Mmm, the coffee smells good.
I don't have a degree in engineering.
I did get my licence before the egg man was born - I still have it too.
My point is that engineering is a profession. As in lesser professions such as medicine, law and beancounting, new entrants generally start at the bottom and work their way up. Some may have a degree but they usually spend plenty of time on the shop floor getting practical experience before moving on to jobs where their academic training can be used to full advantage. I know of no case where a new graduate has entered the profession in a managerial or even supervisory position.
As regards salary and benefits, if the most experienced and best qualified practitioners at the top of a profession (and no, I don't include myself in that lofty band), are not well respected, that will reflect not only on their own salaries but right down through the layers to the new entrants. That is currently the case with engineering where, despite control of corporate activity being under the so-called financial experts, it is the engineers who take the blame for failures and thus suffer from low public regard.
Admittedly the effects of ill-considered cost cutting are also beginning to be felt in other fields. (I do enjoy that advert where the bean counter is told that his dream means there are no more costs to be cut and he should try production instead.)
The world as we know it was developed by those with a flair for improving things - it was the mechanically minded cavemen that built a better fireplace, made a better spear point and so on... The guys painting the walls, chanting to the gods and organizing the war parties were no doubt very useful too, but it was the mechanical men and women that dragged humanity into civilisation. For some reason, engineers are their own worst enemy, wasting time arguing among themselves about who is the most useful. In truth we are all needed, but it is the men and women who develop new things and thereby create wealth that are the most useful. Mending things or keeping the wheels turning smoothly is all very well, but it is innovation that contributes the most to human development. When we stop rewarding those who create new wealth our society goes into decline.
Think about it - what is the big difference between the era of those other great engineers Watt, Stevenson, Brunel and the present day?
Apart from the absence of LAMEs that is...
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Through difficulties to the cinema