I would encourage them. I'd make sure they've got the right stuff. B.N. Being able to see beyond the way we do things today. If that person had the personality of pushing the boundaries, I'd think they'd make a good aeronautical engineer. You said employment is cyclical.
Good engineers understand their systems and are able to learn and understand other people's systems.
These are the people who are able to develop better systems. They're the people who tend to work better with people. If you can work with people you get to lead efforts, teams. If your products are systems that work, you tend to move up. I think sometimes it does.