I myself was an electrical engineering (EE) major until I switched to computer science in my third …

Definitely true, as there weren’t EE jobs here. Now that we’re moving chip manufacturing back, and with programming job market being saturated, perhaps it will shift and EE will pay more due to being more in demand

What you said seems contradictory. You open with the premise that intelligent youth go the finance / CS / MBA path instead of engineering and then say that those who do go into traditional engineering can’t find jobs. Couldn’t it be that people don’t go into engineering because there aren’t any jobs? Wouldn’t the lack of jobs explain the low salaries and thus the preference for more high paying alternatives?

Everyone I know that was in EE falls into two camps basically: 1. Became web developers 2. Work in Defense or some other regulated industry that has protections from being outsourced to China

Alternate explanation: electrical engineering is actually really hard and some parts of computer science look comparatively easier. Plus coding is startups is cool, EE is still nerd as in Nerd.

It's not even brain drain, America's dominance came from the fact that for nearly a century the brightest people in the world were willing to give up everything to come here. That is no longer the case. Today's Einstein probably isn't going to immigrate here.

My hot take as to the reason EE is a bit of a dead end in the US is that the options outside of the handful of primary employers are limited. It is very capital intensive to run a semiconductor fab, design chips or assemble electronics at scale. Therefore the employer has all of the leverage. The equipment and/or factory worker infrastructure comes first and the engineering teams are just a cog. Compare that to having all the degrees of freedom as a computer science student to start up a niche mobile app or internet based niche service after working at FAANG for 5-6 years. Even AI infrastructure will eventually go down in price making niche AI first startups a possibility. In finance its the same, as a post i-banker you have the option to start a boutique fund, a niche fintech or just invest your own savings.

I think your explanation about large numbers of motivated students pursuing lucrative Non-STEM degrees is incomplete without mentioning the cost of an undergraduate and graduate STEM education in the USA. The most critical shortages of STEM graduates are in roles requiring advanced degrees. Your median undergraduate education (~$40k) and median graduate education (~$60k) saddles students with approximately $100k in unforgivable student debt! Never mind the years lost that one could otherwise be working. So it’s no wonder students are motivated by the ROI of their degrees, it’s why I chose Computer Engineering over Electrical Engineering. These are expensive STEM degrees which students on visas are all too willing to pay for a chance at a residency and a pathway to citizenship. So no wonder the majority of undergraduate and graduate STEM students are foreign born in the US. The ROI is not…

Your argument doesnt really make sense : there are no EE jobs in the use, therefore no one wants to pursue EE jobs, therefire there are no EE jobs.