ANSWERING THE CALL

AEROSPACE AND DEFENSE COMPANIES ARE WORKING HARD TO ATTRACT YOUNG AMERICANS TO ENGINEERING. WITH MUCH OF THEIR WORK REQUIRING SECURITY CLEARANCES ONLY U.S. CITIZENS CAN OBTAIN, THEY HAVE NO CHOICE.

The latest numbers from the National Science Foundation Science and Engineering Indicators show that although approximately one third of all U.S. undergraduate degrees are earned in science and engineering, the portion of those degrees earned in engineering have been declining for the past 10 years. Since 1975, the United States has dropped from third to thirteenth in terms of the number of 24-year-olds holding natural science and engineering degrees.

Industry and acadcmia say K-12 teachers and high school guidance counselors are the key to bringing more and better prepared students into engineering. "Wc find high school teachers and guidance counselors aren't pushing math and science," says Ray Hayncs, director of university relations for Northrup Grumman. "There are kids coming out of eighth grade who aren't encouraged to go for calculus." secondary school teachers, on the other hand, maintain that the profession hasn't clone enough to change its stuffy image and low profile. Many students don't even know what engineers do.

All this comes as a time when the country is looking for engineers to help strengthen its defenses. "We need to move beyond the 65,000 or so engineers we produce today to 80 to 90,000," says Isadore Davis, manager of engineering university relations at Raytheon Co. With defense spending set to rise 10.3 percent-one of the largest increases in the 2005 budget -the war on terror, the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the nuclear tensions with North Korea and Iran, the defense industry's demand for engineering students is likely to remain high. "Our technical capability," says Jay Snellenberger, manager of employee development for RollsRoyce, "is the engine that drives our economy."

Industry and academia have stepped up efforts to direct students into the pipeline leading to engineering programs. Companies involved in defense and aerospace work have a particular interest in getting American students into engineering programs. Most aerospace companies, Northrup Grumman's Haynes says, can hire only U.S. citizens because so much of their work requires security clearances only citizens can obtain. Northrop Gmmman's biggest customers, he adds, are the Air Force, NASA, and the Department of Defense. And much ofthat work is classified. Companies can hire foreign graduates of U.S. schools, but it takes time for them to become citizens and get security clearance. "We could hire a Russian national [for instance], but it could take five years for him to get clearance," Haynes says. "And during that time the person is useless to us."

In addition to increasing the number of high school students going into undergraduate engineering programs, aerospace and defense companies and academia are working to get more engineering students into graduate programs. "We have a big issue in hiring master's and Ph.D. students because so many of them are foreign nationals," IIaynes says. "We [the aerospace companies] tend to end up robbing from each other." According to ASEE data, the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to foreign nationals rose from 45.6 to 55.2 percent from 1999 to 2003. The percentage of master's degrees awarded to foreign nationals rose from 39.7 to 46 percent over the same period.

"Brain drain is a big problem and we're all worried about it," says Joseph Tidwell, coordinator of engineering and technical education for the Boeing Co. Recruiting graduate students has proven particularly difficult. "We hurt the worst when we go after graduate students for defense work," Tidwell says.

The United States has long relied on international students to fill its graduate engineering programs and stay in this country after getting their degrees. "International students for decades have been coming here to be educated and many have stayed to become the great engineers and technologists of this country," says Eva Pell, dean of graduate studies at Pennsylvania State University.

"We've had a drop of over 40 percent in the number of international graduate student applications," Pell says. Last year, the top research universities across the country experienced, on average, a drop of 32 percent in international student applications. There are a number of reasons for this, from the SARS scare closing Chinese GRE testing centers to stricter, post-9/11 security measures that tend to make foreigners feel unwelcome, and competition from universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. "For a long time the United States was the only game on the planet in terms of providing a quality technical education," Pell says. "That's not the case anymore."

Educators say that the recruitment burden isn't just the responsibility of high school and middle school teachers. "There is a problem at the university level in terms of directing students into graduate school," PcIl says. "They don't see the value of engineering, so many of them go into law or business."