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Print Edition StoriesFriday, July 31, 2009
Letter To The Editor
STEM will stay stunted until companies stop offshoring
MHT's Galen Moore: Hiring trends and opportunities
MHT's Galen Moore: Two differing web-based news business models
Interactive map of Greater Boston tech layoffs in 2009
Dear Editor:
This is an open-letter reply to Irina Simmons of EMC Corp. and her column in the July 3-9, 2009 issue of Mass High Tech.
As a mechanical engineer, I love my job. There is an enormous thrill in bringing into being something that never existed until I focused on the task. There is a similar thrill in sciences, discovering something never before was understood, and a like thrill in math, in proving a theorem that was previously unsolved. All these speak to the most fundamental resources — human creativity and curiosity.
All these subjects, however, are difficult. As Euclid once said, there is no royal road to geometry. Students take a rational look at the amount of effort involved and compare them to the reward. So let us consider the reward.
Every day finds new anecdotes of manufacturing lines being sent to other countries. Information technology, once the heralded savior of our economy, is also being offshored — with even more anecdotes of people being told to train their replacements overseas.
Companies are sending engineering R&D work overseas. In addition, bio/pharma companies are starting satellite R&D centers in lower-cost countries like India. Indeed, some hospitals have contracted out radiology interpretation, among other tasks, to foreign doctors. Nothing is safe: legal consultants and research houses have also sprung up overseas.
Simmons and the others carping about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education are crying crocodile tears, lamenting the crisis they have made themselves. Until our students can look ahead and see a future where some MBA-holding pencil-pusher can’t wipe out their job with the stroke of a pen — which would require companies to actually make commitments to their communities and employees in good faith and with real loyalty — the numbers of people studying STEM will diminish.
My own experience, fueled by two masters degrees and almost two decades of professional experience, tells me that properly-designed products made in well-thought-out manufacturing facilities can compete anywhere. This will never happen, though, until companies make the conscious decision to put forth the effort to do so, instead of being lured by the siren song of offshoring. Only then will we see STEM numbers come up.
David Hunt, mechanical project engineer, Nashua, N.H.
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