It depends on what you mean by “become”?
Certainly a technician can fill in the math and other advanced coursework to get an engineering degree. It’s also true that some job descriptions could be filled by either technicians or engineers. A technician is not an engineer per se though.
Well technicians have 2 year degrees and technologists have 4 year degrees. I believe one can hold the title of engineer with having a ET degree depending on the discipline. In the automation engineering world I feel ET grads can do just as good as an Eng grad. The reason is in automation, controls, systems, and robotics engineering you really do not learn anything till you get the hands on experience…
One complaint that is heard frequently in the engineering community is the appropriation of the term “engineer” by people who have a lot less than an ABET-level engineering education. This happens in many fields, but it is particularly common in the software industry:
The harsh reality is that if a professional title isn't standardized and regulated in some way -- normally by accreditation and/or licensing -- then it is up for grabs by anyone. And that is exactly what has happened to the title of "engineer" in the US. There is, of course, one conspicuous exception: the title of "Professional Engineer" is protected. The obvious problem there is that most engineers outside of the Civil sector aren't PEs.If you aren’t a licensed engineer, then the only other obvious mechanism for title protection is degree accreditation (i.e. ABET). But if ABET diminishes as an accepted standard, then that won’t work either. On the contrary, you should expect to see increasing numbers of “engineers” who don’t meet the traditional benchmark.
Even schools like Harvard, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins are now issuing non-ABET “lite” BA degrees in engineering disciplines. Like it or not, those BA graduates generally have the same legal rights to claim the title of “engineer” as someone with a traditional ABET BS. In fact, so does the guy who took a couple of web design classes at the community college and now calls himself a “Software Engineer”.
If US engineers want title protection (which does exist in other countries), then they need to define a mandatory professional standard. Mechanisms like PE licensing or ABET accreditation have sufficient rigor in theory, but they obviously can’t protect the “engineer” title if they are optional.
This s far adrift of your original topic, but why did you ask the engineer/technician/ technologist question of you feel like you already had the answer?
@Corbett - agree. In my opinion the ABET degree and PE license should be required of all engineers, even those working in private industry in fields for which a PE is not explicitly required (including software). If I got a resume across my desk touting a “BA in engineering” (which to my mind is an oxymoron) even from Harvard, Dartmouth, or Johns Hopkins, it will be filed in the circular file. Do Harvard, Dartmouth, JHU, et al really need to stuff their classrooms with students of ersatz engineering? Don’t they already have far more applicants than seats in their classes? Cheapening up the degree in this manner serves no public interest (of course, industries likely won’t consider this to be the equivalent of an actual ABET accredited degree).
The “engineering lite” degrees may be for students with typical (not major-specific) career goals found in those schools (e.g. Wall Street and consulting at Harvard and Dartmouth; pre-law and pre-med students may also be included) but find engineering interesting enough to dabble in even if they never intend to go into engineering careers. Those who want to go into engineering careers are advised to study the ABET-accredited versions of the engineering majors. For example, JHU says at https://engineering.jhu.edu/academics/general-engineering/ for its BA general engineering major:
In fairness, I think the BA at these schools is primarily intended for people who don’t plan to become practicing engineers, but who are seeking careers in fields like tech management or tech finance. In other words, the engineering BA may not be so much about making future engineers dumber, but about making future managers and investors smarter.
It’s very difficult to add a double-major to a traditional ABET BS engineering program, if you want to graduate in four years. However, this is quite feasible with a non-ABET engineering BA. It’s true that a Dartmouth BA with a double-major in engineering and economics might not be what traditional engineering employers are looking for – but it might be an attractive combination to an employer on Wall Street.
@Corbett- perhaps a contributing factor to the degree of instability and chaos that seems to occur regularly in financial markets and Wall St. is the investment banking industry’s misplaced love of Harvard/Yale/Dartmouth, et. al liberal arts BA holders, studying subjects in which no real quantitative or analysis skills are required many of whom probably never had an actual hard math or science course in their entire college career. They really believe these people are so great at hard (quantitative/analytical) problem solving? I still regard a “BA in engineering” to be a joke. At least JHU disclaims it being a real engineering degree, to their credit. Do the others do the same? I doubt most of those Ivy League liberal arts majors would survive majoring in engineering.
But, as you said earlier, given that we do not protect the title of Engineer (other than the specific case of Professional Engineer), those “BA in Engineering” holders may choose to refer to themselves as engineers. Industry and government of course will know that they are pretenders. Those of us who sweated the work needed to become real engineers and PEs bristle at this.
“The Bachelor of Arts in General Engineering is a true liberal arts degree with a concentration in engineering”. LOL. That statement is an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one. Engineering is not a “liberal art” any more than medicine, architecture, law, accounting, et al are.
“It’s difficult to double major in a traditional ABET BS engineering program” - yes it most certainly is, no doubt about that. Nonetheless, in my school for example we had and still have a fair number of students who obtain both the BE and BA in humanities/liberal arts or BS in a science in four years (a few take 5 years, granted). We have also had three or four each year who earned their BE and MS in four years. Our undergraduate engineering program requires 152 credits, yet the majority of students in the non-co-op program (which is 5 years by design) graduate in 4 years. If one has the drive and determination they will accomplish their goal. As my father used to say, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”.
Wall Street does a lot of quantitative finance these days, often preferring to recruit those with strong math and statistics knowledge (note that math is a liberal art). Of course, some may question whether using such talent to design new financial products that are difficult to understand by the investors really adds to the essential service that the finance industry provides to the overall economy, as opposed to allowing it to privatize a larger share of the gains for itself while socializing the losses onto others.
I read that Brooke Shields (the actress, I guess she is no longer in the public spotlight and a has-been now) went through Princeton University without taking even one actual math or science course, yet she majored in “liberal arts” and got a BA degree. Aren’t math and science parts of a decent liberal arts curriculum as well? Yet, people think those Princeton fluff majors are “so smart” just because they went to Princeton. What a joke. The Wall St. investment banking industry is probably filled with people like that, who have no hard problem solving ability, like Ronald Reagan (and now Trump) whose knowledge of economics for example are at a grammar school level.
You mean this: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/15/opinion/at-princeton-they-call-it-an-education.html ?
However, Princeton then was not the same as Princeton now in terms of general education requirements. Princeton now: https://odoc.princeton.edu/curriculum/general-education-requirements
Also, Wall Street then was not the same as Wall Street now, which wants a lot of quants (probably including those with “engineering lite” as well as math degrees): https://www.forbes.com/sites/investopedia/2013/06/07/quants-the-rocket-scientists-of-wall-street/
@ucbalumnus - Yes, that’s the article I read on Brooke Shields (among other articles at that time). I’m laughing. She was nothing more than a fluff major. Princeton prides itself as a “superior” liberal arts school? Baloney!
“However, Princeton then was not the same as Princeton now in terms of general education requirements. Princeton now: https://odoc.princeton.edu/curriculum/general-education-requirements”.
Under the requirements for “AB” (I guess that means “BA” students) all of the general education requirements are humanities/soft courses with the exception of the four “science and technology” courses. I’d be willing to bet (and I’m not a gambling type) those aren’t real science courses required (e.g., quantitative and proof-based). They have no requirement for calculus-based physics, calculus, chemistry, etc? They call that “liberal arts”? As I said before, LOL! You mean that Princeton’s GE requirements in 1987 were even fluffier than they are now?
Of course, the BSE (Engineering) students take the regular hard science and math courses.
I know a couple of Wall St. analysts (quants). One has a BSEE and a PhD in financial engineering and stochastic calculus/quantitative finance from Stevens Institute of Technology having done his dissertation research on neural networks using a wavelet model for financial time series analysis and prediction. He had papers on that topic published in Harvard Business Review and other well known journals. Another has a BS in math from Stevens and a PhD in math/stochastic optimization from NYU. They are both quite successful. I doubt that most traditional liberal arts or “engineering lite” majors could do their work at that level.
I said it in the other similar thread, so I’ll say it here. ABET for CS is simply not needed.
One of these years the software industry and CS will catch up to engineering.
I think the only people who should be called engineers are those who drive trains.
@simba9 - Train operators or drivers drive the train. Engineers design the train.
The @Engineer80 doth protest too much, methinks. Things like going to a top engineering school, or having a PE don’t make one a good engineer. I have seen people with no engineering degree make it through our very rigorous interview process, and I have walked people out mid interview with great credentials. Companies should hire the best people for the job. You might be a very good engineer, but it does get a bit tiring seeing you talk down to people who don’t have your credentials.
From Wikipedia - “An engineer (American and Canadian), engine driver, train driver, loco pilot, motorman, train operator (British and Commonwealth English), is a person who operates a train. The driver is in charge of, and responsible for driving the engine, as well as the mechanical operation of the train, train speed, and all train handling.”
A railroad “engineer” (train operator) is a historic definition. I am differentiating between railroad “engineering” and actual engineering.
@Nordicdad - A person without a degree is not an engineer, regardless of what an employer or interviewing process may call them. None of my employers would hire a non-degreed person to do engineering work. Occasionally they hired technicians or engineering assistants with 2 year degrees or in some cases none, but to be promoted to an engineering position they had to obtain their four year engineering degree. We had an excellent employee tuition reimbursement program and supported the employees in getting their degrees, even giving them time off to go to school.
Those with good engineering academic credentials and (where it is required) a PE as a group are going to be far better engineers than people without any formal engineering training. If you believe otherwise, well, you’re simply wrong.
Yes, companies should hire the best people for the job. The best people are the ones with the academic training and the practical experience.
This gave me a good chuckle. I may tend to agree with you.
Sincerely,
DecideSomeHow, PE