The popular myth is that the United States is graduating 70,000 engineers a year versus 350,000 in India and 600,000 in China.
This information confirmed by many academies and US politicians is normally used to justify the position that the United States is losing its competitive edge and that the country is in trouble.
The Duke study titled 'Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India' has found that the numbers from earlier studies had largely been misunderstood and did not provide an accurate comparison of engineering graduates in each of these countries as China and India include graduates of three-year degrees and other technical certifications like diplomas in their statistics.
''In an apples-to-apples comparison, the United States actually graduates more engineers than India, and the Chinese numbers are misleading. On a per capita basis, the United States still has a strong lead as it graduates over 750 engineers per million, India graduates only 200 engineers per million and China graduates 500 per million of population,'' the study said.
It analysed different definitions used to describe the word 'engineer' to make better comparisons of the available data.
The engineers, who are capable of taking jobs away from US graduates, are known as dynamic engineers, who are able to lead innovation.
These dynamic engineers graduate from recognised universities and have specialised language skills and form a very small percentage of the total number of engineers graduating from China and India annually.
The study concluded that dynamic engineers in other countries are hardly a threat since the high-end jobs cannot be outsourced and the United States is producing a competitive number of engineers, computer scientists and information technology specialists.
The big task for America over the next decade is to maintain its legacy as a technological innovator, the study said.
