would you discourage your child to take up engineering in college? 20

[westheimer1234]

i know i would. i find engineering one of the most unstable jobs. i work for EPC companies and they always mass hire and mass lay off.

 

[GregLocock]

"If we want respect, just for being engineers, then we need to make the program a mandatory masters, (6 years should do) followed by a mandatory internship (much like doctors) "

One out of two ain't bad, but it's not great either.

I have yet to see any evidence that staying at uni produces better engineers. The Australian engineering industry certainly doesn't think that a higher degree is worth paying for, judging by starting salaries.

After all, if university teaches you to teach yourself (which I think is the main aim) then once you know that then hanging around waiting for the slow ones to catch on is not very productive.

Perhaps we ought to face facts and accept that the great engineers of the past operated in a different environment, where seeing the practical implications of an equation, even if they couldn't solve it exactly, was (and still is) a skill, largely negated now because now we can solve the equation numerically. I don't want to encourage hundreds of monkeys to type Shakespeare, but given spell checkers and so on even that job has got quicker, by several factors of infinity.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[moltenmetal]

HgTX: you make my point for me. You suggest, as do I, that an engineering education should no longer be viewed as training for the profession of engineering, but rather has become just like a liberal arts education. It can no longer be considered a professional education like law, architecture, medicine or even accounting.

When recommending engineering as a career to a young person, shouldn’t this be the FIRST thing you mention? “If you survive the educational program and graduate, you will have about one chance in three of actually working in the field for which you were trained”. Wouldn’t that give you pause to recommend it as an educational choice?

By the way, the 1/3 includes engineering project managers, engineering managers etc.!

Forget about the philosophy, English lit or fine arts grads- how many law, medicine or architecture grads choose to go on to do something else? Some, certainly- I know a few myself- but is it anywhere nearly 2/3 of the graduating class? Surely this begs the question: what’s wrong with working as an engineer in Canada, such that a majority of those educated to become engineers end up "choosing" something else?!

The last stats I saw for engineers in the US were far better, with a much higher fraction of engineering grads actually working as engineers. I’ve got plenty of supply-side data which I believe to explain that difference, but I suspect that we Canadians are just a bit ahead of the curve on this unfortunate trend.

Indeed I’ve observed years where a large fraction of the graduating class of even the best engineering schools in Canada CANNOT find engineering work- and not for lack of trying.

I’m not denying that some enter the program and persist to graduation despite having no intention of ever actually working as engineers- but a great many are denied entry to the profession due to pure oversupply. It’s wishful thinking that the other 2/3 of eng grads are all medical researchers or patent lawyers, intent all along on using engineering as a mere stepping stone!

Quite a few grads do what good engineers are trained to do: once they graduate, they rationally examine the effort and risk to financial reward ratio of our profession and find it lacking, and go on to do something else- a job for which they’re often recruited fresh out of school, rather than having to pound the pavement to find. Those lost to the profession early are usually lost to the profession permanently. Fast forward ten years, and suddenly there’s a “shortage” of engineers with 10 years experience to handle some boom time in some industry or another, and the hue and cry of “shortage” is raised yet again.

 

[Keith1029]

Greg, you are correct, staying at university, the way it is now, will not produce a better engineer. Coupled with that requirement is the belief that the university become more accountable to the students and raise the bar so that the learning is faster and we are not waiting for the slow ones to catch up (the hallmark of public education). True, they don't teach anything that you couldn't learn on your own for $1.50 in late fee's at the local Library, but the same could be said about any program anywhere. The hope (something that they achieve to varying degrees now) is that the academic experience of the professors will accelerate the theoretical knowledge gain in the same way that a mentor or internship will accelerate the experience gain. That being said, I do concede your point, the universities will never progress to the point that 1 year under the guidance of a highly experienced working professional working won’t still be worth 2 sitting in a lecture theatre.

 

[IRstuff]

There are two aspects of respect, that from the public, and that from employers.

Since employers are all pretty much the same, nuff said about getting respect there. Doctors are simply revenue machines to most medical systems.

As for public respect, that'll never happen, at least, not in the US. Getting a masters makes you an egghead, nuff said there as well. Watch a few episodes of Eureka on SyFy, and you get an idea of the stereotype of higher-educated technical people; basically, the "dumb" sheriff is the one that usually solves the problems created by the "geniuses." This is, and has been. the perception of higher education in the US since pretty much the beginning of the republic. A perusal of popular culture, in movies and cartoons, will likewise give that idea, Mr. Peabody's history, the bald, thick-glassed, labcoated scientist, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. No, Independence Day, etc. The last one is of particular interest because the majority of the scientist are depicted as wild-eyed geeks, but one of the heroes is a genius who rejected academia to be a technician.

The reason doctors get respect is because they have direct, and immmediate, impact on people's lives. Since that can never happen to the average person with an engineer, that avenue can never be pursued.

The only engineering discipline that might come close to the level of respect that doctors get are probably prosthetics engineers, but even those are usually not in contact with the patients.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[arcinNsparkin]

A lot of the posters here seem to have been in the profession for a while, but I figured I’d ad my perspective as a semi-newly graduated Electrical Engineer.

Perhaps most people should NOT be going to college. Everyone and their dog feels they deserve a college education so they can get the best jobs and have the easy life. Well… there’s no reason a janitor should require a college education. Same goes for most jobs out there. Its why my friends who majored in RTF (Radio, Tele., Film), Physical Education, and everyone who went to the diploma Mills, are still jobless because there is no market for the degree they were peddled.

Then there are the people who do go for the engineering degree just because. All that happens is they end up diluting the rest of the population who have talent and enjoy the field (I apologize for being one of them… sorry!). There are too many people going to college, and not enough people entering the trades, or construction, or any kind of industry that actually builds something but has a hard days physical labor involved.

I hear it a lot from contractors that the trades are simply dying off, because the Vo-Tech schools aren’t “hip” and all the high school grads are going to college.

Im not sure I am going to stay in the engineering profession. My game plan is to work as much as I can until I have enough money for a 50% down payment on a nice reasonably sized house, then bail on the industry and get a job with a reasonable stress / work week / expectations.

(my original post was 4 times longer so if it seems to jump around I apologize for that, just cut out the fluff.)

 

[KENAT]

Well I'm not sure about the ending of your post but I share some of concerns about the philosophy of sending almost everyone to college and have posted about it before.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[arcinNsparkin]

ha, neither am I. Its just what gets me through the day, thinking that one day I'll tell "the man" off and ride off into the sunset. I'll probably end up staying, but finding a place to work that isnt an hour and half away from where I live.

Anyways, The main proponents for the continuation of education can all be found in the academic field, based on my observations and life experiences to date, but the entire education process is flawed to begin with. I use 8, maybe 10, classes in my daily actives at work. So much of what I learned was wasted. In fact, 8 is a fluffy number, because Im including Calc and Physics in that count, simply because I needed an understanding of what they cover and the theories behind it for the 2-3 classes I actually did use.

The education has become so broad, that you truly gain nothing from the time you spend there. You learn good work habits, responsibility, dead-lines, etc… but that’s no excuse for gaining no useful knowledge after you leave College/University. The courses should be focused on a particular industry, and based on real jobs and projects. Engineers should be Marketable strait out of college. If college prepared students, we shouldn’t have to hit the ground running… we should have been running already before we left. There is simply too much out there to learn everything about every single field of engineering. And so, classes get watered down and the purpose of education is lost and dissolved into nothing more then “an experience to teach you the life skills needed to work”. Far to often I left a Class with a solid A(+), and still didn’t feel like I knew anything about what I was taught or knew enough about it to do something with it.

 

[Bester2]

Today's engineering is EASY. There I said it. It has been mentioned in this post how the quality of education has dropped but I say this is a supply and demand function. Not one of my friends that I went to school with (large state school been out 5 years) does any real difficult conceptual engineering. We all pretty much copy and paste designs or calculation maybe changing an initial condition here and there. That is what the market requires of us so that is what we do. I am sure there are difficult engineering positions in the US, but, the super top tier schools (MIT, Standford, CIT and the like) can handle filling these positions, all the rest of the positions can be filled with average IQ individuals like myself. I know a lot of engineers, and I only know of one engineer who actually does difficult conceptual stuff, and he has a masters from a top 10 engineer school and works for a conceptual aerospace firm. So I think we should stop degrading the universities for education their students how the market requires them to be educated.


SW 2007 SP 5.0

 

[KENAT]

arcin, this has been debated before and this may not the the thread for it. Concensus seems to be Engineering Degrees try to/should build a fairly broad foundation to build upon and teach you to learn. Trying to focus too much on more applied information will make them more specialized to only certain fields which has its own disadvantages.

Some people when they start a degree aren't even sure what general course of engineering they want to follow, yet alone whate niche within that broader field.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[HgTX]

moltenmetal: I may or may not be making your point for you. If 2/3 of people who go to engineering school realize that the job market is not what they wanted and change their mind, that's a problem. That means people want engineering jobs but can't have them. And there is no shortage.

However, if a lot of those people develop other interests along the way or entered to begin with "just because", then perhaps the shortage is real, because engineering schools lose 2/3 of their students upon graduation to other fields even though there are jobs available.

There's a difference between "although I would very much like to work as an engineer, I just don't see it as a sustainable future" and "there are other things I would rather do than work as an engineer". The former means there are too many engineering students. The latter means there may not be enough.

Hg

Eng-Tips policies: faq731-376

 

[arcinNsparkin]

Sorry, I was not trying to derail the thread. Ill go back to my corner to lurk from afar now.

 

[SNORGY]

KENAT:

No worries. Never an offense taken here.

When I get tired of being treated like scum in my engineering career, I just take time off (like the past 2 months) to train and play with my dogs. Doesn't pay as much but it's way more fun.

My wife figured that out 30 years ago.



Regards,

SNORGY.

 

[abusementpark]

One of the frustrating things I have learned early on in my young career is that your ultimate value to you company is based largely on what clients you can bring in.

Well, for most us structural guys, that is a matter of what architects from which you can generate work. What does this mean?

Well, firstly, who you know and networking are all the more important. This is not something I expected when I chose engineering as a profession.

Secondly, it is not about how good of an engineer you are, it is about how good of an engineer the architects think you are. We all know that their views can be diametrically opposed to reality at times. This is frustrating because I hold my technical background to be of great importance, yet it is disheartening to realize that it doesn't hold the weight in your value as an engineer that it should.

 

[KENAT]

Once again, someone taking something specific to only part of engineering and talking as if it applied to the whole field.

However, the point about "it is not about how good of an engineer you are, it is about how good of an engineer the architects client/management think you are" holds almost entirely true anywhere you have some kind of boss or client.

Humans tend to be poor at being objective about our or others performance. If we like a guy that's an average performer, we may rank him as high or higher than a very high performer who's more difficult to get on with and similar. Obviously if someone’s too difficult to work with that may be fair but generally I'd say that's the exception.

Some people take this too far to the point of brown nosing, others never accept the idea and suffer because of it. I assume there's a cheerful witch somewhere in between the 2 extremes but I'm not sure I've found it yet.

Anyway, this is going to be common to many professions/jobs, not just engineering. In fact, one might suppose this is more of an issue in other fields as Engineers tend to be slightly more objective than the average, or so I’ve heard claimed. So again, why is this a reason not to take engineering compared to other courses of study?

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[moltenmetal]

I don't see entry-level engineering jobs going unfilled, EVER, so I think you have indeed made my point for me HgTX!

 

[blarge]

I loved figuring out how things worked when I was a kid. No one in my family tree had ever gone to college so we really did not consider it more than just a dream. After high school I had a good union job in the local factory. On midnights I would travel around the plant and see opportunities to make things better. On days I was told to leave it to the engineers. Eventually I quit that job, to the dismay of my friends and family, and went to college to study engineering. Yes, most of my time is spent documenting my work instead of just running around and fixing things, which is not as exciting. But when I am working on a problem I love it. Not only would I encourage my son to be an engineer, but the local elementary school has been converted to an Engineering Magnate program and I have spent much of my free time helping get the program off the ground. And yes my son has transferred to that school. My life today is much better than it ever could have been in the factory, and that is because I am an engineer. If my son chooses not be an engineer I will support that choice. My only hope is that he chooses a career that gives him those moments where he loves the choice he made.

 

[slickdeals]

http://xkcd.com/242/

 

[dmech]

I would absolutely encourage my child to pursue a job in engineering or the sciences!!! I get paid to think, create, problem solve problems. I make twice as much as the average American (1/3 Career). Take a look at the top 10 chart...can you say engineer, science, math.

http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp

However, I'm also going to encourage my child to pursue entrepreneurship too. Fortunately, engineering is one of the professions where the skill set allows one to make money in their sleep.

http://www.innovationmagazine.com/innovation/volumes/v5n3/feature2.shtml

For example, the guy who invented the SuperSoaker is a scientist/engineer that attributes the eureka moment to solving a problem at work. This is not uncommon in engineering. Ever since, that gentleman has made money in his sleep...to the tune of approximately 5% of $1 billion (i.e. $50,000,000).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Johnson_(inventor)

Heart surgeons only makes money while he is actively performing surgery. The inventor of the pacemaker or stent makes money on every heart surgery. Lets not forget the new surgical robots...can you say doctor outsourcing.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcardiac.htm

Think of Dyson, Bill Gates, Hewlett-Packard, Ford, Dean Kamen, etc...they all come from a technical (science/math/engineering) background. Engineering provides a great foundation and skill set for creating "things" that can create money while you sleep, so long as you have entrepreneurship skills too.

Lastly, stop worrying about outsourcing. On a percentage basis, we (US) pumps out 2x as many engineers as China. Locally, there will always be technical problems to solve.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901760.html

 

[FACS]

I think it's stupid to discourage anyone from doing anything. Everyone has a right to choose to do what they want.

No one has a crystal ball, and can predict how anyone will succeed in any market or in any career at any point in time.

Do what you are interested in, and do your best. It works out how it works out.





Charlie

http://www.facsco.com

 

[atlas06]

I've heard that a Mechanical engineer refused to work for Vince Lombardi playing football because he made more money as a Mechanical Engineer than as a football player.

Some movie director once said (early period of cinema): "who the hell wants to hear actors talk".

Those were the days I guess. Boy, how times change.
Try to lead kids toward tomorrow's trend instead. Whatever that is.