<p>Actually, you're going to find the graduate degree requirement/recommendation popping up in more and more industries as time goes by... The Amer. Soc. of Civil Engineers is currently debating the whole idea of the bachelors degree being the first terminal degree for receiving a PE license in the future, and the way it's looking, it's going to change--not for a while, but eventually. When it does change, and it will, there's going to start to be state-level legislation passed that makes it almost as difficult to get one's PE license with only a bachelors degree as it would be to get a PE license with no degree whatsoever. Many companies have a policy of not even interviewing engineers who are fresh off their bachelors educations.</p>
<p>So, extrapolating from how the trend in civil/structural has gone, I think the question you're probably going to want to ask yourself is: will my career involve more researching to develop innovative solutions to old problems, or will my career involve applying time-tested solutions to new and more complex problems?</p>
<p>A PhD in engineering is typically geared towards innovation. Academia is typically where off-the-wall new methods are pioneered, and PhD candidates are the ones who are tinkering with those new methods. I used to have this linear idea that a bachelors degree would give me a certain amount of tools to use as an engineer, and that a masters degree would be sort of like a Bachelors Degree Plus, and a PhD would be like a Bachelors Degree Ultra, if they were being renamed by a snazzy marketing executive.</p>
<p>What I've found instead, as I've moved through my engineering grad program and compared notes with other grad students in other fields, is that instead of degree programs being more linear, they sort of branch out into two different but parallel directions.</p>
<p>You start out with a bachelors degree.
Then you get a masters degree.</p>
<p>At this point, the path diverges, and you get the...</p>
<p>PRACTICE path............................and the RESEARCH path.
In the practice path,....................In the research path, you
you're hired by a firm..................are apprenticed, more or less,
and are taught the.......................to a professor, who will
necessary practical......................supervise your methods and
skills required for........................instruct you on how to
your industry by a.......................develop and test new
senior engineer. ..........................innovations.</p>
<pre><code> THEN......
</code></pre>
<p>You become a senior.....................You've got two choices.
engineer. You can switch...............You can either get a job
firms, or become a project.............in academia, or you can
lead or a manager within..............get employed at a higher
the firm that you started...............starting salary with a company
with. You teach young, ................or lab that does heavy research.
inexperienced junior engineers.......You get appointed some young
how to do their jobs. ....................engineers to teach and mold.</p>
<p>It's comparable in BME, too. Would you rather design future, more efficient and reliable models of the insulin pump, or would you like to try to create an artificial brain?</p>