@ucbalumnus thx. It is interesting. One of the internships my son is applying to in their business culture /values page business and entrepreneurship seems important to them. So I guess they must teach their own in a sense
@eyemgh
My son is interested in Computer Engineering.
@momofsenior1, the opportunities your daughter has available to her are different than what the OP referenced, BS to MBA with no break. Leadership and communication are useful and different than the more boiler plate MBA program. Regardless of utility, if they crowd out tech electives, every student need to weigh the cost:benefit.
@SCMomofTwo, what year is he?
@eyemgh - It’s a good point about not crowding out tech electives. My DD was lucky that all her AP and DE credits transferred so she has no gen ed requirements left, so plenty of room in her schedule for the leadership/comm courses as well as tech electives. It’s also why she’s doing much of it now as a freshman. Obviously YMMV depending on school.
And I was not suggesting that undergraduate leadership courses are a substitute for an MBA. (My husband would kill me if that’s what came across). Just wanted OP to know that there are undergrad opportunities to gain knowledge in those areas, especially for entrepreneurship across engineering disciplines.
Many good engineering schools offer courses on entrepreneurship and venture capital these days, in addition to basic accounting, finance and marketing courses. Other than additional networking opportunities, MBAs are not really necessary. To succeed, you do need some EQ, in addition to your IQ, however.
The company I worked for used to select an engineer to move into management based on their desire to be a manager and their skills demonstrated as an acting manager as those opportunities presented themselves. The new manager was then sent to “charm school” to learn how to be a manager. It didn’t always work out do well.
They then changed their approach and required that perspective managers take National Management Association classes and complete the certified managers set of classes before they would be considered. There was a very active NMA chapter within the company. It still wasn’t perfect but a whole lot better. Power would still go to some people’s heads.
My son’s plan, initially, was to do one of these hybrid programs and then get his Masters in either Engineering or CS. So he would graduate with the STEM to MBA and the Masters in his tech field. Is that a horse of a different color?
My son was initially intrigued, until he learned about all the previously mentioned pitfalls. He elected instead to do a BS/MS in 5 years and will be done this year. He did the MS because he had excess capacity in his schedule from AP and DE credit, but due to the cumulative nature of the engineering curriculum, with his culminating in a year long Senior Project, he couldn’t get out early with just a BS. @boneh3ad regularly councils to be cautious about planning on grad school before one starts. Lots can change. Good luck to your son!
An MBA and a NMA certificate in management are two different items. The MBA will have a large component (even the hybrid ones I have looked at) of business classes. The management certificate focuses on people skills. If you want a business job, then an MBA is the way to go. However, for engineering management (and I’m coming from working at a well known large aerospace company) you don’t need the business skills until you are moving into the executive management side of things. That’s about 15 to 20 years into your career and most don’t make it that far (or even want to).
An engineering manager must manage people to get engineering tasks done, on time, within budget and done correctly. To accomplish that, you need to understand thoroughly the technical side. I figure that over 90% of what I knew technically, I learned on the job. A college grad has so much to learn. A technical manager must also need to stay on top of the technical to plan where you must grow the group expertise. I never had to worry about sales, product placement, etc., or all the other business aspects. There were other groups in the company that did that, and they weren’t typically engineers. If I needed someone to help me make a schedule, I had a group I could go to with my inputs and they would enter the schedule into the master schedule. I would then get together with them once or twice a month to status the schedule. The financial aspect of my job meant simply tracking of engineering hours to do the job and the cost to purchase any specialized equipment to get the job done. Again, a business group handled all the details.
Your son should figure out what the job is that he is shooting for. Figure out the skills needed to do that job. Then focus his education on getting those skills.
One word of caution; the job he desires may not exist for a new college grad. It may exist down the line once he gets some experience. You wouldn’t want to have open heart surgery by a new doctor, fresh out of medical school and having never seen or done such a surgery before. Well, a company isn’t going to trust it’s corporate life on a new grad with no experience either. Do the work, prove yourself and then it may happen. I don’t recall hearing of someone becoming an engineering manager with my company until they had at least 5 years experience. I moved into management after about 10 years on the job.
Here’s a few of my guesses::
If you are in some sort of program that is BS-MBA, then when you finish, you will have a BS degree in something and an MBA, with a concentration in something. Those are two degrees. Afterwards people looking at your resume will look and see you have two degrees. They will evaluate that like anybody else that has two degrees. They won’t even necessarily even know that they were linked as part of some joint program.
As someone who has two degrees but no work experience after the first degree, you will probably be considered as any other entry level MBA with no work experience. The technical part could be useful if the firm does technical work, but they will probably look at you as a fledgling MBA, on their MBA path, not a fledgling engineer. Is my guess.
As for how to get into management at an engineering firm: At my firm you had to be selected for it. Based on your work performance and their perception of your leadership potential, your work habits and your interpersonal skills. They hired consultants to do various internal testing of all engineers, such as inbox management practices. That was not just for management screening, but performance assessment in general . Some people who were selected to first-rung engineering management jobs did choose to pursue MBA programs at night. But they weren’t selected in the first place because they were taking those programs. And who knows if they helped them later on.
Personally, as a former engineer who went awry and into finance:
The way I think of it is going off to get an advanced degree is an option.
Options have value.
If you go straight from school to an MBA then you will have exercised your option prematurely.
You can’t go later to get an MBA, once you’ve been on the job and have a better feeling for what interests you, if you already have an MBA !
You can’t use it as a vehicle to switch careers, if you conclude that the initial path you are on is not right for you, if you already have the degree !
I think in many cases one can make a more informed decision if they can work for a few years after their BS and see where that takes them.
But that’s me.
monydad, exactly what I have been saying. Get the degree in engineering, skip the MBA. Try to be the best engineer you can be. Find out what being a manager really means. Different companies have different ways to get into engineering management but none that I know of need an MBA. Engineering managers are selected based on being good engineers with a demonstrated track record that would make someone believe that they would make a good manager. Getting education in business or people management can easily come later when you know what is required at your company.
And after you’ve been in management, you may decide it isn’t for you. I was in management (made it to senior manager) for about 15 years and decided I wanted out. I went back into engineering and enjoyed it.
Thanks to everyone for sharing all of your advice and experience; it’s really helpful since we have no engineers in our family. I will be sharing this thread with my S19 who is planning on chemical engineering, and has asked about some of the hybrid MBA programs. Pretty clear that he will be better off focusing on engineering as an UG.
Thanks everyone! This has been very helpful and has changed my son’s trajectory. He is re-evaluating.
I appreciate it!
Engineering entrepreneurial programs (coursework or minor) for undergrads with case studies and related coursework are terrific opportunities but recognized as purely academic exercises. Penn SEAS minor has engaging core courses based on case studies and guest speakers. Electives dip into law school, Wharton, Health policy.
It’s hard to imagine all 60 credits of an MBA as a pure academic exercise without prior or parallel work experience.
One last comment: I have said it before on other similar threads on this subject, but a class or maybe two in management MAY be useful as an undergrad.
I took a class on manufacturing management as an undergrad. The class content was along the lines of making decisions in product development in a manufacturing setting. I learned some useful things in that class. It wasn’t any kind of precursor to going into management, although the subject title might sound that way. It was taught as a series of case studies.
I took it mainly because the instructor for the class was a well known auto company executive, on sabbatical, who came to the college to teach and I wanted to learn from him. It was actually a lot of fun. You need some fun classes in college to balance all the tough engineering classes.
I do hope that people in this forum stop giving bad business advice for others who want to start their own business with a technical background. Far and foremost, great marketing doesn’t lead only to junk tech companies like Juicero. What about instrument companies? Especially with a computer background you can use your know to market computerized polygraphs.
I can’t quite understand what this says, but I did not say great marketing leads to junk tech. I referenced what you can end up with when you lead with junk tech. There’s a BIG difference.
There are obviously well-known spectacular exceptions to what I’m about to say, particularly in emerging
industries.
But it seems to me that generally to create something worth being entrepreneurial about, from the technical side, you have to know something. You have to have a good idea for a product that is needed and can be implemented.
Someone posted previously on this thread that 90% of what he needed to do for his job was leaned on the job. Or something like that. That was my experience too. Of course my prior engineering training was a necessary foundation for that, but it was not sufficient in and of itself.
I think most people fresh with an engineering BS, and no actual experience, would not know anything that would lead them to develop a product worth being entrepreneurial about. They simply wouldn’t know enough.
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