Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Heard off the Street column

Len Boselovic

Jun. 28, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- There is a segment of the American population, far removed from the unique perspective of Wall Street and Washington, D.C., that finds the billions of taxpayer dollars being used to engineer a rescue of the financial services industry disturbing. Their frustration was vented in an op-ed piece penned earlier this year by Mark C. Tomlinson, executive director of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.

"Wall Street's 'Masters of the Universe' who created 'paper' wealth got more help than an industry that creates real wealth by making things," Mr. Tomlinson wrote.

While AIG (NYSE:AIG) , Citigroup (NYSE:C) , Bear Stearns and other financial services pranksters have given that industry a black eye, the prescription for extracting the economy from the severe recession relies largely on mending the industry that is arguably most responsible for it. Perhaps that's because our leaders are more comfortable talking about finance than nuts and bolts.

"We live in a country run by a political class that consists mostly of attorneys and lifelong politicians with little work experience outside the political realm. To such people, manufacturing is a strange, dark land, far from their normal haunts," consulting engineer David F. Bastl wrote in a missive to SME's Pittsburgh chapter recently.

The Manor resident wrote that if a politician's son or daughter went to work in a manufacturing plant, the politician "would be stricken as though there had been a death in the family."

Mr. Bastl and other manufacturing mavens know their life's work is not the dull, dirty, repetitive career many believe it to be. For them, manufacturing is a clean, lean environment that relies on technically skilled workers, not mindless drones. Some of the blame for why more Americans don't feel the same way lies with engineers.

"We're as much at fault as anybody else [for not] getting this out to the public," he said.

Even if manufacturing overcomes its image problem, there is a more serious issue to address. That is evident in the results of an April report from McKinsey and Company, which assessed the performance of the U.S. educational system. The United States ranks 25th out of 30 nations in math education and 24th out of 30 in science education, McKinsey reported. When it comes to math, "Korea, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland and the Czech Republic have at least five times the proportion of top performers as the United States," the study concluded.

One reason for the miserable performance is that math's reputation is little better than manufacturing's.

"It's not generally perceived to be a fun topic in elementary school," said Pam Hurt SME's workforce development manager.

She says the same perception plagues other subjects required for a career in manufacturing.

"Engineering and science are extremely complex subjects and they take a lot of time and effort to become proficient in," Ms. Hurt said.

Mr. Bastl is active in SME initiatives designed to get young students interested in manufacturing. This month, he spent time at South Park Middle School, where sixth-graders learned how to use software to design rockets. The theory is to get students interested in science and math before high school, when students decide what they want to study in college.

"I always try to tell students you can save the world as an engineer," Mr. Bastl said.

There are indications that there will be jobs for those willing to learn the skills manufacturers need. Ms. Hurt says the National Association of Manufacturers reported five years ago that 80 percent of their members had trouble finding skilled workers. Even in the current recession, half of NAM's members report they face the same issue.

Moreover, fields such as clean energy offer potential for those who choose engineering over finance. A recent Study by the Pew Charitable Trusts revealed that employment in the renewable energy industry -- companies that generate solar and wind power, produce energy-efficient light bulbs and provide similar products and services -- grew 9.1 percent from 1998 to 2007 vs. a 3.7 percent growth rate for all jobs.

It's probable that the days of making easy money are over for most Americans for the foreseeable future, despite the Federal Reserve's best efforts to keep interest rates low. So perhaps the cultural bias will shift ever so slightly in favor of hard work, a trend that would let students know it is all right to use their heads to solve real problems instead of using low interest rates to create phony wealth.

To that point, Jeremy Grantham, chairman of fund manager GMO, recently bemoaned that what he calls "the financial mafia" intimidated Washington into believing that nearly all failing financial companies had to be defended with taxpayer dollars. Spending those billions instead "on really useful, high return infrastructure and energy conservation and oil and coal replacement projects would seem like a real bargain for society," Mr. Grantham wrote in his quarterly letter.

Those projects demand engineers. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that where there is demand, there is eventually supply. Mr. Bastl and his fellow voices in the wilderness are preparing for that day.

Len Boselovic can be reached at lboselovic@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1941.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0159-36134831