the answer, but I will keep looking for it.
Bob
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Finland is a small economy as The Tick mentioned but it is a lot more than cell phones. They have excellent fabrication shops for equipment and can actually supply steel tanks to China cheaper than the Chinese can. I've seen the numbers more than once. The company I work for is actually hiring engineers in Finland (mechanical and process) to work on projects in Chile, China, Indonesia, Brazil, India, etc. We are hiring the same skill sets in NA for our end of the projects in the same locations.
Finns are very nationalistic and will do what it takes for their economy to grow so the student walk-out doesn't surprise me in the least. A brief study of heir history will explain why that is.
To respond to flamby, the Finnish government does protect their engineering jobs by investing in facilities to give companies an edge. One example is steel tanks (of meaningful complexity). Finland has one of the lowest fabricated cost in EUR/kg of nearly anyplace in the world. This includes Brazil, India, and China. I've seen the numbers repeatedly from our global sourcing efforts. Believe me, I've tried to prove this notion wrong more than once and occasionally I do. But there is a definite trend showing this to be true. The reason is there shops are very efficient and need nowhere near the labor to do the work. The only things that is hurting them right now is the high Euro.
Believe me, I am not wanting to move there or say it is better than the US, because it isn't and many of their engineers want to transfer to our offices here.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
OT:
Pretty heavy Finn population in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, too. Descendants of the immigrant lumberjacks. There were even some Finnish language radio broadcasts that I can remember hearing when I was young(er).
I dream of one day going to Finland for pike and salmon fishing. Maybe when the kids are grown...
http://www.EsoxRepublic.com-SolidWorks API VB programming help
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Universities in Canada and I'm sure Finland get most of there funding from government.
I would conclude that it is possible for the government to control engineering graduate levels.
Also in Canada engineering degrees are in a way controlled by the Canadain Council of Professional Engineers. In this way the graduate levels can be controlled. As my friend has mentioned in so many other threads - If Canada could only control the amount of immigrating engineers - We may have a control of the supply. And hence the demand.
It seems that the US has no control over any of the aspects of engineering supply. In this thread some people talk about the need for control of the profession in the Us and in others people say that the profession is controlled by the PE license. I happen to agree that the engineering profession from what I have seen is totally out of control in the US.
I would also encourage some people to read the thread about offshoring because there are a lot of engineers saying that the US government should stop job lose due to offshoring and outsourcing.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Have you been following the posts.
There are apparently no jobs and no reasons for the young to go into engineering.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Engineering enrolment is down in our engineering schools, so the future does not look any better from that prespective.
The retirement demographic from the baby boomer population is another factor that will start affecting the availability of engineers.
I wast just reading the help wanted adds in the Sunday paper. Almost every add had contained in it "MUST HAVE 4 YEAR DEGREE" I can say that there are a bunch of unqualified "engineers" out there, but that is not what we are talking about here.
As this trend continues, and if engineers remain a commodity, they will become an increasingly valuable commodity provided we do not lower our defination of "engineer" to allow less qualified people to practice in our place. This will happen all on its own, with little or no input from us engineers. If we could only get our act together, we would all be compensated for our true worth as engineers and not as a commodity much sooner and gain more respect in the process.
Bob
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
If that strikes you as crazy, well, it does me too. I'd have thought if your company needed 10 experienced engineers yesterday then any procative manager would at least recruit one trainee at the same time.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Shareholders and the board want to see increased profit in the next quarter. Employing graduates to replace retirees is the sensible thing to do for the longer term but it won't increase profit for the next quarter.
The last British car manufacturer MG Rover has gone into administration because of this short term out look. Oh and by the way the Directors were paid twice that of BMW Directors with a pension fund greater than their salary.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Sure its bad in some parts of the US but if your worth your salary, you can find a job in the electrical area.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
No IT and no telecommunications. I would not want to be in tele right now, its way to vulnerable.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
Welcome to the oil patch guys!
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
I can see the want ads now: "Engineers needed now for desinging offsea oil platforms and auxiliary equipment. No peteroleum experience needed. Ideal candidate should have experience designing rear seat supports in small sports cars. High salary. Call now"
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
If you want the stats for Canada, again I point you to www.geocities.com/martinsmoltenmetal/index.htm so you can see the overall numbers versus time for engineering supply into Canada. Here in Canada, the stats PROVE that there's a massive over-supply of engineers to the marketplace in the overall, general sense.
Does that mean that top-notch engineers with experience in a particular field can no longer find employment with competitors or change jobs? Of course not! But since when do you use the experience of the top 5-10% of the experienced members of a profession to generalize to the average, much less to those just entering the profession?
Does that mean that every company looking for an engineer anywhere in Canada finds exactly the person they want within a week? Of course not! There will always be shortages in some specialties and in some parts of the country. Not everyone wants to relocate their family to take a job in the tar sands of northern Alberta, even for a premium salary, even if they have the experience required for the positions offered. So guess what! The tar sands projects cry "shortage", while thousands of recent immigrant engineers work as factory workers or drive taxis in Toronto. Does that mean the oil sands companies are willing to train significant numbers of new grads or people outside their specialty, or to hire engineers whose English communication skills are significantly sub-par? The job postings certainly don't bear that out if it's true! Like most businesses, they'd rather just continue to cry shortage and hope the government floods the market enough to displace the kind of people they'll actually consider hiring in their direction. And they won't stop b*tching about shortages and lobbying for more supply until they no longer have to pay site premium salaries. You can be guaranteed that when the oil boom busts again, all those people will be back out of work and back in Toronto anyway- but nobody will be there to turn off the tap on the supply...
These Finnish students have the right idea. We'll always need bright young engineers to join our ranks, and immigration of skilled workers is of significant benefit to my country: but a government-driven over-supply from either or BOTH sources as is the current case in Canada is not in the interest of either the engineering profession or of these prospective engineers themselves.
Until every student who graduates from engineering has at least the OPTION to work as an engineer, and until every qualified engineering immigrant to Canada has a realistic chance of finding employment as an engineer if they so choose, we have a very serious problem in our profession. By the way, this IS the situation in virtually every other senior self-regulated PROFESSION in Canada EXCEPT engineering- we're the only idiots who care so little about advocacy and politics that we do nothing to even attempt to control supply. Until this problem is fixed, I won't be promoting this profession as a career option to any kid who asks me about it. And I'll be warning prospective immigrants to make their decision in full knowledge of the REAL situation rather than the hype. If they still choose to come, they're absolutely welcome, but if they can't find a job thereafter it's their tough luck and I'll offer them no sympathy.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
You are improving your arguement everytime. I hope you can improve the situation in Canada.
I agree with you but always find it funny that I get a couple of job offers a year without looking and everytime the company says that they are having trouble finding engineers. My company has also found problems with finding engineers. Also usually if a friend of mine calls me and he/she is looking for engineering work they 90% of the time have a job within 6-12 monthes. Yes 6-12 monthes sucks but it ain't so bad.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
The simple answer is "yes".
Consider educational establishments just like any other manufacturing operation. The law of supply and demand applies here as much as with any other organisation providing a service or product.
It is a proper function of government and education (or other regulatory body) to anticipate the demand and cater for it. In what sector of industry is over supply or undersupply appropriate?
What we see all too often is the situation where the wrong criteria are applied to university places.
If there is a forcast need for 50 engineers what is the benefit of producing 100? 50 of them will not find jobs and will have inappropriate training for the alternative available jobs. The jobs will be devalued and possibly some of the best students will not even enter that career path.
What this leads to are imbalances, too many engineers and not enough teachers or nurses.
It seems immoral to me that a wealthy country should so far get its forcasting so wrong that they need to draw on recruits from other parts of the world. The UK has been notorious for many years for recruiting nurses from over seas. Special imigration rules are proposed for other diciplines.
Poor countries provide many of the nurses required in the UK. They struggle to provide training for their students and then find these students lured away by richer countries who have failed to provide for their own needs. What does this do for the country that trained them? How do they recover their investment in training? how do they provide for their own needs?
Unless someone can tell me how this benefits the originating country, I tend to the opinion that the Finish Students are right to expect better planning from their governments and universities, as should students and industry in all countries.
Oversupply is just as bad as undersupply.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
This always just devolves into the two camps of the world:
One who sees that governments can and do fiddle way too much with society and economies and end up creating disasters - and that free enterprise and supply/demand can and will correct themselves over time...
...and the other who sees that governments should manage our lives for us and design our environments such that all will be well.
In Finland, it is probably way too late to go back to freedom (the first option) and so the strike seems to be the only option left.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
There are two ways in the US to limit the supply of engineers, and thus increase the cost: 1) Control the licensing of engineers (the PE license in the US), and 2) Advise prospective students not to study engineering in the first place. A student "strike" would not work in the US.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
I manage a structural engineering department and I can tell you that I just don't get flooded with lots of candidate's resume's.
In fact, many firms in our area are stealing engineers from other firms to staff up.
Now maybe in other disciplines there are swings in numbers but this is just the nature of the thing - there will always be swings in available candidates as students learn what the job markets hold.
In fact, I would argue that its the STUDENT'S responsibility to investigate what the market holds, combine that with their own personal aspirations for a career, and then make a wise decision as to what field to enter.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
or
If it is better for students to have the "freedom" to have no power to do anything about student enrollment.
Maybe the question should be:
Is it a better system to have corporations influence the universities engineering enrollment with cash donations or is it better if the engineering enrollment is influenced by university or government or students opinion on needed supply?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
However, I am forced by JAe's comment to wonder (and not for the first time) just what governments are there for?
In the UK it certainly is, or has been, the responsibility of government (The Department of Education) to make some estimate of the number of places required. Of course, i may have misunderstood this since the government subsidises (or subsidised) education to a significant extent. I know that my grandfather, when a civil servant in the Min of Ed, was once warmly congratualted on extremely accurately predicting the number of student teacher places required and provisioned for based on duration of training, proportion of teachers entering training and failing, proportion of teachers leaving the profession etc. In other words, exactly the sort of thing the Finnish student are deploring as lacking in regard to engineering places.
From DonPE's comments i guess this is not a universal approach and not universal in the UK, as i have suggested. Unless of course it does take place but is now totally ineffective e.g. when predicting the number of nursing places required for example.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
If this country (USA) had any sense (and balls) left to it all, it would put real restrictions on all the H1-B visas, instead of the farce that it is now.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
I think that most people in this forum do expect the government to supply them with a job and a nice salary. That is one of the main causes of people in this forum complaining about the position of the engineering profession.
- the government lets to much business go overseas.
- the government lets to many foreign trained engineers into the country.
etc, etc.
I think most people will not support a government that lets the unemployment rate soar. Although I've seen stranger things.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
I sense, QCE, that you work in a country where the government is very active in controlling, planning, and creating all sorts of economic and social conditions, such as a university. I'm not judging this here as to the value of such socialistic governments...just pointing out that this thread seems to be a series of posts that talk past each other as some here see the government as totally responsible for our well-being and others see the government as limited in scope.
For the students in Finland (remember them?) they are most likely in a socialized setting where they are complaining about the gov't mis-informing them, directing them into engineering, etc. and have no recourse but to go on some sort of strike.
In other countries where gov't is more limited, the idea of a student complaining to the bureaucracy about "not enough jobs out there" is absurd. Individuals much more responsible in these kinds of societies (at least they usually are or should be) and free enterprise reigns.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1995/11/art5full.pdf
On page 64 of the Monthly Labor Review for November 1995 it states that the low, moderate, and high estimates for employment by “Electrical and Electronic Engineers” in the USA in the year 2005 were 402, 417, and 439 thousand. Employment in 1994 was 349,000. The respective rates of increase were 15%, 20%, and 26%.
Next, go to this site:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes170000.htm
Note that the category “Electrical and Electronic Engineers” has split into three categories: “Computer Hardware Engineers”, “Electrical Engineers:, and “Electronic Engineers, Except Computer”. Add up the number employed in all three categories in November 2003: 70,110, 149,540, and 131,240.
The total sum is 350,890 for November 2003.
Total employment in 1994 was 349,000.
The net increase is 0.5%.
The estimated minimum increase by the year 2005 was 15%.
Are you SURE you want your national government to micromanage the number of engineers your universities may produce?
Engineers in other specialties can easily use these two documents to see how accurate the predictions were for their branch of engineering.
RE: Maybe Finland has smarter students?