Jack,
Clearly you are not an impartial third party. You have a vested interest in telling us that all your graduates are immediately employed. I would like to see some supporting statistics rather than just your opinion.
Further more, kids out of school are willing to work for low salaries just to get some experience.
If you have not educated your graduates to solve problems then I suggest you give them their money back, being able to solve problems is what engineering is all about, without it you are not an engineer.
Of course this is what I am talking about. Pay these kids 40 000 per year and have them work 60 hours per week. It is very common for employers to demand extra hours for no extra pay!
Well my friend you have not worked in a Company lately. It's all about top grading and smart goals. You compete with others for the money allocated to salaries in the budget. All Companies promote team work but yet you are judged on your performance versus performance of others in the department and around the Company.
This is true, H1B visa engineers are not the best communicators but they are cheap. It takes only two days to fill in the quota of 65000 per year!
So the communication issue is not that important after all.
Besides, many professors at universities don't speak English very well (you are not included), but that doesn't stop schools like Purdue to hire absolutely ridiculous people. One of my friends went through three professors in one semester. The class had to stage a walk-out because the professor was teaching with an interpreter at his side. You are responsible for producing these poor communicators!
I think you meant to say "well educated people". Not trying to nit pick here, I know you what you mean. Thank you for admitting this.
I agree with you that the type of engineering and geographic location makes a difference, but that is all part of the standard deviation. The article refers to engineering and science as a whole, it looks at the bigger picture.
Here is a link to a very cool web site (not my own and I am not affiliated with it)
http://www.automation.com/sitepages/pid2965.php
It gives you results of a salary survey they took, unfortunatelly it is only based on 864 respondents, not enough to be a true representation.