GLOBAL ENGINEERING STATISTICS

From BusinessWeek Online, this article describes a recent study into the validity of statistics that categorizes the US engineering profession as falling behind global competitors (particularly China and India). Although it does open some questions (such as what is the definition of an engineer in China?) it admits that the engineering profession is getting more demanding, with fundamental tasks easily outsourced, and key measures of research results (papers, government budgeting, facilities construction) clearly showing the US is losing the size of it's considerable lead.