Page 26 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

PHASE I REVISITED 9
1
outside of the developed nations (CIA, 2001). Of the 1.5 billion people
that the world population will gain by 2020, most will be added to
countries in Asia and Africa. By 2015, and for the first time in history,
the majority of people, mostly poor, will reside in urban centers, mostly
in countries that lack the economic, social, and physical infrastructures
to support a burgeoning population.
In the United States, if current trends continue, Hispanic Ameri-
cans will account for 17 percent of the U.S. population and African
Americans will constitute 12.8 percent of the population by 2020. The
percentage of whites will decline from the 2000 value of 75.6 percent to
63.7 percent. Looking even further into the future, by 2050, almost
half of the U.S. population will be nonwhite (USCB, 2002). Thus, in
2020 and beyond, the engineering profession will need to develop solu-
tions that will serve an increasingly diverse community and will likely
need to (and should try to) draw more students from sectors of the
community that traditionally have not been well represented in the en-
gineering workforce.
As new knowledge on health and health care is created, shifts in life
expectancies will lead to an increase in the number of people living well
beyond established retirement ages. With increases in life expectancy,
relatively fewer young workers will be available to help pay for the ser-
vices that older citizens expect to have, and stresses on economic sys-
tems will occur. An aging population makes greater demands on the
health care system, heightens labor force contractions, and increases
political instability (CIA, 2001). The engineering profession of 2020
will have to operate in this environment, which may include “senior”
engineers who are willing and able to work, and perhaps compelled to
do so because of economic necessity.
In contrast to the aging trend, nations in many politically unstable
parts of the world will experience a “youth bulge,” a disproportionate
number of 15- to 29-year-olds in the general population; globally, more
than 50 percent of the world’s population could be under 18 years old
in 2020. Youth-bulge conditions are likely in many regions of recent
social and political tension, which are exacerbated by an excess of idle
youth unable to find employment. As a consequence, the world could

1 Developed nations as defined by the World Bank are countries with a gross national
product equal to or greater than $10,000 per person.

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