Who’s the last creator you remember? How about, Lee Iacocca, Ed Cole, John DeLorean? Afficionados, Detroiters prefer men like Harley Earl and Bunky Knudsen.
Who’s the last CEO you recognize from one of the Big Three car makers? Alfred P. Sloan, Robert McNamara? Business historians will name others like Roger Smith and Arjay Miller.
Who mattered most to you when you bought your first car? Which do you associate with failed enterprises?
As car dealer Hoot McInerey said, when asked about the latest reorganization at Ford, "If you've got the right product in the right market, any fool can be a hero."
But why hasn’t General Motors or Ford been able to produce a vehicle consumers want?
Ed Cole was lead engineer for Corvette in 1953 when he was 44; he became president of General Motors when he was 58, in 1967, and retired at 65.
He was the one of the last engineers to rise so far. Since, production men have had their careers stymied.
Lee Iacocca was behind the introduction of the Mustang in 1964 when he was 40. He became president of Ford in 1970, at 46, and was fired by Henry Ford II eight years later.
John DeLorean developed the Pontiac GTO in 1964 when he was 41. He aborted his promotion path when he divorced a second time and began dating celebrities. He left General Motors when he was 48.
Today, the top men and lone woman at Ford and GM are in their 40s or 50s, but their experience is in finance and international operations. Almost none mention time in a plant on their resumes. None are associated with a single product innovation, but several are credited with salvaging operations by downsizing.
The talent of several generations rose in the 1960s and left in the 1970s. What was happening in the 1950's when the young men were coming of age who would be in their 40s then? What’s happened in the 1970s that stopped those men from getting new projects? What suppressed the culture of mechanical innovation and design since?
When I was growing up, sons of storekeepers and professionals did not consider engineering. It was the route to upward mobility for children of plant workers. Then, in the Nixon years, the aerospace industry laid off highly paid engineers. Parents who valued education for concrete, pragmatic reasons began to question the wisdom of their ancestors.
The oil embargo by OPEC and quality problems publicized by Ralph Nader should have been challenges, not insurmountable crises. The reaction of automotive executives was panic, the first of the hiring freezes and layoffs. Kids began to see their parents’ jobs threatened, and saw accountants were more valued than engineers.
When GM transferred its data processing functions to EDS in 1984, engineers feared they would be next. Teenagers either saw their fathers lose their jobs, or saw cousins and older brothers have problems finding berths out of college. No doubt, parents advised their children to consider other fields.
The number of engineering students in the United States peaked in 1983 in the United States with 441,000 baby boomers, and fell to 361,000 in 1999, according to Ed Cohen. Using rough calculations that multiply the percent of the population between the ages of 5 and 19 by the total population, it appears the actual decline was from .78% of available young people to .67%.
Statistics on engineering enrollments are tricky, because they combine disciplines. ASEE reports nearly a third of the 394,148 students in 2003 were in computers and electrical engineering. If we only count a third of those as traditional engineers, then the current total falls to 306,107 students, or .52% of the available young people.
A quarter percent decline in engineering students nationally seems statistically insignificant, but the percentage of truly creative men in any generation is even smaller, and they may be the ones who first considered computer science or business administration.
The more critical problem is the thirty year dearth of jobs. ASEE tell us the state of Michigan had 22,865 undergraduate engineering students in 2003. Two years later, Michael Ellis reports GM employs 22,000 engineers world-wide, and is planning to transfer more work to Brazil and eliminate more positions at its Tech Center in Warren.
Students know they have to leave. Michigan ranks 4th in the number of engineering students but 37th in the percent of residents with bachelor’s degrees. Even immigrants know there’s no future. GM says it is transferring engineering work because it can pay lower wages and admits it’s recruiting Indian nationals at Wayne State, hoping to lure them back to Bangalore.
How long can an industry deny opportunity to those critical to its success before it finally discourages too many? How long before the ambitious and creative are gone, leaving plodders to fill the slots? GM and Ford can still recruit engineers, but they can’t produce exciting cars.
It may be the only culture GM and Ford have been able to change is the one they need to survive, the one that produces men who might create the next generation of muscle cars. Once the formative environment is gone, it’s almost impossible to recreate. Detroit may become the equal of the places it sends work, Brazil and BangalPrismore.
Sources:
American Society for Engineering Education. "State of Engineering,"
Prism 13 (2) October 2003 on internet.
Cohen, Ed. " Enrollment Trends: Too many students are choosing the same academic paths. What's a college to do?," Notre Dame Magazine Winter 2005-2006 on internet.
Evans, Michael. "Engineers' work goes overseas, GM says," Detroit Free Press, 6 April 2006.
George, Mary Anne. "Michigan’s College Graduate Rank Sinks to 37th in Nation," Detroit Free Press 29 March 2005.
McInerey, Martin. Quoted by Tom Walsh, "New team to drive F"ord," Detroit Free Press, 7 April 2006.
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