Speech - 1953 ENGINEERING OPPORTUNITIES

This is a Rickover speech on Engineering Opportunities given at Northwestern University on December 2, 1953.

Rickover discusses the need for engineers and engineering education.

Text of Speech:

During the past 15 years I have interviewed about 1,000 engineers for employment. Most were

recent college graduates. Because the engineers were to work in my own organization and

because I well knew that selection and training of personnel is the most important function of

an administrator, I devoted considerable time to this problem. If one chooses the right people,

there is little else to do.

To put it another way: Everything in the world must be done through and by people.

What I will say tonight about engineers and about education is what I have learned to look for

in young men who aspire to successful careers.

I will begin with specific points because these are more easily understood. Later, when I branch

off into the generalities you can say to yourselves: “He is now philosophizing and telling us

what is wrong with the younger generation. He is telling us, with hindsight, not to do what he

did.” You will be perfectly right in feeling this way, and you will be proving the well-known fact

that each generation learns only from its own mistakes.

Some of us in the older generation wistfully hope that this need not be so— that you who

follow us will learn a little from our mistakes. It has been said that the art of statesmanship

consists more in stopping bad things from happening, than in doing good things. If I succeed in

stopping one or two of you from doing bad things, I may still qualify as a statesmen.

My first specific criticism is that young men are looking for security in terms of money, rather

than opportunity to improve themselves and develop their capabilities. This is a strange phenomenon, indeed, at a time when the standard of living in the U.S. is higher than it has

been anywhere, at any time in history. Today, when no one need suffer from privations of

hunger, or from lack of clothing or shelter, the desire for security in terms of salary seems to

be growing. Now, I can understand this attitude in a workingman, who has no other assets than

his hands or his tools, but I cannot understand it in young men who, by means of a university

education, profess to be an elite—on whom society has devoted much training, so that they

might assume the role of leaders.

This desire for security generally manifests itself in accepting positions, on graduation, where

the highest starting salary can be obtained. This is a recent development and has two main

causes—one, the large increase in the number of engineers required by industry—from one

engineer for every 250 employees in 1900 to one for every 60 in 1951. These figures are the

average for all industry. In the electrical industry, however, there is now one engineer for every

20 employees—and with no saturation point in sight.

This situation has been aggravated by the large sums of money spent on research and

development in recent years by the Federal Government, particularly since the start of the

Korean War.

Two, the engineering schools have not been graduating a sufficient number of engineers to

take care of these needs. There is today a shortage of about 30,000 engineers and it will likely

be many years before the supply is equal to the demand.

This has placed the young graduate in the position of having great choice in seeking

employment, and has led to the situation known as “the granting of interviews” by students

about to graduate.

The second reason for the high salaries that are available is brought about by the fact that

many companies today have government contracts for which they are reimbursed essentially

on a cost plus a fixed fee basis. This permits them to hire large numbers of engineers at

inflated salaries—since the government directly or indirectly pays the entire cost.

For these reasons you must not feel that, upon graduation, when your abilities cannot really be

known to your employer, a high salary offer is actually deserved.

Another specific point which has struck me is how poorly read are the vast majority of

engineering graduates. A very few have read some good books; some read nothing, and the

majority have contented themselves with reading current news periodicals and a few bosom

novels.

My own belief is that the importance of reading good books has been stressed too much from

the cultural standpoint. Young men and women have been urged to read because they would

thereby acquire culture, they would become broadminded, or become better citizens, and so

on. In other words it was good for one, as going to church.

Now, let us approach it from a different angle—from the one of acquiring learning. Learning

can be acquired in 3 ways: by studying and reading, by listening to and observing others, and

by doing things one’s self. But the number of years available in a life-time is far too small to

acquire learning doing things one’s self, or being told by someone else.By means of reading it is possible to acquire the experience and learning of many great men in

a short time. A book which has required years of sustained effort and the erudition of a great

mind can be mastered in a few hours. It is like having the privilege of watching a great brain in

operation and picking its choice parts. It offers the ability to multiply ourselves—to live several

lives in one.

I could dwell at length on the importance of reading—of the relation to the process of creative

thought. I don’t know whether Lowes’ book “The Road to Xanadu” is required reading at

Northwestern. I understand it was once at M.I.T. Professor Lowes shows that Coleridge acquired

most of his thoughts and phrases for “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” and “Kublai Khan”

from the most extensive reading over a period of years—how, through reading and thinking he

created a work of art.

Many demands are made of a young man’s time in college and afterwards, and he must

constantly be judging these demands and saying to himself: Is this a good thing—will this help

me to become a better human being—will this lead me to a better understanding of people

and of the world I live in? Or is it shallow and evanescent? I do not mean to imply that one

should not enjoy life—but it is possible to enjoy life in a rich manner, rather than in a grubby

one.

Another important point is that engineers have learned many facts—but have not learned

principles. It is, of course, much easier during a course in calculus or in chemistry to memorize

formulas and be able to work many problems. This is particularly the case when a course is

difficult and a term exam is in the offing.

What I am now discussing is probably more in the domain and responsibility of the University.

By means of reading it is possible to acquire the experience and learning of many great men in

a short time.... It offers the ability to multiply ourselves—to live several lives in one.

But it behooves the student to know that principles are more important than facts, and that

they are far more difficult to master. But once the principle is learned it becomes part of us

and is never lost. The facts we learn are soon forgotten and their meaning changes with time.

My concept of a good engineering course is one in which the student learns the principles of

mathematics, of physics, of mechanics, of metallurgy and of chemistry. A thorough

understanding of these leads easily into the more practical aspects of mechanical engineering,

electrical engineering, chemical engineering, etc.

All knowledge and all scientific activity [are] somehow, somewhere interrelated, and

substantial progress in any pursuit demands a wide generalized interest in many fields, not

merely in one narrow specialized field.

Through concentrating on a specialty too early in life, a man becomes a kind of useful

machine, but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student

acquire an understanding for, and a lively feeling for values. Otherwise, with his specialized

knowledge, he more closely resembles a well-trained dog, than a harmoniously developed

person.

It is vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed by the young man, a development that is greatly jeopardized by over-burdening with too many and too

varied subjects.

When I interview a young man, I am not particularly interested in whether he is an electrical,

or mechanical, or metallurgical engineer, because to obtain a degree in one of these subjects

merely requires about 100 hours of classroom work. What can one really learn about electrical

engineering in 100 hours? I call such engineers “Textbook engineers.” I use electrical

engineering as an example, because many years ago I was awarded a Master’s degree in that

field—after demonstrating that I could work out a paper design of one or two motors and

generators by using a large number of empirical formulae listed in handbooks. I would much

rather employ an engineer who had devoted all his time to learning the principles of

electricity—because if he knew these it would be easy for him to learn motor or generator

design, or any other kind of design.

I do not believe that “practical stuff” should be or can be properly taught in a University. The

reason is easy to see. Nearly all college text-books are several years behind current industrial

practices. Furthermore, they are written by men who do not have the latest “practical”

information, so that they are obsolete even while they are being written.

The employer who wants a “practical” engineering graduate from a university is simply hiring a

man who knows how to make the same mistakes which have been made in his plant for the

past 10 or 15 years.

If the young engineer is intelligent and enthusiastic, if he is interested in learning, and has

enough sense to know that he is bound to be a liability for a year or two in any organization

really interested in his welfare—it makes no difference what particular subject he has studied.

What counts is: Will he work hard, will he accept responsibility? Another characteristic I have

noted in some young engineers is the desire to be placed in charge of something, or a group

of people. Our social structure is such that people believe that the measure of one’s

importance is the number of people he supervises. On this basis Einstein is not as important

as the foreman of a railroad gang.

Today industry recognizes that a good scientist or a good engineer is worth the same salary as

a good administrator, and you will find that there is now just as much opportunity, salary wise,

in engineering as in administration.

Another characteristic of young engineers is the search for the exact answers and the feeling

of frustration if an exact answer is not forthcoming.

This probably stems from the many years of grammar and high school where the answer is

always to be found in the back of the book, and the feeling of elation which comes when, after

trying several solutions, and looking furtively at the known answer, the latest trial finally

works.

Unfortunately, in real life, there are no exact or final answers. I have for some time thought

that a few of the ills of today start from this childish faith in the existence of perfect answers.

It requires a degree of maturity to realize that all solutions are partial ones.

Just remember that not so very many years ago the correct answer was that the universe consisted of a number of celestial transparent spherical shells in which the stars were fixed—

or that the sun revolved about the flat earth. And more recently an eminent physicist stated

that all the basic laws of physics were known.

I can sum this up by saying that regularity is abnormal, and that the irregular is always

commoner than the regular.

By now you have come to the conclusion that I have violated my agreement to mention

nothing but specific points, and have slyly worked in a few principles.

But as I look around the room and can see no outward evidence of sleeping, I feel warranted to

proceed on the basis of principle alone.

Let us consider the question of salary. This, in itself, can never be the most important means

for happiness, and it is quite obvious that the wealthiest people in the world are not

necessarily the happiest. Of course, if a man goes to a university for the sole purpose of

bettering his economic status, the earning of a large salary may appear to him to be the one

means to happiness. But I am not addressing myself tonight to men with that limited

viewpoint. They have the right to their choice, but they are certainly the beneficiaries of a

lower than cost tuition, and they are taking advantage of many instructors and professors who

teach because of professional duty, and who could command larger salaries in industry.

The greater opportunities which exist today for the satisfaction of material needs and the

growing freedom of action that follows from increasing control of Nature expose us to the

danger that we shall regard material comfort as the end of civilization rather than the means

to its attainment.

The only way in which these dangers can be avoided in a society which rejects the over-riding

authority of a Church or a State is through the existence of a minority of individuals capable of

securing, by the respect which their own standards evoke, the adherence of the majority of

men to higher standards than those they would create for themselves.

The university must train the most diverse kinds of people for a wide variety of future careers.

Many of these are potential leaders in various fields. From the university must come the future

under-secretary, the politician, the scientist, the surgeon, the teacher, the men of business,

and the editor.

How, then, does one achieve success in a profession? Only in exceptional cases is success, as

commonly known, the result of skill, and of certain other human qualities like honesty,

decency, and integrity. Although the proportion between skill and human qualities on the one

hand, and “personality” on the other hand, as prerequisites for success varies, – the

“personality” factor always plays a decisive role.

Success, in this sense, depends largely on how well a person sells himself, how well he gets his

personality across, whether he is “cheerful,” sound, aggressive, reliable, ambitious—

furthermore what his family background is, what clubs he belongs to, and whether he has the

respect of people. The fact that in order to have “success” it is not sufficient to have the skill

and equipment for performing a given task, but that we must be able to “put across” one’s

personality in competition with many others—shapes the attitude toward one’s self.If it were enough for the purpose of making a living to rely on what one knows and what one

can do by himself, esteem would be in proportion to one’s capacities. But since success

depends largely on how one sells one’s personality, we experience one’s self as a commodity.

A person is not concerned with his life and happiness, but with becoming saleable.

Many of you will soon be faced with making a choice. Remember that your choice of where you

will work and for whom you work is far more important than the starting salary. What you have

learned so far is but a small part of what you must know if you are to become competent in

your chosen field. The first few years after graduation will largely shape your future.

Several days ago I asked a number of young engineers who are working with me to express

their views on this subject. A number of these men took reductions in salary to work where

they now are. You may be interested in knowing that every one of them independently arrived

at these same conclusions.