Over the last decade, even as spending on new military projects has reached its highest level since the Reagan years, the Pentagon has increasingly been losing the people most skilled at managing them. That brain drain, military experts like Mr. Kaminski say, is a big factor in a breakdown in engineering management that has made huge cost overruns and long delays the maddening norm. <...> At M.I.T., a 2007 survey showed that 28.7 percent of undergraduates were headed for work in finance, 13.7 in management consulting and just 7.5 percent in aerospace and defense. The top 10 employers included McKinsey, Google, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bain, JPMorgan and Oracle -- but not a single military contractor or government office. The survey showed that the average annual starting salary in finance and high-tech was more than $70,000, compared with $37,000 at the Defense Department. The average in the military industry was $61,000.M.I.T. does not have comparable survey data for 10 or 15 years ago, but officials there say the trend is unmistakable. "Google calls me every other week looking for systems engineers," said Donna H. Rhodes, a systems engineering expert at M.I.T.
Over the last decade, even as spending on new military projects has reached its highest level since the Reagan years, the Pentagon has increasingly been losing the people most skilled at managing them. That brain drain, military experts like Mr. Kaminski say, is a big factor in a breakdown in engineering management that has made huge cost overruns and long delays the maddening norm. <...>
At M.I.T., a 2007 survey showed that 28.7 percent of undergraduates were headed for work in finance, 13.7 in management consulting and just 7.5 percent in aerospace and defense. The top 10 employers included McKinsey, Google, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Bain, JPMorgan and Oracle -- but not a single military contractor or government office.
The survey showed that the average annual starting salary in finance and high-tech was more than $70,000, compared with $37,000 at the Defense Department. The average in the military industry was $61,000.
M.I.T. does not have comparable survey data for 10 or 15 years ago, but officials there say the trend is unmistakable.
"Google calls me every other week looking for systems engineers," said Donna H. Rhodes, a systems engineering expert at M.I.T.
In the past, huge cost overruns were, of course, unheard of.
