Florida does a good job of educating engineers like Cannon. The state pumped $166 million into engineering education in the 1980s, building brand-new colleges at FAMU/FSU in Tallahassee and Florida International University in Miami. The investment has paid off: While the number of new engineers has plummeted nationwide over the past 10 years -- U.S. universities awarded 15% fewer engineering bachelor's degrees in 1997 than in 1987 -- Florida universities have increased production, from 2,344 in 1987 to 2,457 in 1997.
Like Cannon, however, most Florida-grown engineers don't stick around. A recent State University System (SUS) study shows only four of 10 engineering graduates were working here five years after receiving a bachelor's degree -- meaning other states reaped the benefits of Florida's investment in their educations. Private university grads are even more likely to leave, says Bob Sullivan, engineering dean at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. "It's a definite brain drain," he says.
And Florida companies go hungry for engineers as they compete for grads in a labor market defined by national rather than state boundaries. "Just about every high-tech company here has had an incredibly difficult time recruiting and retaining engineers," says Jo Moskowitz, Florida head of the American Electronics Association.
It's a puzzle fit for a Ph.D.: Many of Florida's brightest young engineers aren't going to hang around unless the state builds up its high-tech sector. But the companies that could make that happen aren't going to relocate here without a robust work force of engineers -- the people in society who build everything nature did not.
"Leaving Florida has been hard on me and my family," says Cannon, 25, who designs petrochemical plants for Houston-based S&B Engineers and Constructors. "But they wanted me to do what was best for my future."
The issue isn't just a matter of pay; many large Florida firms offer salary packages competitive with those in Silicon Valley. Sometimes, the state's low-tech image scares off talent. Too many young people still see Florida as "Mickey Mouse, orange juice, where my grandparents go," says Gregory Schuckman with the American Association of Engineering Societies in Washington, D.C. "Instead, they should know about aerospace technology on the Space Coast and electro-optics in Orlando and biomedical engineering in Tampa."
As college recruiter for software developer Citrix Systems in Fort Lauderdale, Oxana Maslak tries to sell new engineers on Florida's science and its sunshine. She spends weekends ferrying college kids to the hottest bars and restaurants on the Intracoastal Waterway to try and lure them to Citrix, whose south Florida staff includes about 100 engineers. Despite hefty signing bonuses and competitive salary packages ($42,000 for an entry-level engineer with a bachelor's), Maslak says it's a tough sell. Craig Deaton, staffing manager at the Haskell Company in Jacksonville, agrees. To woo engineers, he pitches high salaries and perks from concert tickets to access to the company yacht, the Casa Mia. But the recruiters say many young scientists would rather head to Houston, Boston or Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, where the concentration of high-tech firms and research universities makes it easier to network, to jump jobs, even to spin-off companies. "About 40% of the graduates who decline our offer simply don't want to come to south Florida," Maslak says. "Candidates have told us if things don't work out at Citrix they wouldn't have anywhere to go from here."
A group called Joint Venture South Florida is working to change that perception. Boca Raton management consultant Roger Ueltzen, a Silicon Valley transplant who watched that region take off during his 14 years with Hewlett-Packard, came up with the idea of harnessing private sector, education and government to work on high-tech work force issues. The initiative, formed two years ago, already has resulted in better collaboration among south Florida's engineering schools and its high-tech firms, where graduates are more likely to sign on if they've worked on an internship or research project.
Similar efforts are under way around the state; the universities of South and Central Florida are key partners in the I-4 High-Tech Corridor Council that is working to lure a semiconductor plant to the area. But Ueltzen and others say the brain drain is a statewide problem that deserves more than regional solutions. Ueltzen says Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeb Bush has lent his name to Joint Venture South Florida but is otherwise uninvolved. Schuckman, a former member of Florida's Postsecondary Education Planning Commission, laments that Bush and Democratic front-runner Buddy MacKay aren't talking on the campaign trail about Florida's science and engineering potential. Meanwhile, Gov. Lawton Chiles is not among 27 governors who have made appointments to the U.S. Innovation Partnership, a program in which federal and state governments work on technology-related economic development. Nor does the governor have a science and technology advisor, a position shifted to Enterprise Florida when the public-private economic development agency was created in 1996.
The concept of a brain drain is touchy, particularly for economic recruiters. To sell Florida, they have to emphasize its ability to produce engineers, not its inability to keep them. "The supply of engineers is not an issue,'' says Randy Berridge, head of the I-4 council, repeating the phrase like a mantra. "It has not surfaced (among the 15 high-tech companies in the I-4 consortium), so to us it is not an issue." But while big firms such as Cirent Semiconductor have been able -- with some effort -- to fill engineering staffs, smaller companies in central Florida don't have it so easy, says Leila Nodarse, president of Nodarse & Associates, a geotechnical, environmental and materials-testing engineering firm in Winter Park. Nodarse, named chair of the State Board of Professional Engineers recently , says companies are having a particularly hard time hiring registered, professional engineers with four or five years' experience. And because only those engineers can oversee projects, their shortage limits small firms' growth.
Reversing the flow
Traditionally beholden to the larger corporations that underwrite computer equipment and fund endowed chairs, Florida's engineering schools are working more closely with small companies, creating certification programs for workers and co-op opportunities for students. To Brent Gregory, technology development vice president at Enterprise Florida, reversing the outflow of engineers is a matter of time: Efforts to build clusters of industries such as aviation/aerospace, information technology and healthcare technology are working and will eventually keep graduates here, he says. "My immediate concern is not a brain drain. My immediate concern is what can we do to provide a climate in Florida conducive to the growth of those companies that are going to keep the graduates here."
In the meantime, Florida has to figure out how much more to invest on training engineers. A 1995 SUS review of engineering programs pointed to the need for a funding tune-up, finding several schools short on maintenance money, research space and funds to increase faculty salaries. (It's not unusual for a new master's graduate to earn more than a department chair.)
SUS Chancellor Adam Herbert, the former University of North Florida president who took over the 10-campus public system in January, says the universities must continue to grow their engineering programs because one day every one of the graduates will have -- and want -- a job in Florida. "We are in a developmental mode now, but we are putting Florida at a great advantage long-term. When companies look at a state, they look at the quality of the academic programs and the students coming out of them. As more and more of these types of companies locate along our research corridors, you'll see more students remaining here."
Michael Kovac, who left Boston's Route 128 high-tech sector 12 years ago to become USF's engineering dean, says Florida's technology build-up and its youth population boom that will pump 100,000 more students into the universities in the next decade could give the state a keen advantage, but only if the universities are equipped to handle those trends. He says the Legislature should match the millions it put into engineering in the '80s. "There is no greater opportunity to diversify our work force and wean ourselves from reliance on service economy and tourism."
But another big infusion of money doesn't seem likely when state lawmakers have nixed the idea of a technology fee for four years straight, and when high-tech infrastructure in the university system continues to be underfunded across disciplines -- not only in engineering. It's also doubtful that the state would make engineering education more efficient by consolidating programs rather than operating eight separate -- and expensive -- sets of faculties and facilities. "If you ask me if I would have personally created eight, the answer is no," says University of Florida engineering dean Winfred Phillips, chairman of Enterprise Florida's technology development board. "But the university system is operating the way the citizens have demanded and the Legislature intends."
And that's not a bad way, according to Phillips, who believes the fact that Florida is sending so many well-qualified engineers out into the world should be a matter of pride, not consternation: "The sons and daughters of Floridians should have worldwide opportunity," Phillips says. "And that's what we're giving them."