Akhtar you gave the reason yourself, with even noticing, when you said our young engineer will earn $45,000 PA in his first job.

At this point our young engineer will be about 23 years old, with a considerable hex debt to repay, & will be having trouble raising enough money to buy the reliable car he needs.

The switch girl he says good morning to every day is also about 23 years old, & also earns $45,000 PA. She has no hex debt, has payed off a nice car, & saved enough money for a year off, for a trip to europe.

When she returns from europe, she will walk strainht back into a similar job. Her experience will be valued.

If, in 5 years, when our engineer has payed his hex debt, & saved some money, he decides to take a year off, & go to europe, there will be no walking back into a similar job for him. He will be considered "flightly" & unreliable, for quiting his previous job. His only hope is to find a similar job in the UK, while he's there, so his experience can be valued.

Now when our engineer goes down the factory, or on sight, the blokes he will be overseeing will often be 23 years old tradesman. They will have been payed to go to tech, a couple of days a week, to get their trade. If the work is in any way high quality, they may have a couple of qualifications, with all training payed for by the employer.

These highly competent blokes won't get out of bed for less than $80,000, & if you want the good ones, think over $100,000. Now, when it's done, if the thing doesn't work, or brakes, it's the engineers fault. Why the bl@@dy hell would any one be an engineer.

The author says:"Even better, make it “Emily the Engineer” to encourage young women into the field."

Why is that "better"? I worked in Engineering (Geotechnical) for over 20 years. In that time I watched "affirmative action" programs run by a couple of different firms, culminating in one firm (heavily involved in Govt consultancy) offering female graduates 10% more tham male graduates one year to try to increase its female numbers. Without exception those female graduates have left the profession, while there are no doubt senior male negineers working for the firm today who were passed over as graduates because they were the "wrong" gender.

In my experience, most women are not well-suited to the field and it is stupidly ideological to try to induce them to be part of it. Far better to encourage the young men who will go on to become senior members of the profession than young women who will do it for a few years until they meet Mr Right.

The author says:"At universities, the demand for engineering courses is in decline and many first-year engineering places remain unfilled"

And at Uni, Australian women outnumber Australian men by 3 to 2. It's not hard to see the correlation.

“ Emily the engineer” may actually result in a further decrease in the number of engineers in the country. It has been found in a number of countries (most noticeably in the UK) that a shortage of doctors in actual practice did not equate to the number of doctors that had been trained. Many of the doctors trained were female doctors who left the profession and did not return, and so a shortage of doctors has resulted that has to be made up by immigration.

The policy of many feminist schools to push boys into a trade course so that more girls can go to university has now resulted in a decline in the number of male engineers, who tend to stay in that profession.

The education system itself is almost 100% at fault for the shortage of engineers and science graduates. Very little fault can be attributed to the public.

A practical way to have engineering as our future is to have a strong industry-univeristy linkage or bondage. WE need to learn from the example of singapore where the curriculum for engineering students is designed in such a way that they spend full last year of their engineering education in relavant industry. This means we need to strongly realise that both industry and university have equal stake in promotion of engineering education and they should consider themselves as equal partners for promotions of technical skills and engineering education.

Engineers in industry generally do very well. I don't know of any with more than 10yrs experience earning less than 100k and several earning > 300k.

Many engineers simply apply the rule books, and produce standard designs, those that look further and innovate go much further and are greatly in demand, as they generally save huge amounts of money for their employers.

The problem with many of these brighter engineers is that with their strong maths training and problem solving techniques they often move into more lucrative careers. For example, several of my collegues are stock and derivative traders.

Also within companies, the path to promotion is within management and while they make good managers, they leave a gap.

The solution to retaining good engineers in the profession is to ensure that technical prowess is end and not a stepping stone.

I have a love-hate relationship with engineering, its been my bread and butter for the last 20 years. I never set out to be an engineer, in fact, maths was my worst subject at school! Yet, I went on to gain 1st class honours, a Masters, a PhD and two scholarships in Engineering. How was this possible? One day I finally saw the connection between the theory I hated so much at school and the practical, real life events occuring around me. Suddenly, it became real. As an engineer, I am in the fortunate position of being able to help, advise, suggest things that others are not able to see. If, as a country, we want people to be engineers then we need to let people know from an early age that engineers make it happen. Without us the world stops - we know that. It is not ALL about maths and physics but thats a start.