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The more I look at this argument, the more wrong it seems. The overwhelming majority of K-12 schools teach “math” and “science” in ways that have little correlation to real study in those subjects. Read [Lockhart’s</a> Lament](<a href=“Scatterplot: The MAA Journal of Data Science – Mathematical Association of America”>http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html)</p>
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Geeze, what would that make people who go into Investment Banking?</p>
<p>"The “sell out” thing hurts. I like being an engineer. I like the creative aspects of it. Engineers leave the field if they don’t like it. "
<p>"To me a “sell out” goes to business school to rob people blind on Wall Street or goes to medical school so that they can inject botox. That is a sell out! "
As far as business and pre-med go… I tend to agree they may be worse than engineering in this regard.</p>
<p>"The more I look at this argument, the more wrong it seems. The overwhelming majority of K-12 schools teach “math” and “science” in ways that have little correlation to real study in those subjects. "
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<li>Well, except for the already noted extracurricular activities. I’m not sure all of the mentioned activities are the best way to expose kids to engineering (a math competition?) but that’s another story and I generally acknowledge that some kids some places may get some exposure before college. I still believe it’s a second-order effect when compared to the institutionalized curriculum.</li>
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<p>"Geeze, what would that make people who go into Investment Banking? "
<p>My basic premise shouldn’t be that hard to swallow. Nobody majors in philosophy for the money (well, I don’t want to say nobody, but one would tend to think this isn’t the primary motivating factor for philosophy majors), but it’s much more reasonable to imagine that people major in business for the money.</p>
<p>Engineering is closer to business than are the pure sciences , which are closer to philosophy, at least in my way of looking at things. I suppose by “philosophy” I could more realistically include all classical liberal arts… history, rhetoric, philosophy, literature, …</p>
<p>If this doesn’t make any sense, I apologize… my way of thinking about things is probably incompatible with the current contingencies of the American higher education system anyway.</p>
<p>i think it makes sense, auburnmathtutor, but it depends on the person though. In my case, I’m majoring in engineering because what I’m more interested in is using the principles of the sciences and applying them for solving real life problems. I just love the idea of manipulating your surroundings with our current knowledge in the sciences. I just think engineering is art. And for interest, I minor in physics and chemistry in order to know the theories behind engineering in more depth. In addition to all this, I actually find liberal arts majors (excluding the sciences) a lot harder than engineering and the sciences.</p>
<p>Quick in working out problems with not the best answer,maybe.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it’s fair to call it “selling out” for people to major in something that will actually lead to a good-paying job! I think it’s a difference in philosophy for some people.</p>
<p>My dad was an engineering professor who always stressed that you go to college to prepare for a career. My boyfriend’s father was a classics professor who thought that was nonsense - you should go to college to become a well-rounded person. The two of them actually had a couple of good debates on the subject! So I majored in engineering and my boyfriend majored in theoretical physics (cosmology).</p>
<p>I think AMT’s logic is flawed. By his reasoning, we should all become mathematicians, historians, scientists, grammarians, and polyglots. And perhaps professional four-square players. (Which raises another valid question: Why is there not a greater call for professional four-square? I think it’d be more fun to watch than endless poker tournaments…)</p>
<p>I think it’s a little silly to determine that since people haven’t had direct curricular exposure to a field, that they must not be motivated by the idea of being in the field itself. By this token, we would have no architects, no orchestral conductors or composers, no surgeons, no pilots, no veterinarians, no pharmacists, no real estate agents, no archaeologists… </p>
<p>My brother’s an electrical engineer, and he was born to be an electrical engineer. He learned to read when he was two and would sit for hours with users’ manuals, flipping through the pages. His favorite book was the NASA Astronaut’s Manual. He took things apart and looked at the chip boards inside. He figured out computers, and my dad taught him a little bit of Basic (anyone remember gorillas throwing exploding bananas?). He got in trouble in preschool for having developed a rudimentary game called “Guess My Number” (it would pick a random number and you’d guess it, with it telling you whether you should guess higher or lower until you guessed the right one), printing it up on diskettes, and selling it to his classmates for a dollar apiece. His career goal as a kid was to be an inventor. He’s now an electrical engineering PhD candidate at Rice, applying for NSF grants, doing highly-paid consulting on the side, making computer networking systems more efficient as a chip architect.</p>
<p>I was in fourth grade when our house was burglarized, and we decided to move. I was dragged through countless houses, and none of them seemed to be quite right. I noticed the floor plans, and I started drawing floor plans of my own… Mine seemed much better than theirs. I’d draw house after house, I’d draw houses for me, and houses for my friends. I’d sit out in front of our new house and draw elevation views of the front of the house. One of my friends gave me a book called “The Art of Construction” by Mario Salvadori for my birthday one year, and I started to read about it. I absolutely loved it. At the time, since I was lousy at mental arithmetic, I thought I was terrible at math, so I didn’t think I wanted to be an engineer, but I knew I wanted to be an architect. In history class, when we were supposed to do a report on something historical and we could choose what we wanted to do a report on, I’d immediately choose the architecture of the period. I learned about castles, colonial architecture, Native American longhouses, and eventually got into the construction of how everything was put together. Meanwhile, I’d become entranced with 8th grade physical science, and had a really amazing algebra teacher who taught me that there was more to math than just long division, and to my surprise, discovered that I had a talent for math and science. Someone erroneously informed me that the only avenues into architecture were through interior design (which, being the budding feminist that I was, I considered to be a bit candy-assed) and structural engineering, and so I decided I was going to be a structural engineer. In eighth grade. With no clubs, no classes, no nothing to encourage me to do so.</p>
<p>I’m sure others have similar stories. Kids keep their eyes open. They don’t have blinders on. They’re curious about the world, and they don’t blunder through school as tunnel-visioned as you might think. They just have to have someone to inspire them.</p>
<p>I think kids have a much better idea of what those other professions do… it’s less, how does one say, technical, in a way. Doctors work in hospitals and cure people. Architects design buildings. Kids know that.</p>
<p>Ask a 10-year old what a list of professions does, and see if you don’t get better answers for a lot of non-engineering fields than you do for engineering. I’d imagine you would. I’m not saying nobody knows what engineering entails, I’m just saying that I think a lot of people have a better idea about what other things entail.</p>
<p>FWIW, I’m the kind of guy that would see anything where they teach you anything practical (read: useful for a job) relegated to trade/vocational school. There are more of us than you’d think, aibarr.</p>
<p>I have a friend who was a math major until his sr year when he switched to computer engr. When asked why he’d always say: “I used to love numbers so I majored in math but in my jr year we stopped using numbers.”</p>
<p>I think a lot of kids go into engineering because they have an aptitude for math and science but can’t see doing only math or science. They’re then steered to engineering by their teachers, GC’s and parents.</p>
<p>Regarding selling out; my S took some type of vocational interest test in HS and in each case he scrolled down to the bottom of the description to salary. He told his GC he wanted to be an Investment Banker. He’s not.</p>
<p>Auburn, I think the reason kids go for engineering over science/math is simply because engineering is more practical. If you understand practical to mean lucrative then that might be the problem.</p>
<p>The assumption is that most people know that to build bridges, houses, structures etc you become an Architect, Civil/Structural Engineer NOT a Physicist. To build machines, cars, planes, fridges etc you become a Mechanical/Automotive/Aeronautical Engineer NOT a Physicist or Mathematician. Ipod, TV, Laptop, GPU; Electrical/Electronic/Computer Engineering NOT Physics, Math, Biology or Chemistry. </p>
<p>My suspicion is that most kids’ contact with science is from their teachers and they don’t exactly look like they design iphones for a living.</p>
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<p>There’s an underlying assumption there that needs to be explicitly stated. Most people nowadays don’t go to college to go to college. It is more of a means to an end, specifically getting a better job. If a degree wasn’t required, you’d see enrollment be a minute fraction of what it is today.</p>
<p>People major in engineering as opposed to physics because they want to be engineers instead of physicists after college. Most students in high school who are beginning to decide on majors at least have an idea of what an engineer does. They may not know the specifics, but they know a civil engineer builds structures, a mechanical engineer designs cars, etc etc. Engineering is more connected to people’s everyday lives.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if a student has had exposure to the academic side of engineering for a student to be interested. School / college is merely a means to an end for many if not most people.</p>
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<p>Isn’t there some woman suing her college for lost wages plus pain and suffering because she’s been unable to find a job upon graduation?</p>
<p>I remember reading that somewhere here on CC. While I don’t think there is a legal responsibility for institutions of higher learning to get jobs for its graduates, it most certainly is one of the main reasons students attend college. Why else would people spend $150k for 40 courses? </p>
<p>I attended college because I wanted to work in the construction industry in a management or engineering role. If I could have done that without going to college I most likely wouldn’t have bothered getting a degree, especially if I had to pay tuition.</p>
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<p>If you’re referring to that old thread from College Life, then yes. But she went to one of those trade “for profit” schools like Devry or ITT Tech, and I guess, she claims, in their advertisements they guarantee job placements.</p>
<p>No, this gal went to Monroe College up in the Bronx and majored in business.</p>
<p>I think her entire case rests upon the presumption that people go to college to get jobs.</p>
<p>I think reality shows that this isn’t always the case.</p>
<p>But anyhow.</p>
<p>Monroe College = For-profit
[Monroe</a> College - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_College]Monroe”>Monroe College - Wikipedia)
Which means they probably “suggested” that she’ll get a job from attending there. I don’t think they outright said it, but it’s probably insinuated.</p>
<p>“People major in engineering as opposed to physics because they want to be engineers instead of physicists after college.”</p>
<p>I would bet that most physicists work as engineers anyway even though they still call themselves physicists.</p>
<p>My step-father has a math degrees from Carlton and Harvard. He spent most of his career as an engineer with Lockheed.</p>
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But we’re talking about college majors, not random lists of professions. Why don’t you ask your hypothetical 10-year-old what a math major does? They might say that they teach - okay, that’s one job. But many, many math majors (especially on the applied end of things) end up as engineers, ORAs, actuaries… you get the idea.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I’m stuck with this choice right now. As I search for schools, the question is always churning around in the back of my head. One of my primary concerns with studying science or math rather than engineering is that I actually know less about what that entails. I have some engineers in the family, but not a whole lot of scientists. I suspect this is true for many people.</p>