The pie charts compare the proportion of employees in engineering companies with various university qualifications in two years: 1980 and 2008. Overall, while the share of employees with a PhD rose, the opposite was true for workers with other qualifications. More than half of the workers in those organizations had a graduate degree in science, with PhDs in Art exhibiting the lowest figures in both years.
The share of workers with PhDs saw a marked increase. The smallest percentage was observed in those with a PhD in Arts, which increased from a chart low of 2% in 1980 to 7% in 2008. A similar rise of 5% points can be seen in those with a PhD in Science, from 25% to 30% – the highest proportion in 1980.
By contrast, the remaining categories bucked the foregoing trend. The share of employees who had a first degree in science drastically fell from 20% in 1980 to 12% in 2008, this being the biggest change on the charts. The figure for workers with a first degree in art negligibly declined by 1% point, as did those with a master’s degree in art, down from 11% and 13%, respectively.
The proportion of workers with a master’s degree in science, meanwhile, was something of an outlier: its share held steady at 29% in both years.