36% of Chinese Undergraduates Choose Engineering, Compared To 5% in US and UK (economist.com) 62
36% of all Chinese undergraduate entrants -- about 1.6 million people -- selected engineering degrees in 2022 (the latest year for which data are available), up from 32% in 2010, according to data from China's Ministry of Education. In Britain and America, which have far fewer students to start with, the proportion hovers around 5%.
The surge comes as China's government directs universities to focus on strategic industries and technological bottlenecks. Over 600 Chinese universities now offer undergraduate programs in artificial intelligence, a field the Communist Party vows to dominate by 2030. In 2023, officials started telling universities to overhaul their degree programs, and the education ministry announced an "emergency mechanism" to create degrees more quickly to meet "national priorities." Over half of China's young people now complete some form of higher education through 3,000-odd institutions. Youth unemployment reached 14.9% in May, driving students toward technical fields they believe offer better job prospects.
The surge comes as China's government directs universities to focus on strategic industries and technological bottlenecks. Over 600 Chinese universities now offer undergraduate programs in artificial intelligence, a field the Communist Party vows to dominate by 2030. In 2023, officials started telling universities to overhaul their degree programs, and the education ministry announced an "emergency mechanism" to create degrees more quickly to meet "national priorities." Over half of China's young people now complete some form of higher education through 3,000-odd institutions. Youth unemployment reached 14.9% in May, driving students toward technical fields they believe offer better job prospects.
Duh (Score:1)
Why would you study stem in the west when you could make more money posting cute dog videos on tiktok and feline vids on OnlyFans?
China still build stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
We stopped doing all of that in the '80s when the party started to lurch to the right wing. The UK stopped when Thatcher invaded the Falklands and used it to cement her power and begin a campaign of privatization and government cuts... in the same way Bush Jr would use Iraq and Afghanistan years later to do the same.
If you want more engineers you need to bring back those big government projects, what kind of don't pay off until you're too old to care. Sort where you are planting a tree whose shade you will never sit in.
Re:China still build stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Right! Just like Spacex! ... wait. Just like the transcontinental railroad! ... umm, wait, that was private industry too. Just like the cellular telephone! ... oh, that was private industry too. The Unix operating system! ... again.
I'm sure there are SOME government programs that caused a leap in engineering. The B2 bomber! The ICBM! Nukes! There we go. The aircraft carrier! Now we're talking. We need more engineers for those kind of government programs, right?
The last major project I can think of that was a successful government run thing was the interstate highway system, and maybe some feats of the Army Corps of Engineers like the reversal of the Chicago river and the levee systems of the Mississippi. Aside from that, even the subway systems in major cities like Chicago were private industry that was taken over (and run into the ground) by government.
Re:China still build stuff (Score:5, Informative)
NASA made many important contributions that we’re all currently benefiting from.
But it's still why everything is (Score:3, Insightful)
Collapsing before our eyes. I might be Chinese all right but if everybody listened to me, the world would be a much better place people need to critical thinking in order to save us and finally become an advanced civilization. I just discovered my mother was an anti-flosser.
It's like how we blame cell phones on everything wrong with kids and not the ludicrous amounts of pressure we're putting on them because we know the entire economy and job market is collapsing and there aren't going to be enough jobs ava
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NASA was the public arm of the ICBM program. It's always been a DOD program first, which is why once the shuttle retired, they did shit - because only the civilian stuff was left.
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The Transcontinental railroad was from the 1860s. I mean when you have to go almost a hundred years back to find a large project that you can say was private... Not exactly helping your cause.
And I don't actually know much about the history of Unix, but the cellular phone system was heavily heavily heavily subsidized by the government.
As for major projects, your house. The United States governmen
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Railroads were highly government funded. Railroads were given government land based on miles of track laid, and railroads made money by selling that land to settlers.
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Unix was developed at Bell Labs, which was a regulated monopoly that was incentivised by the federal government to spend large amounts of money on research and development, because the more money they spent on R&D, the more money they could make. They were literally banned from raising rates or making more profits until and unless they spent more money on R&D, and guess what happen? They invented the fax machines, the fucking transi
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The first US transcontinental railroad in particular was funded by federal, state and private bond issuances, plus grants of federal land. It was a public-private partnership except nobody had invented the fancy name yet.
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After WW2 people could see how well the government directing these large projects worked, and wanted more of it. In the US you had things like the GI Act that got a lot of people into new homes. NASA was funded because of the Cold War and developed a lot of really valuable technology.
Then in the 80s the people who benefited from all that stuff decided that it was unfair that now some other people were getting a hand up too, and created the myth that they themselves got it all through personal hard work with
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SpaceX would never of existed without NASA pioneering the technology and paying a lot of money to support them. The intercontinental railways also heavily leaned on government, huge gifts of land and a lot of government corruption. Some American Senators were referred to the Senator from railroad company (replace the name with an actual company). Phones have been heavily government regulated since the early 20th century when the government forced inter-operation, government even nationalized the phone compa
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“SpaceX would never of existed without NASA pioneering the technology and paying a lot of money to support them.”
That’s overly reductive. A more full context view:
- NASA tech? It mostly repurposed existing military and/or commercial tech (rockets, computers).
- And SpaceX? It applied basic “Henry Ford” commercial cost cutting to that same tech stack (single sourcing, in-housing, reusability, talent acquisition, cutting red tape, automation of bespoke processes, etc).
So NASA wasn
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you make a great case for why we should be pursuing national high-speed rail it takes a lot of infrastructure investment and would require more people be involved in the engineering to build high speed rail and the renewable energy grid to power it.
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As a licensed Engineer in North America, who also has a Business degree, having working both in Canada and in Europe, as well as having exposure to China through travel...
Engineering as a profession has the same recognition as law and medicine in Europe... In China, Engineering is neck in neck with Medicine. In North America and in the UK engineers are looked down on by other professionals and management.
When I worked in Europe as an Engineer in tech companies Management was made up of Engineers that had w
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Thatcher invaded the Falklands
Argentina invaded the Falklands. Thatcher did many things wrong, but defending citizens from invasion by a foreign power was not one of them. You can't invade your own country.
in the same way Bush Jr would use Iraq and Afghanistan years later to do the same.
Those are not remotely comparable. Those are both invading foreign countries, under false or dubious pretenses in some cases. The Falklands were (a) not a foreign country and (b) not defended under false pretenses.
The Argen
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Because that is really, really not the direction things seem to be going in China at the moment. Most of them are going to be lucky to get a 996 job on a factory floor.
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It's not because they build stuff. The US builds lots of stuff.
The problem is more cultural than anything else - the Chinese simply believe in education and an educated workforce. The US, well, has pretty much gone the other way, where intellectualism is seen as a major drawback.
So China celebrates their nerds, geeks, and other bookish people. The US celebrates their celebrities and sports heroes.
It reflects on politics too - being an intelligent person is considered bad compared to one with a lot of charis
What are the other 95% studying (Score:3)
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Re:What are the other 95% studying (Score:5, Interesting)
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I mentioned it on another comment but the real problem is that the kind of infrastructure you need to do what they're trying to do in that video is extraordinarily expensive and takes decades and decades to pay off. It can't be done by Private industry because Private industry is always going to be thinking about this quarter and
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Re:What are the other 95% studying (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok boomer. China is going to eat our lunch in the coming years. Have you noticed what car holds the fastest Nurburgring time? It’s a Chinese EV. https://www.carscoops.com/2025... [carscoops.com]
They’re every bit as capable engineering wise.
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Re: What are the other 95% studying (Score:1)
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That statement is false. The original company founded by the Wright brothers, the Wright Company (est. 1909), no longer exists independently and does not still make aircraft parts.
Here's what happened:
– In 1916, the Wright Company merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company to form the Wright-Martin Company.
– Wright-Martin went through several mergers and name changes, eventually becoming part of Curtiss-Wright.
– Curtiss-Wright Corporation still exists today and makes aerospace components, but
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"Probably French literature ..."
To get the chicks.
"La fille que j’aimerai sera comme le bon vin qui s’améliore avec le temps."
You speak French?
"Oui"
Re:What are the other 95% studying (Score:5, Interesting)
law, medicine, etc. than in the engineering or science fields
In the U.S. the hot fields for making big money are finance, economics, and business. Many of our best and brightest are staying away from health care (too much education required, too much burnout, and too much yuck), engineering (too much math, not enough jobs), and law (yay?), and instead chasing the easy money of Wall Street. Which is really sad because Wall Street produces nothing of value for society.
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The downside is that every time a line of work starts making a lot of money MBAs come in and get to work collapsing wages.
It's got a name, Taylorism. It's the process of identifying skilled labor and breaking it down so that it's no longer skilled labor and it doesn't matter what your industry is somebody is working on that problem.
If you work for a living instead of owning things for a living then one of the thing
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There is generally more money in law, medicine, etc. than in the engineering or science fields.
Law and medicine are advanced degrees.
Engineering is not.
Engineering is the most lucrative bachelor's degree.
Those who continue to law school, medical school, or an MBA are most successful when their undergrad degree was engineering.
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They're not really. They're professional degrees, just like engineering. It's not typical anymore in the US to go straight into medicine from high school, but lots of schools either require only a year or two of "pre-med" or have "accelerated programs" where you do a bachelor's degree and an MD at the same time. Other professional schools are often similar, requiring some post-secondary education before you can be admitted.
Medical specialization is arguably analogous to
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Well, ask yourself what is better:
1) Bridge does not collapse or
2) Bridge collapses, but there are MDs to save some of the victims and lawyers to sue for all of them.
Serves the hateful DEI universities here right (Score:3, Insightful)
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Time you got out of your woke bubble.
study (Score:2)
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And the Chinese aren't focusing on studying painting and poetry
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I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy... so that their children can study painting, poetry and music
Hard times create strong men
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
And, weak men create hard times
The thing that impresses me is the demand to create weak men is now a real thing. And a certain number of young men are rebelling against the socially demanded feminization.
p.s. This is not a denigration of being feminine. Just that is not a masculine thing, which masculinity is best reserved for males.
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Socially demanded feminization? What the hell are you babbling about?
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Socially demanded feminization? What the hell are you babbling about?
First off, here is Pubmed Government and their assessment of fragile masculinity. Is a Gov site enough for you? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov] But let us move to pop culture and the demands for the feminization of men- here is some stuff you should read.
https://www.resetbrainandbody.... [resetbrainandbody.com] https://datingfortodaysman.com... [datingfortodaysman.com]
https://www.herorise.us/integr... [herorise.us]
https://goodmenproject.com/fea... [goodmenproject.com]
One of my favorites, men must break down their masculine side, or they are not good men.
Now we get into itt.
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Painting, poetry and music? No, thanks. Sure, those that want it should do it, but I do not.
Well duh! (Score:2)
In the US, the prevailing opinion is that if you have a degree - any degree you are ubermenschen.
Part of how the student loan crisis happened. Parents and teachers taught this, and the kids just expected that with their degree, they were going to make a difference in a fast upgrading meaningful career. Where they were so
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My experience with engineers in China (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for 10 years in China with engineers. I'm one myself. This is what I learned:
Most go into it because they don't want to work with their hands. i.e. get dirty. It's not because they have any particular interest. It's for the money and social status. As such, ~80% of the ones I worked with were unimpressive. They do what they are told, nothing more, nothing less. Minimal problem solving skills. No curiosity. Your average US high school student would definitely know less engineering, but could do a better job without being micromanaged.
This isn't to say they were bad people. Some were friends. The system in China just tend to create a lot of these people. And if you are brute forcing a project and able to micromanage, it's a powerful resource.
The other ~10 percent were more typical of Western engineers. Loved technology, hands on, tinkered with stuff, curious, smart. And yeah, a bit nerdy. That said, the work culture still ties their hands. You're to stay in your lane. Don't question superiors. Do exactly as you are told. We had several meetings where it was explained that it is their job to call bullshit on me.
They liked that, but it didn't come naturally. There was one guy that was an absolute master at it. He was incredibly polite about it. So much so that when he started acting a certain way, I knew I'd effed up and just had to wait for him to politely tell me he must be wrong and could I please help him learn where he made a mistake. To this day, I still feel he was being sincere. Dude should teach classes in how to tell your boss he is wrong.
Anyway, just comparing engineering numbers in China and the US misses a lot of nuance.
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Interesting.
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A lot of people compare to Americans because we have a hyper individualistic culture and that results in a lot of people who will go out of their way to find problems to solve and solve them.
It does make us quite a bit more independent. The downside to that is it makes us less likely to work together harmoniously. So you end up needing more management to smooth over people's quirks.
Although that's a broad generalization I can tell you that
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> So you end up needing more management to smooth over people's quirks.
Is the ratio of managers to underlings different in China? ("tree spread")
As far as teaching phonics, what they find is that different students learn better under different teaching techniques. One-size-fits-all is a mistake. The problem is that it can take a while to find the best approach for a given struggling student. People over-extrapolate their own head into others.
For example, I'm a visual thinker, my relatives are professio
More a cultural rather than national thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Even in the US, the percentage of Chinese (and other Asian) students studying engineering is high, arguably comparable to the percentage in China. The percentage in Korea and Taiwan are also close to the percentage in China. This is a cultural thing much more than a national thing.
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social (Score:2)
Apparently, they are not counting social engineering as engineering.
Maybe it's the unemployment... (Score:3)
Computer Engineering - 7.5% unemployment
Computer Science - 6.1%
This unemployment rate is on the level of art history.
Other engineering fields are between 3-4%. Much, much easier majors are at the same level. Who wants to take a hard major when an easy one gets the same shitty results?
Most of my coworkers in computer engineering are H-1Bs, very few citizens amongst them, and we're not slowing down with that. Wages have stagnated for the past 5 years.
So yeah, of course kids aren't choosing engineering in droves. The other way to look at it is that apparently we've got all the engineers we need, either directly or via the slave trade.
Yes, this is good, but (Score:2)
Talent is real. Not everybody has the talent to be a good engineer.
People should work at perfecting the talents they have, not be forced into something they will suck at because of social pressure
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Totally agree with this - not everyone has the talent or the temperament to be an effective engineer.
Are 5% of the population able to cut it? I think that may be a little high, but a defensible opinion. 36% of any population? No way. Absolutely no way.
Not quite the terrible picture being painted (Score:2)
I have a huge amount of respect for engineers of every stripe. I know they’re super-important to driving progress for humanity. But they’re far from the *only* career that counts. Other paths are also valuable, and so I’m less worried about 5% vs 36% than this article is