High-Tech Japanese Running Out of Engineers
New York Times reporter Martin Fackler details the changing engineering scene in Japan. As fewer young Japanese opt to study engineering and science, Japanese companies are "feeling the pinch." "It was engineering prowess that lifted this nation from post-war defeat to economic superpower. But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing," Fackler writes. To fill the gap, Japanese companies are moving operations outside of Japan to China, Malaysia and other Asian nations.