In some of the recent understandable moans about the sheer awfulness of Britain’s state-controlled rail network – please don’t try and tell me it has much to do with laissez faire capitalism – several commentators have complained about the dearth of people entering the fields of engineering. Jeff Randall in today’s Daily Telegraph does so. Various reasons are given for this lack of talent: the education system, an anti-science, anti-technology culture, etc. While some of these factors have a part to play in this, I do not think these explanations get to the core of the issue. If railway engineers do not earn large salaries and the job is not seen to be worth the hassle compared with say, becoming a hedge fund manager in London’s West End, it is not a surprise to see what will happen. If or when the remuneration for being a new Brunel rivals or even exceeds that of being a Goldman Sachs derivatives dealer, we will get more engineers, and of higher quality. It is that simple.
Or maybe one problem is that railways, perhaps because of the problems now facing the UK industry, are seen as just plain dull. As Randall says, confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party, or for that matter, on a hot date. I am not sure how one changes that.
Johnathan wrote:
This is an excellent view, really, though it is confused in my mind by two things:
(i) How can there be a proper market for railway (track) engineers if there is (ultimately) a monopoly purchaser of their services? [Note: this is on the assumption that there is a longish learning curve for the job, which makes it more difficult to move in and out of that field of employment.]
(ii) How come the problem does not occur in France and most other countries with monopoly control of their railway systems?
This leads me to ask whether a shortage of (graduate railway) engineers is the real problem, or just today’s sound-bite excuse.
Best regards
I’m not convinced I’m afraid. German and French engineers do not a great deal more than their British counterparts (and engineering is an exportable skill, so an engineering graduate is not tied to wherever he qualified).
I do believe the fact that most Britons neither know nor understand (nor really care) that there is a difference between an engineer and a mechanic to be a factor. That is not to say it is the only, or even a major factor. People do however work for more than just money, so the low status of engineers in public will both discourage applicants, and it will prevent engineering being fairly considered as a career choice.
In a similar way, a good plumber can earn more than an indifferent lawyer or accountant, but the latter are the jobs people aspire to.
The failure, or decline, or stagnation of railways isn’t caused by the lack of qualified engineers.
On the other hand I’ve been told that in China there are tons of new, private colleges teaching engineering, as engineers are in high demand there. Haven’t heard of a comparable number of colleges teaching the humanities…
Maybe it’s got something to do with the rapid growth there vs. the stagnation in Britain and Europe.
My train wasn’t late once in the whole of 2007, even with a few centimetres of snow on the line back in Feb. I wrote to South West Trains to tell them this, although followed it with my usual moan about exactly why only people wearing suits are really expected to pay their fares.
As a periodic cheerleader for the impressive quality of my children’s state-provided education, am I just lucky or are you all a bunch of whingers?
actually – come to think of it my train wasn’t even late when the impressive rail engineers completely replaced a bridge in Kingston in a single weekend.
I reckon I’m just lucky.
You are indeed lucky Manuel.
Especially if your children have an “impressive” state education.
On Isambard Kingdom Brunel:
He was indeed a great man, but he did have a record of cost over runs that hit a lot of his investors very hard.
So even when he was right (and he most likely was right on the broad gage versus narrow gage dispute) people tended to doubt him.
I am no fan of Goldman Sachs (polticially connected credit/money bubble dependent financers that they are), but one does not have to be a fan of such people to think that the balance sheet matters.
In regards to what a train driver should say to a member of the opposite sex :
“I’m in transport”.
It’s what taxi drivers I know say, and well, yeah, not so good I suppose…
It’s not just the lack of CE Engineers, but the lack of skilled technicians / mechanics as well. Post privatisation, the contractors did very little operative training so in the years since, huge numbers of staff left through wastage and retirement, and were not replaced. The failure at Rugby was due to the lack of people to do the job, not a shortage of those telling them what to do.
In 2005, Network Rail instituted an apprenticeship scheme which is training >250 skilled men per year – but the first cohort is not yet fully trained. There is a huge demand for places, with a 10% acceptance rate.
An engineering degree is a 4-year slog, and for what? Does an engineer earn dramatically more than a policeman? I say this because I have several colleagues who gave up engineering for the Police service because they were so pitifully paid in engineering jobs.
What percentage of those with advanced qualifications are actually employed in roles utilising those studies? I recall reading a report that less than 10% of Phd’s do so, so perhaps those with MA’s & BA’s/Bsc’s are proportionately higher, but higher than 50%?
I’m not proposing that we employ humanities students as engineers on the railways, but I am suggesting that if there is a shortfall of suitably qualified individuals then the market will dictate an increase in their wages, which in turn will motivate a greater number of qualified individuals to return to engineering, the unqualified to take up engineering studies and suitably qualified foreigners to immigrate to the UK.
If none of this happens then the market is telling us that a shortage of engineers is not the problem with our railways.
We often hear moans about the plumetting numbers of individuals studying for engineering degrees and the impact this will have in the development of new products, etc. But engineering is not a scaleable employment, i.e. it’s not the engineers who are making the money on the new innovations. The engineer who put together the technical specifications for the iPod doesn’t make as much money as Mr Ives who designed the case to contain it; long live the art degree! 🙂
To put a few things together that are already in this thread. There is indeed huge demand in China for good engineers, and China is indeed attempting to train lots of engineers in order to fill this need. However, the quality of Chinese engineering training engineers is generally fairly low, and employers tend to be disappointed with Chinese trained engineers.
On the other hand, the quality of British (and French, and German, and Australian) trained engineers is high, and the profession doesn’t get enough respect (and, often, money) at home. The obvious consequence of this is that you can’t go into an expat bar in Asia without finding yourself in a room for of expat engineers. I know at least one person with an engineering degree who was working as an analyst for an investment bank in Australia who recently gave up finance and went back to work as an engineer because the money was a good deal better.
It’s actually a great time to be an engineer if you are willing to move around a bit.
The British Railway System… It’s acquired a reputation (deservedly or not) for being “a bit crappy”. What self respecting engineer would want to get in bed with that?
That higher wages would be required to attract more engineers implies that the British Railway System is on what pilots would call the “back side” of the power curve where decreasing speed required more power to maintain altitude. Others might also call this the death spiral.
My husband and most of his expat mates are graduates of the Farnborough apprentice/engineering system which Tony Blair in his lack of wisdom saw fit to shut down simply because lawyer/politicians especially those of the left leaning persuasion are clueless about pure and applied science.
But to get back to the expat Brit engineers and how they fared none of them seem to be hurting. In fact most of them are enjoying the fruits of remunerative and enjoyable careers. There are a few millionaires among the group, a few holders of patents on this and that, a successful novelist and if they do not rake in the mega bucks of city wheeler dealers they have the satisfaction of knowing that they have left their mark in some small way.
I am not sure how one changes that.
Make Atlas Shrugged compulsory.
I used to work for Thales Defence, a defence electronics company. There, the Senior Electronic Engineers and Senior Software Engineers were paid the same as the Trainee Accountants.
So when you hear of a defence project coming in late and being massively over budget, you now know why.
“…confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party…”
I cannot understand that attitude Mr Pearce. I seem to recall that our very own Paul Marks once worked in a not-so-fashionable job and yet I find what he has to say consistently interesting (if consistently pessimistic). The connection between job (and therefore money) and social status is fatuous. I have met people in my business (and plenty of others) considerably better off than myself financially and yet most of what they jabber on about is worth less to me than a monkey’s uncle.
Speaking for myself, I can think of many occassions when I’d have instantly chosen conversation with just a single railway engineer over conversation with a thousand fashionable-watch-owning, twinkly-laughter stockbrokers!
But that’s just you, Mike (well, and Jonathan, and me, and a few others):-)
Salaries in engineering differ a great deal depending on a number of factors:
– operations, maintenance or design engineer
– staff or contract
– industry
– discipline
Working in London as a contract design electrical engineer in the oil & gas industry is reasonably well paid. Working as a salaried maintenance engineer for the railways is probably less so.
The migration of engineers to the higher paid design engineering roles and industries also exacerbates labour shortages.
In an economy which is still largely command, China can produce as many engineers as the 5 year plans dictate, but what they’ll end up with will be about as useful as a million left footed shoes were to the Soviets.