Materials engineering share of practicing engineers

Tom cites a study finding ~25% of practicing engineers are directly doing materials work and another ~35% indirectly — for ~60% total. Used to motivate the Course Three / materials subgroup point in §4.p3.

Since this is a course in both Course Two and Course Three, mechanical engineering degrees are over twenty percent of all engineering degrees. In materials there was a study once that even though materials engineers are about 1.2 percent or a quarter percent of all degrees offered in engineering, about twenty-five percent of all people working as practicing engineers are basically acting as materials engineers. If you're a civil engineer and you were selecting the materials to build a new building or bridge, you're basically doing a material selection. They found that thirty-five percent of all other engineers were indirectly involved with materials — so sixty percent of all engineers end up working on materials. And you can say that probably seventy-five percent of all engineers are doing mechanical-type things.