by Russell A.
Vacante, Ph.D.
With the ever-increasing cost
of higher education and waning opportunities to realize a lucrative technological
career, many students, especially those who are U.S native born, are steering
their higher education sights away from a career in engineering. Among those students who do pursue a formal
education, few are actively seeking out courses of study in reliability,
maintainability, supportability, logistics and systems engineering. The reasons are many, however, they all boil
down to “there’s little perceived return on investment.”
Newspaper articles and television news programs frequently report on
the increasing number of students graduating from college with huge student
loan debt; a financial burden that follows them well into their adult
life. The repayment of their educational
debt and the interest incurred, in many instances, is large enough to adversely
impact their quality of life, e.g., marriage planning, purchasing homes, automobiles
and more. Exasperating as the repayment
of student loans issue is, the opportunity to find well paying jobs upon
graduating from college that will help to mitigate the economic burden of
repaying their student loans is on the wane.
While it remains relatively accurate that students with engineering
degrees often have a starting wage higher than their classmates graduating with
non-technical degrees, it is also correct to say that well paying engineering
jobs are increasingly becoming a scarce commodity. This is especially true for
engineers specializing in “the illities,” e.g., reliability, maintainability
supportability and logistics. All of this
leads us the next related subject to be discussed.
The cost(s) to run DoD cost and
industry profits have increasingly been the driving force for acquisition
reform and industry consolidation. This trend most likely began with The
Packard Commission (1985) report on management and decision-making issues,
gained momentum with the National Performance Review (1993) that
promoted the commercial use of standards, followed by the Rumsfeld’s
Challenge (2001) that underscored issues with an expanding DoD
infrastructure and advances in industry technology outpacing the need within
the DoD.
Most recently the Under Secretary of Defense for
Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, The Honorable Frank Kendall, wrote in the Forward of the Performance
of the Defense Acquisition System, 2014 Annual Report the following: “Most of the development and
production on acquisition programs is conducted by industry under contract to
the government. Therefore, we examine various incentive techniques to see how
effective they are at driving cost, schedule, and technical performance.” All suggesting that from 1985 to present the
emphasis within DoD has been to increasingly shift DoD acquisition and technology
tasks to industry, i.e., as means to reduce defense expenditures and remain on
the cutting edge of advancing technologies.
How’s this working for us at a time when other advanced and advancing
nation-states are graduating more engineers from college in one year than the
U.S. graduates in ten years?
As I have
discussed in a prior newsletter editorial, despite the numerous acquisition
reform measures implemented by DoD during the last thirty years, disappointing
performance, cost overruns and schedule delays remain a persistent nemesis of
the DoD acquisition system. The
migration of DoD acquisition, technology knowledge, expertise and
responsibility to industry, in many instances, has not streamlined the procurement
of major weapon systems. As DoD continues
working at bringing down the cost of doing business, industry is also on a
never ending quest to increase its profit margins. It is well known within the industry defense community
that senior technical employees frequently are among the first to get furloughed
as a cost reduction or profit seeking measure while individuals with less experience
and education are frequently retained or hired to assume the responsibilities
and duties of those they have replaced.
The goal to
make DoD more efficient while industry partners remain profitable is a notable endeavor.
However, to do so at the expense of formal education and technical training in
the engineering illities and technical fields in general is misguided. For
example, the on-going DoD sequester has significantly reduced DoD and industry
support of formal education and on-the- job training. This is occurring at a period in U.S. history
when the defense challenge from other countries appears to be escalating. This seems to be a counter-intuitive approach
to acquisition reform and national defense.
While the cost of promoting and supporting formal education and technical
training in engineering and related illities initially may be more expensive,
in terms of total life cycle cost savings, it will be proven to be cost
effective to DoD in terms of providing systems with improved performance, fewer
cost overruns and timely deliveries.
It is
important to note that lack of student interest in subjects such as reliability,
maintainability, supportability/ sustainability and logistics is not what caused
students to avoid pursuing an engineering degree. It is low wages, questionable employment
opportunity or well-paying jobs and long term, secure employment opportunities are
influencers for them to seek other career alternatives. Less focus on government cost savings and
industry profit margins would be good for the engineering profession,
educational institution and our national defense.
