ENGINEERING GRADUATES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 16, 19 July 1939, Page 10

ENGINEERING GRADUATES

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Now that the question of the export of New Zealand talent has arisen once more, and since there is, I believe, a committee investigating the matter, I cannot allow Dr. J. A. W. Bennett's remarks on the subject to pass as generally applicable to all university graduates. Dr. Bennett, in common with other recent correspondents, has confined Ms remarks lo graduates in the more academic branches of learning, but these are by no means the only ones concerned in the overseas drift.

As a New Zealand engineering graduate with several years' English experience I would like to say a few words concerning this class of university product. Of those who go overseas, engineers are quite as numerous as arts graduates. They go abroad to work at their calling, they do not have brilliant careers at Oxford, and the few who return rarely have their views publicised by the Press Association. The common belief, reiterated by Dr. Bennett, that New Zealand cannot absorb its reimported graduates may be true enough for arts students <I claim no special knowledge on this point), but hardly applies, or ever did apply, to engineers. Indeed, the fact that, the Public Works Department is even now engaging foreign refugee engineers and advertising for engineers in your paper, makes Dr. Bennett's generalisation, and no less your heading. Sir, most unseasonable.

The pity of it is that ther? are competent and capable New Zealand engineering graduates now abroad who would return tomorrow if they were offered an adequate remuneration for their services. Private enterprise and local -bodies generally pay well, but can absorb only a few at the present time. The bulk must, therefore, look to the Public Service, and m particu lar, the Public Works Department, for employment.

Those New Zealand engineers whom I knew abroad were unanimous in dedaring that, much as they preferred New Zealand as a country to live in, they would not come back here to work in a skilled technical capacity for about the equivalent of unskilled workers' wages.

When it is considered that they have had an expensive education covering several years, no earnings during this period, and very low wages during their earlier years of training, the desire to accept the financial recognition offered in England, but not in New Zealand, will be better understood. One has only to compare the salaries offered in the above-mentioned adver tisements with those in advertisements in the British Technical Press (not forgetting to add about 30 per cent, to the latter figures to obtain equivalent purchasing power in New Zealand currency) and New Zealand's unattractiveness to a capable man is only too clear.

That, Sir, is why New Zealand's engineering graduates do not come back, and the sooner current misapprehensions about "too many engineers" and "more scope in England" are removed the sooner will steps be taken to en-

tice back to New Zealand those who have changed n trip for experience into a permanent stay abroad.—l am, etc., K. H. BLACK.