Immediately after you hear this, China and India must have come up in your mind with USA and Japan a distant 3rd and fourth. Well, it turns out that China doesn’t release its human resource statistics to the international community and India, well its officials statistics aren’t reliable at all as they fluctuate from state to federal level. So, apart from these two obvious winners, which of the countries are leading in engineering students? Here is the full list from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) bureau of statistics:
Yes, we are as flabbergasted as you are. Russia isn’t one of the most thickly populated areas in the world, and it is neither leading in technology, but it does have the largest number of engineering graduates with almost double the number of the USA itself. I think I have finally found the answer to all those weird Russian DIY enthusiasts on Youtube!
Interestingly, Iran, the Middle East rival of the USA that had international sanctions enforced on it for more than a decade stands third. Most of the Iranian engineers will eventually be employed by the government entities to help with their nuclear ambitions. Japan and South Korea follow suit, and at least, theirs is justified since they are amongst the top in research and development. There are a few other surprises as well in the form of Ukraine and Vietnam.
Sorry to say, You forgot India!
I don’t want to go into the debate, whether all Indian engineering graduates are employable or not.
But still then, One single state of Tamil Nadu in India generated 75000, engineers in a single year. Collectively all other states would definitely be more than 250000.
But as always the standards would definitely vary widely.
I guess they suck so badly that they aren’t considered engineers, seriously 95% of their “engineers” don’t have the basic level of quality or capabilities. (not to mention they don’t speak english even they swear they do).
“Most of the Iranian engineers will eventually be employed by the government entities to help with their nuclear ambitions”.
You should be embarrassed of your shortsightedness and stupidity for writing the above line.
This is the first time I’m leaving a comment ever on an on-line magazine article…The reason is that I feel offended not only as an Iranian, but as an engineer.
Iran has a population of 80 million and among top 20 countries in terms of GDP (ppp). It has an area five times bigger than Germany with a relatively huge infrastructure. I’m guessing oil, automotive, petrochemical, etc. industries need those engineers as well. Just imagine 230,000 engineers going into nuclear industry each year to help the government with its “nuclear ambitions”!!!
This is an embarrassment for Wonderful Engineering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_education_in_India
tells there are about 4298 engg. colleges in India. Most of them will have about 400 students per year. while some go way beyond it. So maybe we are looking at about 1.7-2 million engineers a year. Which is about 4 times population of Ireland 🙂
that is an impressive number but since it doesn’t come with a reliable quality of education metric it means nothing… same problem with all of the figures in this article btw
I’ve heard most of the graduates in the US are from other countries, especially those with advanced degrees. True?
100% false. I’m a senior engineering student. My class is about 90% Americans. Before transferring to this school my class was 85-ish % Americans.