Center for Science, Technology, and Economic Development (CSTED) > Selected Reports

As noted previously, while only about 40 percent of ERC participating companies had hired ERC students or graduates (either as temporary employees or regular full-time employees after graduation), the impact of the hiring of these students in terms of the degree of benefit to the companies was rated higher than any other outcome. Additional detail about the hiring of ERC students and graduates and the perceptions of companies regarding ERC students and their qualifications as new company employees compared with graduates without ERC experience is provided in this section of this report.[11]

Table 16 shows the number of ERC students and graduates hired by survey respondents' companies as temporary (e.g., summer hires) or full-time employees after graduation during the five-year period preceding the survey. About a fifth (21.8%) of the companies had hired ERC students or graduates as temporary employees during that period, and a slightly higher percentage (27.3%) had hired ERC students as full-time regular employees after graduation. Most company representatives who reported hiring ERC students as either temporary or full-time employees reported only one such hire during the five-year period, but 12.8% reported hiring two or more ERC students as temporary employees and 15.2% reported hiring two or more ERC students as full-time employees after graduation. Two companies had hired 10 ERC students as regular full-time employees during the previous five year period, one had hired 11, one had hired 12, and 1 (an industry consortium) had hired more than 25 through its own member companies considered collectively. 

Respondents whose companies had hired one or more ERC students or graduates as regular, full-time employees in the five-year period preceding the survey were asked to rate these employees compared to students and graduates hired without ERC experience on a scale of 1 to 5 from "much worse" to "much better" (see Table 17). As no respondents reported that ERC students/graduates were "much worse" than students/graduates hired without ERC experience on any of the response items, this column is not shown on the table, although it has been used in calculating the mean.

More than three-fourths of the industry representatives whose company units had hired ERC students or graduates considered them to be much better or somewhat better than peers without ERC experience in terms of the depth of their technical knowledge (80.2%), overall preparedness for working in industry (80.2%), and contribution to the company's technical work (77.3%). More than two-thirds considered the ERC-educated employees much better or somewhat better than non-ERC peers in the firm in terms of the breadth of their technical knowledge (74.3%) and their ability to apply knowledge from different disciplines and use technologies in an integrated fashion to solve problems (72.3%). From half to two-thirds of the respondents considered ERC-educated students better prepared in terms of their ability to use knowledge to develop technology (66.3%), ability to work in interdisciplinary teams (64.3%), familiarity with an engineering systems approach (63.3%), ability to solve problems within constraints of time, money, and human resources (59.4%), and the amount of company-funded training required before they became a net contributor to the company's work (52.6%). 

Although the survey instrument used fewer and differently worded items, the 1988 GAO survey of industry sponsors of the ERCs found largely similar opinions regarding the preparation of ERC-educated graduates compared to those without ERC experience.[12] More than three-fourths of the roughly 20% of total GAO survey respondents who had hired former ERC students after their graduation considered them much better or somewhat better than their non-ERC counterparts in terms of knowledge of state-of-the-art equipment, knowledge of areas in which the company was specifically interested, and ability to work in the company's environment.

The only other item in this category asked by the GAO survey was the student's "capability for thinking on a systems basis", one of the stated objectives of the ERC program. In contrast to the other three items on the questionnaire where more than three-fourths of respondents considered the ERC students somewhat or much better prepared than their non-ERC counterparts, only 60.6% considered them somewhat or much better prepared in terms of their capability of thinking on a systems basis. This finding is remarkably similar to the SRI survey, in which 63.3% of respondents considered ERC-trained students somewhat or much better than their non-ERC counterparts in terms of "familiarity with engineering systems approach", whereas two-thirds or more considered the ERC students somewhat or much better on at least five other questionnaire items. As our study focused only on industry sponsors of the ERC and not on activities of the ERCs per se, it is not known to what extent, if at all, the Centers have adopted the program's intention of students becoming familiar with an engineering systems approach to problem solving through involvement in ERC activities. However, as noted in the next section of this report dealing with factors that contribute to ERC-derived benefits for participating companies, relatively few respondents considered an emphasis on an engineering systems approach particularly important. While ERC graduates hired as regular company employees were considered "somewhat better" or "much better" in terms of all the specific characteristics on which industry respondents were asked to compare them with students or graduates without ERC experience, only about a fourth (23%) of industry representatives whose companies had hired ERC students said that the positions filled by ERC graduates required capabilities that could only be provided by ERC education or training (see Figure 12). Considering the unique qualifications required for a "yes" answer to this question, however, the fact that close to a fourth of all respondents answered "yes" adds additional testimony to the importance of ERC-trained students among the portfolio of benefits that industry has derived from these Centers.

As noted in the previous section of this report, many survey respondents cited examples pertaining to the hiring of ERC students or graduates when asked to list the most significant benefits they had obtained from their ERC participation to date. Follow-up telephone interviews with selected survey participants reinforced survey findings on the quality of ERC students and graduates, as well as the importance to industry sponsors of the access to students as potential new hires that participation in an ERC affords them. Some examples of benefits cited by survey respondents in the open-ended question are reported below. Additional testimony to the benefits related to ERC students or graduates as new hires is contained in some of the highlighted cases from the telephone interviews described in Chapter IX of this report.