ENGINEERING 'MANPOWER' SHORTAGES, REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, AND THE 1960 CALIFORNIA MASTER PLAN FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: HISTORICAL LESSONS ON ENGINEERING WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

摘要

As demonstrated by accounts such as Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat and the Engineer of 2020 investigations by the National Academy of Engineering, engineering educators are once again focusing on necessary changes to our national engineering workforce. If there ever were an opportunity draw useful lessons from history, it would surely be on this topic. Concerns about an "engineering manpower" crisis persisted throughout the Cold War years in American history, fueled by massive federal expenditures and the emphasis placed on science and its application to the nation's arsenal and economic wealth. Even as we proceed to transform, if not dismantle, the institutional apparatus developed to meet the exigencies of the Cold War period, it may well pay to look at the original architects who transformed the American system of higher education in their efforts to deliver upon the new demands for a technically trained workforce. As drawn from a larger book project, this paper aims to provide new historical insights by looking at how the engineering 'manpower' crisis of the 1950s contributed to the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education in California, and how the Master Plan, in turn, shaped engineering education within the state. The California public system of higher education was already set up as a relatively novel, tripartite system that created separate estates for junior colleges, state colleges, and the University of California system. However, as documented by California historians such as Roger Lotchin, the massive expansion of Southern California's defense sector, along with demographic shifts in the college-going population, made questions of technical workforce development a major issue in California's political scene. This regional development also intersected with ongoing national dialogues about engineering education and engineering manpower shortages, which although exacerbated and politically amplified by Sputnik, pre-dated the specific crisis.