Doing Engineering: The Career Attainment and Mobility of Caucasian, Black, and Asian-American Engineers (review)

This book examines the career trajectories of whites, blacks, and Asian Americans in engineering professions in the U.S. It is motivated by the rising prominence of racial and ethnic minority groups in the U.S. population and by the fact that previous studies of occupational stratification have tended to emphasize black-white comparisons and to neglect other racial minorities. The author’s main conclusion is that “well-educated minorities have not successfully translated their skills and training to tangible rewards.”

The book begins by using data from published statistical reports to examine trends in employment and number of engineering degrees awarded, disaggregated by sex, education level, racial group, and nativity status (i.e., whether native or foreign born). Among other things, Tang shows that blacks are underrepresented in engineering relative to their numbers in the general population, whereas Asian Americans are over represented.

Subsequent chapters are based on the author’s own analyses of data from the Surveys of Natural and Social Scientists and Engineers (SSE) conducted during the 1980s by the U.S. Census Bureau for the National Science Foundation. The 1982 panel consists of more than 88,000 scientists and engineers drawn from the 1980 census sample. These individuals were subsequently reinterviewed in 1984, 1986, and 1989. All of Tang’s cross-sectional analyses are based on engineers in the 1982 sample. Studies of career mobility rely on changes between 1982 and 1984, 1984 and 1986, and 1986 and 1989.

Among the author’s important findings are these. Blacks are the least likely to be employed full-time in engineering occupations. However, blacks are more likely than whites to be employed in academic positions, whereas Asian Americans are less likely to hold academic jobs. Second, after controlling for the type of work engineers do (whether technical engineering or managing) and an array of other personal characteristics, persons who are engaged in technical engineering tasks are more likely to self-identify as “engineers,” whereas individuals whose work is primarily managerial are more inclined to see themselves as “managers.” Third, black and Asian engineers are less likely to hold management positions than comparably situated whites. Finally, in her chapter on occupational mobility, Tang distinguishes between being “promoted” from an engineering track to a managerial track and being “demoted” in the opposite direction. She finds that minorities and immigrants are less likely than native-born whites to move up to managerial positions. On the other hand, once managers, Asians are the least likely to be demoted to an engineering track.

Doing Engineering suffers from several gaps. First, it focuses too narrowly on engineers and ignores the proportionately larger number of individuals in related scientific fields (e.g., computer and mathematical sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences). To be sure, engineers outnumbered scientists by two-to-one in 1970. But by 1997, there were nearly three scientists for every two engineers (Thomas J. Espenshade [2001] “High-End Immigrants and the Shortage of Skilled Labor.” Population Research and Policy Review). Second, relying on data from the 1980s misses the extraordinary changes in the scientific and engineering fields that occurred during the 1990s, including the rapid rise in the number of foreign-born scientists and engineers. Third, it is surprising that Tang includes no systematic analysis of earnings differentials by race and/or nativity status. Fourth, no analysis of immigrants’ and minorities’ chances of being promoted to managerial positions is complete without including English-language proficiency as a control variable, but this predictor is missing from Tang’s regression models. Finally, the author hardly touches on relevant issues in today’s policy debates. In October of 2000, the U.S. Congress substantially expanded the number of temporary visas (known as H-1B visas) available to high-skilled foreign nationals wanting to work in the U.S., primarily in engineering and scientific occupations. Nowhere does Tang make reference to this debate, although she does seem to...