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Dr. Wendelin Wiedeking, President and CEO of Porsche AG, spoke to a group of high school graduates recently and encouraged them to go into engineering and technical professions. Apparently, the number of students going into these fields is well below the number that are needed to fill the jobs in the labor market. The lack of new engineers coming into the field means that it will be harder for companies to develop new products and compete in the future.

I'm not sure how bad the situation is in Germany, but in the United States there are many reasons why people don't want to be engineers, starting with the fact that professional managers who run corporate America largely don't respect engineers. Technical people have an increasingly difficult time moving up through the ranks. The managers have seemingly decided in recent years that engineers in this country cost too much and that they can just send the work overseas instead, which makes it harder for engineers here to find work. In an employment environment like that, who would want to be an engineer? The Porsche press release with more of what Wiedeking said is after the jump.

[Source: Porsche]


PRESS RELEASE:

Wiedeking: "The shortage of engineers is putting our ability to compete at risk" 244 Ferry Porsche Prize winners honored at the Weissach Development Center

Stuttgart. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG, Stuttgart, and the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture, Education, Youth and Sport yesterday honored the 244 winners of the Ferry Porsche Prize 2006 at the Weissach Development Center. This prize has been awarded to the top school leavers in mathematics and physics/technology at the general and vocational high schools since 2001. With this prize the two partners want to make their contribution towards increasing the appeal of scientific and technical subjects at high schools in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

In his celebratory speech, Dr. Wendelin Wiedeking, President and CEO of Porsche AG, said that the number of German high school students going on to study a technical subject at university remained considerably lower than the number required on the labor market. "We urgently have to do something to reverse this trend as quickly as possible. Otherwise, the ability of Germany and its companies to compete in the international arena will be at risk", said the Porsche manager to the prize winners and their parents in Weissach. Although the Stuttgart-based sports car manufacturer has always been one of the most attractive employers for university graduates in Germany and is thus fortunate to be able to select the best from a large number of applicants, Porsche is also extremely dependent on the supplier industry and this has been facing an obvious shortage of new blood coming into the profession: "This is a very dangerous development", warned Wiedeking. "After all, these suppliers, who are often highly innovative, are the backbone of the German automotive industry."

If we do not succeed in encouraging more young people to enter technical professions in the long-term, the Porsche manager believes that this will have immeasurable consequences for Germany as an economic location: "Who will develop top, internationally competitive products 'Made in Germany' ready to be launched onto the market in the future if there are no longer enough young engineers coming from the universities?" asked Wiedeking. In addition, he highlighted that only engineers and technical scientists are able to develop the new technology of the future which could be used to overcome the enormous challenges ahead relating to climate change.

The Baden-Württemberg Minister for Culture and Education, Helmut Rau, also emphasized the importance of future scientific and technical graduates: "Our society needs qualified and motivated engineers and scientists who will secure the future of our country with ideas and inventions that they then launch onto the market." Rau called upon young women in particular to choose the relevant training courses and studies: "If we no longer look at technical innovation exclusively from a male perspective, then we make way for additional ideas, creativity and innovation", said the Minister. The preconception that women are not suited to technical occupations has been proven wrong in many other countries.

The Ferry Porsche Prize, named after the founder of the Porsche sports car who died in 1998, has been awarded since 2001.
Dr. Wolfgang Porsche, Ferry Porsche's youngest son and Chairman of the Supervisory Board at the sports car manufacturer, also spoke to the prize winners in person this year. In his speech, he recalled the construction office being founded by his grandfather Ferdinand Porsche in Stuttgart in 1931, which produced not only the Auto Union racing cars but also the VW "Beetle", perhaps the most famous car in the world, during the thirties.

His father, Ferry, was the first to build a sports car in 1948, which bore the Porsche name as its official brand. By starting series production of these vehicles, Ferry Porsche laid the foundations for today's sports car factory. "My father was instrumental in the company's success right up until his death in 1998 – first as the owner, managing director and head developer, then as Chairman of the Supervisory Board and later as an experienced advisor", said Dr. Porsche, praising his father's life's work.

The highlight of this year's celebration in Weissach was once again the awarding of six scholarships for internships abroad. The lucky winners were Julia Gentner (Kopernikus-Gymnasium Aalen-Wasseralfingen), Gregor Glomb (Lessing-Gymnasium Karlsruhe), Charlotte Gunsilius (Gymnasium Königin-Olga-Stift Stuttgart), Bastian Hettich (Lise-Meitner-Gymnasium Remseck/Neckar), Till Krämer (Rechberg-Gymnasium Donzdorf) and Florian Winke (Scheffold-Gymnasium Schwäbisch Gmünd). The winners have the opportunity to complete a four-week internship at one of the sports car manufacturer's sales subsidiaries abroad during Summer 2007.

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Monster

fantastic news for me, after i finish off my degree i am heading straight to Porsche and demand them to offer me a job.

BMW_Dude

This sounds like good news, I'm interested in doing engineering at university, looks like there will be plenty of jobs for me to go into!

Monster

There is a reason why there is a shortage of engineers. We are underpaid, over worked, over stressed. For the amount of stuff we have to do and know, we are not well respected. My ex-piano teacher thought engineers are those people who fix your car at your local garage. People aren't impressed when you tell them you are an "engineer", but if you tell them you are a lawyer or a doctor, they will be like "nice work". I guess these are the reasons why students aren't choosing engineering for uni.

My engineering degree is driving me insane. There are heaps of people dropping out of my engineering degree, becaues they can't handle it. After 3years of uni i look double my age, and i look pissed off all the time. As people say the only difference between an engineer and a psychopath is that one has a degree. I don't have my degree yet so guess which one am I.

Osnabrueck

I remember the Engineers at the German recycling automat company I worked for were always the guys staying late at the office, tearing their hair out. It was like the weight of the world was on their shoulders.

I start to unserstand situations like this more now that I work for a large company whose personality is driven by exeutive culture. It's sad really.

Germans are already leery of going through Uni to get degree X or Y because there's throngs of highly educated people graduating with nowhere to go. Why go through all the suffering to be underpaid, under-appreciated and quite possibly, unemployed?

warot

That's funny because if your piano teacher thought for a second, who do you think designed/engineered the piano? Not some random person with no degree. Pretty much everything you touch today, an engineer had something to do with it.

I'm a mechanical engineer and I'm starting to lose it with my degree. There's just so much competition. I read somewhere that for our university, 30 percent of kids drop out after the first year to do a business degree instead. You really have to be interested in this to be able to finish the full course.

Engineering alone might not be the best paying job, but it's definitely not bad either. I definitely recommend doing a masters in something else though, like business and law, then you pay will skyrocket through the roof. Me, I'd rather wait a few years, I'm really tired of school.

On a positive note though, the one thing that engineers have almost over everyone is job security. There will ALWAYS be a shortage of engineers no matter what.

BMW_Dude

I know that degrees are hard, but this sounds impossible!

Would you recommend someone doing engineering?

How much maths does it contain?

warot

Ummm... in every class...
It's not as bad as most people think if some of the stuff comes to you naturally. However, it is a sh.t ton of work.

Hypersonic

Engineers are the unsung heros of our industrialized world. It seems everyone wants to be a lawyer or accountant or has a business degree. Some of the smartest people I have ever met are engineers. Warot is right, an engineer likely had something to do with pretty much everything you touch. I think this shortage of engineers in the West could be great news for a country like India with so many highly skilled, educated, and motivated, young people.

Monster

I am studying mech eng right now. I would recommend someone to do engineering if they have a strong passion for finding out how things work, why are they design this way, and what ways we can improve these existing design.

It is 100% maths. Bascially everything you do involve maths and more. The calculations aren't the most difficult part. The most difficult part is to understand the theory behind it, and remember all the small details as well so you can apply the right method to solve the problem.

Just maths isn't going to help, so far in uni, i have done a physics subject, chemical subject, electrical subject, 2 computer programming subjects, 1 material science subject, 1 manufacturing subject, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, machine system design, and various engineering mechanics subjects. There are more but i can't be bothered to type it all out.

Alll subjects are 100% maths and more, you have to know your theory to understand how to use the equation, it isn't as smple as putting numbers in given equations.

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