Do You Want the Blue Pill or the Red Pill? - Part 1

College Search & Selection
41

You mentioned your kid had a Master’s. Among MS in ME, the highest in the CollegeScorecard database are as follows. MIT and Stanford had the highest median salary, I think the bigger surprise is Wayne State in #3. I expect a combination of the nearby Detroit auto industry and experienced workers plays a role, although a similar statement about nearby industries and experienced workers could certainly be made for MIT or Stanford . The usual problem with any such survey is that they don’t control for inputs, and instead persons assume the school name plays a major a role in the salary compared to differences in inputs including differences in years of work experience, differences in stats of incoming students, differences in family background/connections, etc.

Highest Median Earnings for MS in ME (College Scorecard)

  1. MIT – $116k (count = 86)
  2. Stanford – $113k (count = 111)
  3. Wayne State – $101k (count = 29)
  4. Oakland – $97k (count = 66)
  5. Cal Poly – $97k (count = 30)
42

I didn’t see that you can click MS on College Score Board. Cool!

Yes, MS, yes, still higher than the mean of all. Yes, still retroactive confirmation bias, based on n=1. :wink:

@Data10, where did you access that? Thanks!

43

I’m curious as to why Johns Hopkins isn’t on your list? They are ABET accredited in a number of engineering fields (in addition to BME.)

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44

Great question! I think the simple answer is that I didn’t know enough about it to include it. Maybe it was personal bias since it hasn’t been what they are best known for historically. I don’t have a great explanation. I don’t know enough about them to know class sizes, etc. either. In the same realm, I’d probably have to dig deeper into Wash U, Duke and maybe Vanderbilt.

The one I would add, that does meet the criteria that interest me, that I also spaced, is Rice. By the end of this I’ll have the 10 @Rivet2000 originally requested. :rofl:

46

I downloaded the income by major/school figures from https://data.ed.gov/dataset/college-scorecard-all-data-files-through-6-2020/resources .

As I’ve noted earlier, I think earnings metrics primarily relate to characteristics of the students within the particular college + degree program, rather than the college name, which leads to very limited benefit in choosing a college. However, non-CS engineering is interesting in that stats of incoming students seems less correlated with earnings than most other fields. Kids from more selective colleges where most have top stats may have relatively similar early career earnings to less selective colleges, where many struggle to graduate and average graduating GPA is substantially lower.

A longer list for MS in MechEng is below. These are for federal reporting earnings soon after college among mostly federal FA recipients. After considering cost of living difference, I think Wayne State and Oakland have the highest reported median earnings, which are both located in the Detroit area. I did not adjust for inflation, so specific numbers are expected to be a bit higher today.

Highest Median Earnings for MS in ME (College Scorecard)
1 . MIT – $116k (count = 86)
2. Stanford – $113k (count = 111)
3. Wayne State – $100k (count = 29)
4. Oakland – $97k (count = 66)
5. Cal Poly – $97k (count = 30)
6. Notre Dame – $97k (count = 23, large difference between sample years)
7. Michigan – $95k (count = 43)
8. New Mexico – $94k (count = 37)
9. Purdue – $94k (count = 52)
10. Johns Hopkins – $93k (count = 63)
…
Average of All Available Schools = $84k.
…
Berkeley = $90k (count = 41)
UIUC = $90k (count = 43)
UCLA = $89k (count = 82)
Ohio State= $89k (count = 60)
GeorgiaTech = $87k (count = 154)
Cal State Fullerton = $87k (count = 33)
Cornell = $86k (count = 111)
WPI = $85k (count = 92)
Cincinnati = $85k (count = 75)
BYU = $84k (count = 66)
CMU = $84k (count = 65)
Drexel = $84k (count = 74)
Penn = $82k (count = 75)
Lehigh = $82k (count = 54)
Columbia = $80k (count = 39)
…
Cal State LA = $65k (lowest median earnings by a large margin, count = 50)

47

My suspicion is that there are multiple factors.

First, the most marginal state school students don’t make it out. Engineering is tough at every ABET accredited school. The more selective schools don’t let marginal students in. Therefore, there’s a bigger difference between quality input and output at the less selective state schools than the more selective schools. The filter happens before admission at selective schools and after at non-selective schools.

Second, graduating GPAs may not be reflective of how students are viewed because of the different grading scales. At Brown the median graduating GPA across all majors is 3.6. WPI literally will not let a student fail. HMC and CP on the other hand graduate a 4.0 of any engineering discipline about once a decade. It makes the local news when it happens at either. I think employers have a feel for this.

Third, there really is a basement to where engineering salaries can be pushed to where they just won’t be able to acquire any talent. Likewise there is a ceiling for entry level because they are unproven. Engineering is very equalitarian because it’s not clear who will prove out until they’ve been on the job. There’s really no strong correlation between that and the institution they attend. If there was, I would think we’d see a bigger difference.

Speculation for sure, but it makes sense.

48

If you’re implying Stanford and MIT, that’s still a very small number of applicants relatively speaking. But yes they’re doing it on reputation, maybe only on reputation at that point in their applications.

“the thread keeps getting dragged away to this school versus that”

That’s a big LOL, your OP mentioned specific schools, with number of TAs and full-time faculty and a question about red or blue pill. And then you ranked specific schools, and now are surprised that this thread would devolve into a school comparison. Most people see through this deception.

49

I didn’t want it to be dragged back to a specific school. I was asked by @Rivet2000 to rank schools based on MY criteria. The point of the thread is just that…some schools use a large number of TAs, some don’t. That’s never reflected in rankings. Nor are salary outcomes which is Part 2.

50

What I find interesting about this discussion, coming at this from an outsider perspective, is which schools come at undergrad engineering education from a “hands on” curriculum approach v extracurricular research approach.

Questions:

  1. Is is fair to characterize “hands on” as new school and research as old school?
  2. WPI, Olin and Mudd are put out there examples of “hands on”. Are there bigger programs that do a good job of it, too?
  3. Is there any indication that future income is related to teaching style?

Poking around on the MIT website, I found this study on the future of engineering education, which seems relevant to this discussion. It is a few years old, but surveys thought leaders in the area about how engineering education is trending globally.

https://jwel.mit.edu/assets/document/global-state-art-engineering-education

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51

All ABET-accredited engineering bachelor’s degree programs include engineering design (“hands on”).

What may differ is curricular organization. A traditional organization starts with math and natural science (1st and 2nd year), followed by engineering science (2nd and 3rd year), followed by engineering design (3rd and 4th year). While this makes sense from an efficient prerequisite sequencing point of view, it does not give students design experience until late in the program, so that some students may fell like it is a slog the first few years before they get to the good stuff.

Some colleges try to incorporate design course work earlier in the curriculum, so that students can get a better idea of what engineering is like earlier (similar to exposing high school students to robotics ECs or PLTW engineering courses to help them decide whether or not they want to major in engineering in college). This may be what some refer to as a “more hands on” type of curriculum.

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52

Purdue’s engineering program is very hands on as well. Many students also do undergraduate research and participate on engineering teams, and there is a strong emphasis on internships and co-ops.

To give you an idea of what I mean by “hands on”, Purdue starts all first year engineers in a year long design class. My D was in honors college which had it’s own version of the class. Class met 3 days/week for an extended block and then her project design team met an additional 20 hours/week. Per my D, it was very intense but also the best/most fun course she had freshman year. Physics and CS were integrated into the class and they did everything from modeling a hydroelectric dam to building and programming a fully autonomous Mars rover (and multiple projects in between). The rover robot needed to get through an undetermined obstacle course, had a design book that was over 130 pages, and there was an oral presentation after the demo in front of a team from NASA. In addition to the class projects, she got trained and certified in all the machine shops and the 3D printing lab, they had industry guest lecturers, and took field trips.

Within D’s major, even courses like organic chemistry have project components that are industry related and almost all exam questions relate to real word applications. (Pre meds take a different o chem course at Purdue and are warned not to take the engineering class).

D will have a year long capstone senior design class to round out her time as an undergrad.

When we were looking, it seemed that most schools were moving towards a more hands on approach but there were definitely some that were much more theoretical than others. Those programs didn’t make the cut for my D.

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53

I don’t know that I’d call “hands on” new per se. Cal Poly was founded in 1901 with the motto that remains today, discere faciendo (Learn by Doing). The WPI Plan was adopted in 1970.

As more and more research showed that students were dropping out of engineering not because they couldn’t handle the work, but they couldn’t see the relevance of the theory in front loaded curricula, a move towards creating relevancy early on started to take flight. More and more schools are incorporating this approach. Olin is taking it even a step further (for better or worse would depend on one’s perspective) by heavily incorporating entrepreneurship.

All programs have some design and culminate in a capstone/senior project. ABET doesn’t specify how to accomplish that or how many classes are required. The robustness of senior projects is highly variable. They can be a single semester, span a full year, or have more than one full year project as WPI does.

That’s not the only route to “hands on” either. Classes like vibrations and fluid mechanics are essentially math only classes at some schools, while others incorporate labs, even in fourth year classes.

Clubs are yet another way to get “hands on.” Many schools have Formula SAE, Baja, concrete canoe, Supermileage, CubeSat, etc.

I don’t think there’s any indication that future income is related to a program’s style. I think that retention might be. Certainly companies have pet schools too, but they may or may not be “hands on.”

This is not new either. According to First Man, it’s why Neil Armstrong chose Purdue over MIT.

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54

Interesting that it talks about rankings of engineering universities based exclusively on reputation, “identify and describe five or six universities they considered to be the current global leaders in engineering education”. Not surprisingly, MIT, Purdue, Stanford made the list.

That beings said, things like collaboration, more hands on classes have been discussed for quite a while. When I was taking engineering in the good old days, the complaints were around every problem had a cut and dry answer, only one or maybe two ways to solve them, and you could only do them by yourself. The senior project/capstone as a requirement would be new though.

55

I hear you. I think that’s the point. For me the takeaway is that the center of gravity for engineering programs is shifting away from North America and traditional ways of teaching. Prestige is going to be less prestigious. The question posed is how to scale up the more nimble, hands on programs. Schools in other countries are thought leaders in that endeavor.

They cite to one thought leader in Minnesota, a program called Iron Horse, which has an affiliation with a community college. Definitely not a prestige-oriented point of view.

It is very meta for engineers to be redesigning engineering education.

56

That is likely the theory behind having more design work in early course work, so that students most focused on the design aspect of engineering will stay interested. But also note that students who find that they do not like engineering design as much will find out early enough to change to a different major.

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57

Some examples of engineers redesigning engineering education are in The National Academy of Engineering’s report “infusing real world experiences into Engineering Education” that looked at some innovative programs at a variety of engineering schools:

58

Which research are you referring to? An example summary of 50 studies about why engineering students drop out is at https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1890&context=abe_eng_pubs . A summary of the factors that the referenced studies most often found evidence of is below:

Most Frequently Research Supported Reasons For Engineering Attrition
High School Preparation – 28/50 studies
Race and Gender – 27/50 studies
Interest and Career Goals – 17/50 studies
Inadequate Teaching/Advising – 14/50 studies
Low Course Grades – 11/50 studies
Individualistic Culture – 11/50 studies
Conceptual Difficulties – 8/50 studies

I do think certain activities can bring a new light to many fields of engineering. If I retook my college engineering classes today, I would be extremely interested in the classes related to my work. If I had the opportunity, I expect I’d have talks with the professor, do related research to class topics on my own, etc. However, my initial experience taking these same classes was usually very different. I enjoyed the puzzle solving aspect of it and sometimes hearing about the general application, but there was a completely different level of meaning and interest. This also applies to lab classes.

Some schools are bigger on this type of work experience than others. For example, 35% of GeorgiaTech students do a 5-year co-op plan, alternating semesters of full time work, with on campus work study. I’d expect engineers to be significantly above this overall average… perhaps as much as half do the program. GeorgiaTech claims the kids who do co-ops also have much better job placement, although both groups do well. One downside for the college is the slower graduation brings down graduation rate stats and related USNWR ranking. GeorgiaTech’s 4-year graduation rate is only 47%.

59

“As more and more research showed that students were dropping out of engineering not because they couldn’t handle the work, but they couldn’t see the relevance of the theory in front loaded curricula,”

I do think a lot dropped because they couldn’t handle the work, there’s a reason why engineering/CS grads get the premiums in salaries they do out of undergrad, the work is hard and because not everyone can do it, the demand is always there. The study data10 mentions where high school preparation, low course grades, conceptual difficulties, point to not being able to handle the work or academic climate. Race and gender reasons are the most concerning in that study, given that women outperform men wrt grades, at least in that report data10 linked.

60

Thank you for the link re: the book on engineering programs. So interesting. It is an old-ish book, but that makes it even better because it describes what the programs were supposed to be and how they were funded, and one can compare their ideal to the current reality.

One noteworthy omission is Stanford. My impression from the MIT report and this book and the Stanford website is that their program is more traditional research- oriented. I would expect it to be more innovative because of its start up culture. Is that its reputation?

61

I’m not saying that’s the only reason. High school preparation is certainly the most important, especially in non-selective schools. I was referring to loss of prepared students and the rise of “hands on” programs.

The first lines of the discussion in the paper cited above are:

“As any experienced engineering educator knows, some engineering students leave because they discover a passion for a discipline other than engineering—it is hard to argue that we should be trying to prevent such students from leaving. However, it is also true that a significant proportion of engineering students leave because the engineering educational system has failed to show them that the engineering endeavor is profoundly human, has failed to make relevant the key scientific, mathematical, and engineering principles needed for mastery of engineering, has failed to show that engineering is within reach of their abilities, has failed to capture their imagination and fascination, and has failed to provide a welcoming atmosphere to them.”

https://www.rise.hs.iastate.edu/projects/CBiRC/IJEE-WhyTheyLeave.pdf

“Other studies have shown that a primary reason for the attrition of students from engineering is their perception of a learning environment that fails to motivate them and is unwelcoming; it is neither the students’ capabilities nor their potential for performing well as engineers that determines their persistence[3].”

Unfortunately, I can’t link the original citation anymore. The Google seems to have lost it.

https://www.asee.org/retention-project

“Research shows that the first two years are often crucial to student retention and eventual success. In addition, lecture courses generally have been found to be less effective than active learning.”

https://www.asee.org/retention-project/keeping-students-in-engineering-a-research-guide-to-improving-retention

I read the findings of the ASEE Retention Project when my son was still in HS. Given his preparation, I concluded that the only real possibility of my him dropping out of engineering would be from lack of interest and attachment. That’s when we steered him towards schools that fulfilled the factors I cited above while answering @Rivet2000’s question.

I do believe this is the primary problem. It’s the main reason selective schools have higher graduation rates. A higher percentage of their students, for lack of a better term, are pre-screened for success.

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