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A Boeing 787 Dreamliner prepares for take-off at Britain's Farnborough Airshow. Polish engineers helped design the engines that General Electric is building for the 787.
WARSAW, Poland — Foreign companies flock to invest. Its balance sheet is the envy of Europe. Top university programs crank out graduates whom everyone wants to hire.
Such is the current reputation of Poland, which has continued to grow during the global financial crisis as neighboring countries decline, lining itself up for a strong run to become the continent’s next economic powerhouse.
General Electric officials say they haven’t for a moment regretted basing one of their global design centers here, where Polish engineers helped create the new GEnx engine for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. (NBC News is owned by NBCUniversal. Comcast Corporation owns a controlling 51 percent interest in NBCUniversal, with General Electric holding a 49 percent stake.)
“In 2000, we ended the year with 11 engineers,” said G.E.’s human-resources director in Warsaw, Kinga Zalucka. “Today, we have 1,300 engineers. I think it was a good choice.”
How has Poland pulled off this feat of economic magic? Observers say it’s not just about the low labor costs compared to neighboring Germany, or the boon of a currency freed from the struggling Euro. They point to an impressive, decade-long campaign to raise the quality of secondary and university education.
As early as 1999, policymakers were planting the seeds for growth, adding a year of secondary education and extra language instruction for all students before tracking them onto professional or vocational paths. By 2003, Poland had vaulted past the United States and most of Europe on the reading section of the Programme for International Student Assessment exam.
“Students needed more in general education, including subjects like math, in order to help them stay flexible and navigate the labor market later on,” said Nina Arnhold, a senior education specialist at the World Bank, referring to Poland’s strategy. “It made a huge difference.”
University enrollment has quintupled since the 1990s, with private-university enrollment now accounting for around 25 percent of the total. According to Eurostat, the proportion of Polish young people (aged 25 to 34) with college degrees has jumped from 15.0 to 37.4 percent since 2001.
Those reforms have helped Poland gain a clear edge in the global race for engineering talent. In one survey by McKinsey & Company, human-resources directors said the proportion of Polish graduates prepared to work in multinational environments was at least double that of their peers in China and India.
“It’s a modern, dynamic system,” said Arnhold. “They did many things right.”
These days, Polish universities are increasingly exercising their newfound autonomy under the country’s higher education laws, particularly in the fast-growing energy sector. And the central government continues to provide a boost for key industries such as nuclear power.
“Especially in the last two or three years, the state is paying fellowships to students to enter these studies,” said Marek Kwiek, director of the Center for Public Policy Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. “It’s an enormously popular movement.”
The challenge now is to keep the ball rolling, despite a host of potential problems. Birth rates have plummeted since the 1980s. While the Polish economy grew by 4.3 percent in 2011, virtually all of the country’s European trading partners are slipping into recession. Unemployment stands at nearly 13 percent, and many investors still complain of stiff bureaucratic hurdles.
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Kwiek said officials “took very seriously” the criticism in 2007 from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development that Polish universities weren’t adequately preparing graduates for the labor market or helping to retrain existing workers.
“The relationships, the links with industry are [now] very close,” he said, citing the growth of the information-technology industry in cities like Poznań and Kraków. “But there are also bad examples such as the arts and humanities, where universities are still offering curriculums that are not providing good jobs.”
And even within the IT sector, some say universities must do more. It’s one thing to attract offshore investments, but quite another to develop homegrown industry and brands with global appeal.
“Universities should be closer to business, and there should be much more project- and team-work,” said Piotr Wilam, an Oxford-educated partner with Innovation Nest, a $12 million seed fund for IT startups in Kraków. “They are very stagnant.”
Boom town
In many ways, Kraków is a microcosm of Poland’s promise.
Tom Marshall / The Hechinger Report
Piotr Wilam
The city has been a hotbed of innovation since medieval times. Copernicus himself walked these cobbled streets, crafting mathematical formulas by candlelight and inspiring countless other scholars to make their livings by wit rather than brawn.
Today, that flickering light comes from laptops, and math skills are often parlayed into software code.
Foreign-based employers say they’ve been delighted with the quality of Polish graduates, who leave university with a strong base in mathematics and basic programming. Google, Motorola and IBM are just the biggest names in the rush of Western companies to open development labs here.
But lately those companies are competing for graduates with a flurry of homegrown startups.
“There is lots of energy, and there is a community,” said Wilam. “What is really happening right now is people are starting to think more globally. Five years ago, the Polish market was big enough.”
Sitting in his company’s sleek offices overlooking the Vistula River, it’s easy to imagine Kraków as the sort of place where ideas flow. But Wilam said Polish secondary schools and universities need to reach beyond the outsourcing model for inspiration. That means lecturing less, revamping courses and finding more professors with real-world experience.
Piotr Nedzynski, a 30-year-old software entrepreneur in Kraków, said he learned nothing about “source control” — tracking different versions of software code — while studying at the well-regarded AGH University of Science and Technology. It wasn’t until he started working abroad for a Danish software firm that he picked up that critical knowledge, and saw firsthand how Western European students had been trained to think on their feet.
“In Poland, when a teacher asks a question, everyone is silent,” Nedzynski said.
Full international coverage from NBC News
Szymon Piwowarski, a group leader at G.E.’s Engineering Design Center in Warsaw, said it would be helpful for universities to add a half-year of practical work to their programs, or to make greater use of case studies.
“For many years, they’ve been teaching the same material — without much connection to the manufacturing process,” he said. “Have they ever talked to the guys on the shop floor?”
Some university officials say they’re working to correct that problem, with prompting from a new higher-education law that forces them to specify learning objectives — an approach also gaining traction in the United States — and make curricula more relevant.
“The university is producing people who don’t know how to cooperate with other colleagues,” said Andrzej Mania, vice-rector for educational affairs at Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
Senior professors can be just as resistant, he said. But the university is taking the long view and focusing its reform efforts on professors in their 30s and 40s.
“Something has to be done, and we are doing it,” Mania said. “We are transforming our system to define education in a completely different way.”
Uncertain targets
Some corners of academia are changing at a speed that would have amazed Poland’s old Communist Party bosses.
Tom Marshall / The Hechinger Report
Stanislaw Nagy
“We have increased the number of students by 50 percent compared to 10 years ago,” said Stanisław Nagy, head of the gas engineering department at AGH University. “Generally, about 100 students graduate from the department per year. This is a large number. Maybe next year we will open unconventional gas engineering also, and grow to 125.”
That boom is being driven by shale gas—Europe’s largest potential reserves, enough to fuel Poland’s growing economy and free it from a troublesome dependence on Russian natural gas.
Foreign companies like Chevron have jumped at the opportunity, signing training or research deals with AGH and hiring many students in the midst of their studies. The university is also planning new programs to help mid-career workers—the parents of current students—update their skills.
There is reason for caution, though. ExxonMobil abandoned its shale gas hopes in Poland after two exploratory wells failed, and a government survey concluded that much of the country’s reserves will be difficult to exploit.
“There are lots of obstacles,” Nagy said. But even if Poland’s more than 100 exploratory wells don’t pan out over the next few years, the university will gain expertise in areas like coal-based methane gas technology, he said. “We definitely plan to be a big innovation center in this area.”
Poles speak passionately of the need to free themselves of dependence on Russian natural gas imports, which supply 13 percent of the country’s energy needs. In 2009, and briefly again in 2011, those supplies were disrupted in a dispute with Ukraine. Poland also faces pressure under European Union agreements to develop renewable energy sources and wean itself from a dependence on carbon-intensive coal.
More Europe coverage from NBC News
Even nuclear power is on the table, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan and neighboring Germany’s decision to close all of its nuclear plants within the next decade. Poland is still moving forward with plans to build its first reactor by 2024.
At the Warsaw University of Technology, about 80 students have graduated over the last two years with degrees in nuclear engineering, said Miroslaw Lewinski, director of the nuclear energy department at the Ministry of Economy. And it’s the central government that is doing the prodding, offering student scholarships and training in France for professors.
“This is the way to push the higher-education system to react to the needs of the market,” Lewinski said.
He predicted a “disaster” if politics or a series of anti-nuclear referenda derail the country’s latest attempts at energy self-sufficiency. (Residents of Gąski, a village on the Baltic Sea coast, voted overwhelmingly against building a nuclear plant in their backyard earlier this year.)
“We have to install nuclear power stations in Poland,” said Tomasz Szmuc, vice rector for science at AGH University. “There is no chance to go back from this way.”
But officials say some students are hesitating to enter the field out of fear the government may change its plans.
“We need a clear declaration from our government,” said Szmuc. “Studying is an investment in the future.”
Tomasz Wisniewski knows all about such investments. As a newly minted graduate in nuclear engineering back in 1983, he thought his career plans were rock-solid. But six years later, with the end of Communist rule, Poland’s partially built nuclear plants were mothballed.
These days, he’s an associate professor in heat engineering at the Warsaw University of Technology, and at the forefront of efforts to develop renewable energy sources. He still supports nuclear power, but thinks more attention—and funding—ought to be devoted to wind, bio-gas and other sources.
Tom Marshall / The Hechinger Report
Martin Bugaj, a nuclear engineering student at Warsaw University of Technology.
Wisniewski has sent dozens of students to Iceland in an EU-funded partnership with the School for Renewable Energy Science there, and many have found good jobs back in Poland. Research shows huge potential in Poland to develop local bio-mass boilers to heat buildings, allowing agricultural areas to use refuse efficiently. But so far, policymakers have paid scant attention.
“The system is not so flexible,” Wisniewski said, describing the country’s scattered university offerings.
One of his students, Martin Bugaj, is crossing his fingers. The 25-year-old will soon finish his own degree in nuclear engineering. But in recent months he has begun exploring other options like renewable energy and heat-pump technology, just in case Poland changes course.
“I am nervous, but not about my future,” Bugaj said. “I have two ways to go, nuclear and renewable. Now, yes, I am developing both plans.”
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University. It is one in a series focused on what the United States can learn about higher education from other countries.
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Leave a Comment:
Maybe Moldavia could be Europe's next economic powerhouse. What gives? Are you starved for news?
It's nice seeing Poland get back on their feet.
I would like to know how much a Polish engineer gets in salary vs. a US engineer, or a German engineer?
That's a trick question. The American engineers make the least of any engineer.
Moldova, IMHO ? I don't think so.
GDP per capita: Poland - $20,200, Moldova - $3,400 (CIA World Factbook).
I think that it is news because of the fact that at the national level, the polish government consider education a concerning factor at the nation level. Either that or somehow, the parents and teachers have found a way to raise education as a policy issue at the national level of Poland. Plus, Poland is "eastern europe" or former ussr. And so it has to compete with france, england, germany for good EU jobs. What i am thinking is do other EU countries like Italy or Spain put out same number of engineers? Why big changes in Poland and not expected from Spain or Italy? --OR it exists as is because EU is not really unify EU like smelling chaos in the EU union and smelling the pecking order or something like that?
Read the details, they didn't just encourage college degrees, they encouraged them in fields with practical applications. Americans just love liberal art degrees that are damn near useless in the real world. Need to get back to education with a J.O.B. as the goal, not just a way to spend 4 years wasting daddy's money to be an educated waiter.
Starved for news? That sounded a bit arrogant. This should be testament to why the US had better invest in our education system and make it more affordable. We have slipped way down the ladder in math and science against the rest of the industrialized nations. In the mid 1970s, the US ranked #1 in science and #2 in math. Now we rank 17th and 24th respectively (these numbers could be wrong, but they're very close) and our reading skills have dropped as well.
We can cut taxes for wealthy people and corporations (some of which pay negative taxes) get subsidized and then we spend near $700b on defense, more than the next 13 wealthiest nations after the US combined, yet the GOP wants to cut pell grants, raise student interest rates and reduce spending on public schools and universities. Funny how for profit college programs, which are mostly junk, can make a killing getting bankrolled by US tax payers.
If we don't begin to reverse this trend, we'll lose the best of the best and we still have the finest universities in the world. That won't last much longer.
I guess is time to start thinking in our future, with our teachers more focus in social issues and social studies not in science and math, to many graduated students are looking for easy way to get a degree , mostly in "liberal Arts" , at the end it lead us to disadvantage position in this globalized and competitive world. Government must shift their focus in to what the future will demand, promote that kind of degrees and bring us back to a leadership position. Cost of tuition is another factor, but none of the Government past or present have done anythig to make more affordable the College Education. Lower rate in students loans is not much help forstudents and parents , we need lower tuition competitive with other nations.
For the past 30 years the number of affordable technical colleges offering degrees in engineering has gone down. The average middleclass student simply cannot afford colleges offering degrees in engineering, so students opt for business, social service, and educational degrees. To make matters worse, companies hiring engineers, now outsource to India et cetera, or insource from India et cetera to increase profits.
I saw in an article yesterday that Poland just purchased 16 septic tanks. As soon as they learn to drive them they will invade Russia :)
Good for Poland. They are encouraging education in fields that will lead to jobs and economic growth.
Meanwhile, in the United States, they get college degrees in subjects that have little application in the modern job market, and leave the graduates with massive debt (now that the government makes the loans with no oversight).
Tommy6860 " This should be testament to why the US had better invest in our education system and make it more affordable"
We spend plenty on education - that's not the problem.
The REAL problem is that we do not allocate our education resources to fields where there is a demand, like engineering and the sciences. We waste $Billions turning out graduates without skills in the professions of the future, and saddle them with massive debt that they can't afford.
Even Poland can afford to have a national healthcare system where everybody is insured - but not US...
Perhaps things like this, smaller countries doing so well d/t stiffer demands of their educational programs & students, could serve as a sort of "wake-up" call to the U.S., much like the launching of Sputnik a generation ago did, to spur a new drive toward excellence & regain our place as leaders in science & math.
Honestly, though, I'm not holding my breath on this idea taking root.
Yeah well the majority of people are tired of being jerked around and told they have to learn a new profession every 10-15 years or that the profession they already were trained in is now obsolete. People aren't interested in this nationalistic BS about trying to outproduce some other far away nation. F
rankly, as someone who has spent the better part of their life in school of one kind of another, the amount of education needed just to have a semi decent job in this world is absolutely ridiculous. 13 years + 4 years undergrad - and if you're in business you can expect that eventually your employer will want you to get an advanced degree of some kind. So right there thats about 20 years of study for just a decent wage. And then take on the studying you'll need for CPA certification, or some other professional designation. Yeah, its ridiculous.
Eventually people will realize that the economic system they live under is not working in their interest and it'll be overthrown. We might not be there yet, but there are signs things are starting to come apart. The fact that tens of millions of people either refuse to work or need a xanax just to get through the day are signs that the end might be coming...
MHeurt...
Americans just love liberal art degrees that are damn near useless in the real world...
Exactly...even though this is not liberal arts, how many "environmental engineers" does this country really need anyway? The only entity that hires them is the US government. Go into any small western town and the nicest building with the most new SUV's and pickups in the parking lot is the US Forest Service. Thanks to the American taxpayer, these folks get paid very well to scrape bark off trees and study bear sh*t...
Travis,
You sound burned out.
Polish engineers may be great and the Polish school system may produce some wonderfully educated people but America is where it's at: We have the biggest gamblers on Wall Street, entertainment and sports are the money makers, not engineering.
We just need to figure out how to get 10% of our population working on wall street, 50% in sports and 50% in entertainment then we would have 110% employment making millions every year. Even better we could close all schools and save that much more. Move over Poland, production means nothing without our financing and you coming here for our entertainment.
sweet, yet another country I need to add to my list of possible future places to call home. its time.
tommy
please cite a source..ty
You had me going until I read the second paragraph.
Good use of irony to make a point.
yet the GOP wants to cut pell grants, raise student interest rates and reduce spending on public schools and universities
Well, hell yes and I certainly hope so!
Pell Grants has more than doubled in the last three years, turning the program, with its $36.6 billion price tag in 2011, into one of the federal government's most expensive -- larger than eight cabinet agencies -- and making it an almost inevitable target at a time of growing concern about runaway federal budget deficits.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/03/15/proposals_to_restrict_pell_spending_have_supporters_accepting_need_for_change
I had to pay for my education, why should my tax dollars go to subsidize
someoneeveryone else?This Administration is now *giving* away TWICE NASA's budget. Every year. WTF?
Could the US be the next Greece?
alan
We are trying very hard to achieve that . Debt ceiling , fiscal cliff , and the selling off of our industry along with huge treks of our country. YES WE ARE WELL ON OUR WAY !!
To prove my point.
China has already spent 2.5 billion dollars buying up industry this year ( 2012 ) alone. Let alone the amount of acreage other foreign investors have bought up. Real estate , unfinished subdivisions are hot . The Saudi-es are buying them up.
Correction !!!
Make that 10.5 billion invested by China. Sorry about the mistake.
bob
If we keep doing Austerity like them, we will be.
Comparing us to Greece shows a fundemental misunderstanding of both economies. Foremost, Greece lacks a soverign currency. Moreover, the US soverign currency is a fiat currency. The reason the US hasn't seen such trouble as Greece, Spain, etc is because we haven't fallen lock, stock, barrel for austerity.
It's nice seeing Poland get back on their hands.
What?
It's a joke.
Good for Poland. They make the worlds prettiest people and they make them smart too.
Way to go Poland ! Where is the U.S. in all of this ??
More worried about legalizing pot, gay marriage and taking care of slackers who don' t want to work or get an education.
Notice where companies go for needed talent and to make things. Not here !!
As a nation we deserve to fail !!
Where is the USA in all of this?
Haven't you heard; diversity and Political Correctness makes us strong.
Another good one; It's all the fault of the GOP(so the weak links, the 47%ers of the USA claim)
Good Ol' Dog
Don't be so harsh, but in some way you are right , we are in decline as a society. Another WWII will put us back on track.
take your white asses to poland...bitches!!!!
worried about some black president being an" AMERICAN",telling a women she HAS to birth her rapist's baby,pissed off cause his name is HUSSEIN,pissed off cause there's neggras living in the WHITE HOUSE.I could go on and on ......
OH MY GOD! Douglas Oats, you will have a lot of explaining to do. you filthy ............please ban this person fast!!
Birth rates have plummeted in a so-called 90% Catholic country? Educated women tend to have smaller familes. I love it. Congratulations Poland.
We coud get going again in the USA if it wasnt for the republicans and their BS!
Socialist and the don't care about science, they care about social changes , gay marriage , marijuana,take down the rich, destroy evil corporations, destroy evil banks, redistribution of wealth , increase the size of the government, promote a welfare country, create more regulations, more unions, attach our values, divide our country .....science and Math ....what is that?
Really?
redvirginia,
I've read several of your posts today. You seem to have a lot of trouble putting together coherent sentences. I wonder if your thoughts are clear in your head.
I don't mean to attack you, but you seem really angry and unhinged.
Ummm, Poland is VERY socialist!
More jobs ge and jeff imelt, obamas job czar, has sent overseas to bolster the bottom line. All this while everyday people struggle to make ends meet with low paying jobs with no insurance in the good o'l USA. They are striving for democracy and we are heading into socialism.
No surprise, Poland has more geniuses per capita than any other country.
Not true, but it sounds believable.
Evidence that STEM majors are what is most necessary to move a society forward, not Literature, Art, Music and Phys Ed. We seriously need to refocus here and from the elementary/middle school level.
I think we would do just fine if the teachers wouldn't allow calculators in math classes for starters. the young peoples mathof to is sadly hurting. The bare bone how tos are not being taught. Why? The teachers cannot get a point of how it is done with using tech. Weak teachers= weak students.
Well, I think a good part of it is that teachers are now expected to do a lot of things that used to be parental duties. Things like sitting still & actually listening when someone else is talking, what good study habits consist of, manners, respecting other people, etc etc. Sometimes school time ends up being exercises in crowd control for teachers. A little hard to work in much real education in the midst of all that, I should imagine. And the teachers find themselves in unpleasant confrontations w/ parents many times, should the teacher have the nerve to actually express some demands on their precious lil' darlings, or give out grades that actually reflect the work that that the students did.
A world turned upside down. I guess everything is cyclical....just like global warming/cooling. Congrats Poland! But WE in the U.S. still rule when it comes to video-gaming. good grief. oh, (and running up a national debt bigger than the rest of the world combined.)
Not very good at math are you?
And in the USA universities; the priorities are diversity, correct percentage of males vs. females vs. other, in the schools. Are illegals getting equal education as those here legally. Idiot professors making life miserable for any student that isn't a Democrat. Companies like General Electric moving R&D overseas to countries such as Poland. General Motors opening auto manufacturing plants all over Asia, instead of in the USA for export to Asia, providing jobs for Americans. American factories can't find enough employees that are trainable for the new manufacturing equipment because it requires a basic knowledge of math, computer science & reading comprehension.. High schools focus on what's best for teachers unions, the art of being offended, all students are gifted and on and on.
And a GOP that is more interested in restricting Womens Rights than Educating them.
yeah just keep cuttin our lawns,tending to our gardens...then when the start having children get the @!$%# out! hey! why don't YOU take your ass back for where your name implies?
Proud of Poland. As a daughter of Polish parents who fled/emigrated Poland in the 1950s because of dismal prospects, I am so glad to see this amazing transformation. Go Polska!
The United States is a fading superpower. Some of these "backwater" countries like Poland, Panama and Costa Rica are starting to excel in tech and medicine, making it desirable for US citizens to work abroad and not have to deal with the tax and regulation monster in this country.
Lumping Poland with Costa Rica and Panama for pretty much anything is like lumping the US with Italy and South Korea as "countries that play baseball".
why did the polish helicopter crash, the pilot got cold and turned off the fan(propeller).
did you hear about the plane crash in a polish cememtary, 500 bodies were uncovered.
Funny, in Poland they have the same joke, but it's an American plane/cemetary.
Florida does something similar, just opposite of everything Poland is doing!
I think "IMHO above| missed a valuable point being made. The fact that Poland has been successful is something we Americans pride ourselves on which is innovation. We are loosing that in our educational system and I am an educator myself. The education that the universities are giving students today is far from what they need. Yes, they should be asking people in the field of each profession what is necessary. I know people who have spent a lot of time and money studying things that are totally unrelated to what their needs are because "traditional" views. As we are beginning the next century, it is time for us to leave some of that behind. I am sure many of the academics feel strongly that we must be knowledgeable about everything but that does not help you to succeed. The world is specializing and we are not moving forward. Too many of the traditional courses are disconnects to what the person is studying. Sometimes I think it is the university trying to give their professors full time work rather than providing a useful curriulum for its students. Time to change.
I ask why is the price of higher education far outstriping the income of mid-class America. Also, why is there a movement among some GOP leaders to drop or make pell grants much harder to obtain? Could it be that some believe $4.00 an hour with no shared heath ins. plan or safety standards is the best thing for our country? I'm sure the minimum wage could be lowered or dropped in the interest of national/international business. That'll keep jobs here in the U.S. And, hell, keep the large majority of Americans under-educated so they may not find better jobs elsewhere. Corporations have been and will continue drawing technical expertise from abroad. They do not need or want a well educated middle-class. They believe the American mid-class, will be thankful just to work 20hr days/ 7 days a week in an attempt to provide for thier families. For this is the trend we're experiencing now. This is not exceptable now nor ever will be! Who we put in office local or nationally, and hold them accountable, makes a difference. If Poland can do it, so can we.
IS Poland's GDP over 3 trillion like germany's? No? Then not any time soon.
Well, I guess there won't be anymore Pollock jokes. Instead, Poland will have to listen to Yankee Doodle jokes.
Hmm ... perhaps only a true Pollack would misspell it "Pollock jokes", which is a term more commonly used for describing a species of fish.
It's a sad commentary of our institutions of higher education when the best party school makes national news every year. As a nation, we should start educating our own children from the time they are small, then following up with their teachers throughout their schooling and the schools need to adjust the focus to what the jobs of the present and future are. We're all in this together, you know.
When Russia shows up on the porch we'll know they did good.
It is nice to see somewhere in the world engineers are respected and appreciated for the hard work, sacrifice and intelligence it takes to be one. I spent my adult working life as a civil engineer in the U.S. and it was amazing how many times I was mocked and derided for my choice of profession. Often times when I walked onto a job site I was the lowest paid person there even though it was my expertise that made the project possible in the first place. Now that I am retired I can say without fear of reprisal that in this country anyone studying to be an engineer should prepare for a life of hard work, mediocre compensation, and the stealing of your ideas by the powers that be. As Obama said "You didn't build that"!! But if you are a good engineer the thing is, you did. A saying I always kept in mind was "scientists study what exists, engineers build what never existed". So many of the good things we enjoy in this country came from the hard work of engineers, and the one thing I am very happy about is to have known and worked with so many of them. They were all fine people.
Not just engineers. Architects also have to study, work long hours and typically make less per hour than the union guy wielding the hammer. Go figure.
I'm impressed...time for a beer.