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Strengthening the U.S. Engineering Workforce for Innovation: A Time for Government and Industry to Invest in a National Competitive Strategy to Revitalize the U.S. Engineering Infrastructure for Innovation

1. Introduction

This is the fourth of four invited papers prepared for the special panel session of the ASEE- National Collaborative Task Force on Engineering Graduate Education Reform. This paper addresses the importance for federal government and U.S. industry to invest in a national demonstration project with innovative universities across the country to accelerate the development of professional master of engineering and doctor of engineering programs that meet the needs of engineers in industry in bolstering U.S. technological innovation for the nation’s future economic growth, global competitiveness, and national security.

1.1 Benchmarking National Strategies

Today, as the United States competes in the global economy, its industries are facing fierce competition globally. Other nations are challenging U.S. technological leadership by instituting national policies targeted on innovation. As the National Research Council (NRC)-Committee on Comparative Innovation Policy points out, Governments around the world are taking active steps to strengthen their national innovation systems and are recognizing that a capacity to innovate and commercialize new high-technology products is increasingly a part of their international competition policies for economic leadership.1

These nations recognize that developing their indigenous capacity for technology innovation is the key to their competitive advantage. Nations such as China have already placed into policy the importance of nurturing indigenous technology innovation as the core ingredient of their future economic development. As Alan Wolf, member of the NRC-Committee on Comparative Innovation Policy points out, China’s drive toward innovation has been an unmistakable message of its top leaders for several years:

“In today’s world, the core of each country’s competitive strength is intellectual innovation, technological innovation and high-tech industrialization.” [Jiang Zemin] “[We should give] priority to independent innovation in S&T [Science and Technology] work, take efforts to enhance S&T innovation capability, increase core competitiveness and [strive to make] S&T innovation with Chinese characteristics a reality … …We must aim to be at the forefront of the world’s S&T development, speed up the building of [a]national innovation system, …strengthen the coordination of economic policies and S&T policies, [and] create a policy environment beneficial to technological innovation, high-tech development and industrialization.” [Hu Jintao]

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Egbert, N., & DeLoatch, E., & Keating, D. (2009, June), Strengthening The U.S. Engineering Workforce For Technology Innovation: A Time For Government And Industry To Invest In A National Competitive Strategy To Revitalize U.S. Engineering Infrastructure For Innovation Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--5497