One of my favorite books is Robert Pirsig’s classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values. In it Pirsig states that many times when we are faced with what appears to be a dilemma, a choice between two mutually-exclusive paths in which neither is optimal, the best course of action is […]

Read more "The Engineer’s Dilemma: Options for Graduates"

I’m an engineer. For as long as I can remember I have loved to build new things and take old things apart. As a kid I had an electronics kit and a chemistry set and preferred reading the encyclopedia to playing football after school. I taught myself how to program our Apple II+ while I […]

Read more "The Engineer’s Dilemma: Introduction"

For the majority of STEM graduates who end up working outside their chosen fields of study, the seeds of the Engineer’s Dilemma are sown in their university experience. But they are nurtured and come to full fruition as graduates begin their post-university employment. Employers exist to create profit, and with good reason. Profitable companies have […]

Read more "The Engineer’s Dilemma: Employers and Planned Obsolescence"

The majority of US college graduates who hold STEM degrees no longer work in their fields of study. These millions of career changes create significant costs for STEM graduates and their employers, and they hurt society as experienced workers move on to new careers and are replaced by less-experienced ones. To understand this problem we […]

Read more "The Engineer’s Dilemma: The Role of Universities"