America became great, in large part, because of great engineering achievements.  That's a bold statement and certainly not intended to diminish the role of scientists, inventors, craftsmen, etc.   But through our history, great progress has been made based on logistics and technology that was implemented by engineers. It was engineers that took the new scientific principals developed by brilliant scientists and converted them into practical solutions for pressing problems.  One could argue the social merit of many of these developments (e.g. going to the moon, nuclear weapons, virtual reality video games, etc.)  but, like it or not, these engineering achievements have fueled the rapid growth of our country from a  fledgling democracy to a world superpower.

     Engineering ingenuity and product development has been a driving force in American industrial development.  Much of America's economy is based on innovation of processes and products that are brought to existing markets and, in turn, make new markets.  Companies with better innovation capability flourish while less capable organizations disappear. These companies in turn recruit new talent from universities.  Our ability to train engineers who will stay in America and innovate in these industries is critical.

     As the media hypes the "fact" that India and China are producing more engineers, fewer and fewer American born/naturalized Americans are becoming engineers because of myriad situations. For example, salaries, outsourcing, location, lack of visibility, upward mobility, etc. are often overheard. That said,  America is still producing the same number of doctoral engineers -just a smaller percentage of them are American.  As the world becomes more flat - foreign born engineers prefer to go back to their homelands where they can work and enjoy their own culture.  This leaves the United States with a void of trained and talented research-oriented engineers.