This is the same problem we've had in this country for thirty years. My dad was on the board at M.I.T. and they became alarmed at the lack of qualified applicants from the U.S. back in the early 1970s. It just got worse during the next two decades, and the last I heard, only a small fraction of the enrollment in the university -- but especially in the engineering curriculums -- is engineering.

However, I am surprised that Japan is having this problem. You don't have to go back very far (1985 roughly) to find stories about how their schooling system emphasized science and how they did a much better job than Western countries, mostly notably the USA, in encouraging their students to obtain math and science degrees.

If you go back to the early '90's you'll find stories about how Japan was going to overwhelm the US economy. I think a certain Japanese company bought a US movie studio around that time.

http://tinyurl.com/6nqq4j

How can more young people be attracted to careers in science and April 16, 1997

The NYT article did point out that this is not a new problem, but in ten years it doesn't appear that Japan has been successfully able to head it off. After reading all of this stuff it seems apparent that Japanese students overall simply aren't interested in these fields.

John

Maybe it's just that getting a good engineering degree is long, hard work, doesn't make you rich, and has all the status illustrated by Dilbert (and too often the organizational frustrations). Much better to become a film maker and work for half the year and wonder for the other half how you're going to eat.

Maybe it's just that getting a good engineering degree is long, hard work, doesn't make you rich, and has all the status illustrated by Dilbert (and too often the organizational frustrations).

As I mentioned earlier, my old man was a red-hot M.I.T. alum. One thing he drummed into me is that an engineering degree was the way to the top, and he often would tell me of all the people running big companies who had Eng. degrees.

Over the years, it has been my experience that this is true. A quick Google search turned up this:

Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering

I have made no attempt to validate the claims, but a quick scan of the other Google hits makes it look like there is a lot of other evidence that backs up the claim on this site, namely that:

"The most common undergraduate degree for CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies is Engineering: with 20% of all CEOs (from 2005 CEO Study: A Statistical Snapshot of Leading CEOs"

Here's the Google search if you want to look at other hits:

CEO degrees

John, it's an interesting fact that what you say is correct, provided the individual makes that their career aim. But it's also true that most engineers don't go there, preferring to actually do engineering and gripe about pointy-haired supervisors. Whatever, it is seen as an unglamorous occupation and either glamor and/or money is often what decides where students choose their careers. I was always astonished that many of my fellows were rather vague about why they were doing engineering instead of (say) medicine, myself having made that decision quite early. These days people can be shunted purely on the basis of entry examination scores, not scoring enough for their chosen field or suddenly finding the doors to medicine (and social glory) open to them. Engineering is good fun, but I don't think that is the public perception.