To summarize, all three felt my strawman was a little overstated, but not extravagantly.
Professor Connor said that there's always been a shortage of people who can
do real analog design, but that BS grads who had practical experience were readily
hired. Robertson noted that only a few schools have strong analog programs and
that alumni from those schools influence corporate investment in the school
and the hiring of new grads.
Fuller provided the concrete data that ADI's hiring runs consistently 40% BSEEs,
50% MSEEs, and 10% PhDs. He added that "an engineer doing leading-edge design
at ADI earns the equivalent of an MS degree every three to five years."
All three agreed that PhD or not, it's essential to get undergrads committed
to the analog path as early as possible. Each had his own comments to add to
that. Finally, Connor described a number of instances of industry involvement
that help undergrads become acquainted with real-world opportunities in analog
engineering.
The elephant in the room
One last word: Some engineers who responded to Electronic Design's 2006
Reader Survey worry that their jobs, in whatever specialty, are being outsourced
overseas. They fret that overseas universities are turning out graduates who
can out-engineer their North American counterparts while flourishing at home
on half the pay. Additionally, they worry that foreign engineering grad students
outnumber their North American counterparts in U.S. and Canadian universities.
This is a serious concern for code developers. It's a little harder to gauge
for analog EEs. At this time, Chinese OEMs, especially those pursuing higher-margin,
branded product models, seem happy to leave analog and mixed-signal chip development
in the hands of companies such as Analog Devices and Wolfson. An Indian VP at
a chipmaker with a large analog portfolio confided to me his impression that
Indian universities are still concentrating on computer science, because the
outlay for capital equipment for training costs less. (Well, that's my oversimplification
of what he said.)
Speaking of overseas universities, it is a fact that a combination of high
admission standards and early placement of young people on university and non-university
tracks tends to select for really bright people. What also happens is that the
unconventional thinkers and late-bloomers are selected out.
What about the perception of over-enrollment of foreign students at North American
universities, particularly in the grad schools? Opinions vary. The issue came
up at an APEC-conference breakout session last spring on the impact of China
on the makers of power chips and supplies.
At one point, Fred C. Li, director of Virginia Tech's Center for Power Electronics
Systems (CPES), stood up and provided the actual breakdown, by country of origin,
of CPES students. His explanation did not support the image of an institute
overrun by outsiders. On the other hand, people I talk to continue to insist
that this or that program is disproportionately populated by students from abroad.
These issues point to several questions that are worth considering. Is there
really a shortage of analog EEs? Is the shortage worldwide or regional? What
skill set constitutes an analog EE? How and where does one acquire that skill
set? And, how much is an analog EE worth?
See Associated Figure
See Associated Table: IN YOUR OPINION,
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE REASONS WHY ANALOG ENGINEERS MIGHT BE GETTING HARDER TO
FIND? (select all that apply)