What – if anything – are we doing to incentivise our most promising engineering graduates to become the academics of the future?
Building creatures for the entertainment industry to perform lifelike movements is quite different from the work they do for their other clients and very different from what most mechanical engineering graduates encounter.
This is especially true in 2013, which will be the first year in which most companies pay top engineering graduates in Silicon Valley $100,000 or more per year in salary.
Most people don't realize Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America (only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are larger) and produces the most engineering-focused university graduates each year.
Engineering graduates earned the most right out of college, averaging nearly $65,000, or about 40 percent higher than the overall average of about $47,000 for recent graduates.
Engineering dominates the list, taking seven of the top ten spots in NACE's April survey: petroleum engineers earned the most with an average starting salary of $93,500£61,27171); second were computer engineers with $71,700£46,98585); chemical engineering graduates – with a healthy starting salary of $67,600£44,29898) – came in third.
Medicine graduates earn most with average gross salaries of £46,000, while engineering graduates follow with £42,000.
Most engineering schools stress subjects like differential calculus and physics, and their graduates tend to end up narrowly focused and likely to fit the stereotype of a socially awkward clock-puncher.
Each year there are about 21,000 engineering graduates, meaning there will be some 170,000 engineering graduates by 2020.
Meanwhile, more than a quarter of engineering graduates choose occupations outside science, engineering or technology, the Royal Academy of Engineering report said.
