Is the US producing less engineers compared to India and China? Vivek Wadhwa’s research has yielded some surprising results.

There is a perception that the US is falling behind in the number of engineering students that graduate from its universities every year. India and China produce more engineers compared to India is one line of argument.

Vivek Wadhwa and his students at Duke University have been researching on this subject for a while now. Their research showed that the US was not falling behind and in fact was producing quality engineering students. How did this perception of an engineering gap in the US begin? What are the actual numbers of engineering students that graduate every year from the US, India and China? How do each of these countries define who is an engineering student? These are some of the questions that Vivek discusses in this interview.

Vivek published an article about the engineering gap in BusinessWeek Online in December 2005. He is a regular contributor to BusinessWeek online.

Vivek is an Executive in Residence/Adjunct Professor for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He is an active mentor and advisor to various startups and is a regular columnist for BusinessWeek Online.Vivek is an entrepreneur who founded Relativity Technologies and was the CTO of another start-up called Seer Technologies. Before turning into an entrepreneur Vivek worked at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he was Vice President of Information Services.

Vivek holds a B.A. in Computing Studies from the Canberra University in Australia and an MBA from New York University.