1 out of 6, then, if I take your new estimates? I’ll STILL take those odds. Why? For a few reasons:</p>
<p>I love what I do.</p>
<p>I work hard at what I do.</p>
<p>I’m good at what I do.</p>
<p>The odds of losing my job and being unable to find another are not substantially greater than the vast majority of industries.</p>
<p>A large percentage of those unable to find good jobs in engineering (in my experience) are those who, through a lack of ability or dedication, struggled in school or in their profession. This does not describe me, nor the majority of engineers.</p>
<p>While I have my job I earn a hefty salary, which allows me to do things like squirrel away funds against the possibility that I could lose my job and need to retrain.</p>
<p>Should I never work in engineering again, the salary I received over my first four years in industry exceeds the national average salary of $43,460 (2009) by a sufficient margin that the excess during that is more than double the cost of that education.</p>
<p>If I were to lose my job, I know that with a degree in engineering I have numerous options available to me, including specific fields of business and law that are in fact far more lucrative and still very much in demand developing new business (utilizing, if necessary, outsourced engineers) and protecting companies and individuals from patent infringments (often created by outsourced engineers). Many of these fields deliberately seek out engineers.</p>
<p>Should I go into a non-engineering job, I feel confident that an engineering degree will be a far superior preparation for a randomly selected occupation than most other fields of study.</p>
<p>zman - I think if you also hold a BSEE that you will not be penalized for having the BSEET. For that matter, I think it will help you in many areas - your practical skills learned in the EET program, like troubleshooting and repair, will be an additional asset that most incoming students will lack. And the BSEE will ensure that you have the design and theory needed to pursue graduate studies.</p>
<p>One concern - have you verified that your school will permit it? I am not sure that they will permit you to add the BSEE to your course of study if you have already completed the requirements for the BSEET. If you actually graduate, things can get dicier - my old school explicitly prohibited the use of credits from a previously completed degree towards a new degree.</p>
<p>As to the plan of attack, I would not obsess about the specific field of your masters just yet. Focus on acquiring the skills for robotics, and then apply wherever robotics is being done - it might be CS, it might be EE, it might be something else.</p>
<p>Thanks cosmic for the advice. I do have the univeristy that I plan on attending but I havent started the application process or an advisor assigned yet for Spring. I live in Texas so I am using the Hazelwood Act to pay for my tuition and books. The process does get confussing transferring to another school. Anyways…there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel :)</p>
<p>Medical services (I hate the word healthcare, it’s a b***h word) are going down the toilet in this two-bit country, I am not even planning on staying here. I have been told that EE ‘travels’ better than EET, so that is one of the reasons why I brought the issue up.</p>
<p>“Accounting can be outsourced just as easily as engineering can and need I remind you that stasticially, engineers out earn accountants throughout their careers.”</p>
<p>Yes, I am aware of that. And that is why you hear much more about engineer outsourcing than accoutant outsourcing. If your a CEO, who does it make the most financial sense to outsource: the $45k accountant or the $85k engineer? </p>
<p>And to comicfish, the healthcare salaries you posted are low. My mother is an RN and makes substantially more than the figure you posted. So do the 2 surgeons in my family I mentioned earlier. I’m in NYC and even the garbagemen make more than $66k a year.</p>
<p>“If I were to lose my job, I know that with a degree in engineering I have numerous options available to me, including specific fields of business and law”</p>
<p>How do you intend to enter law? Do you have a JD?</p>
<p>Seriously Homer, get off the engineering board. It is evident that you have zero engineering experience. You don’t even have an engineering degree! You have no credentials or experience to make your assessment of the engineering profession relevent. It is clear that you are trying to bash engineering just to make yourself feel better. If you have an accounting degree, why don’t you worry about accounting? None of the engineers I know, including myself, have ever been effected by outsourcing. Does it exist? Yes, but you are blowing it way out of proportion. To reiterate, stop posting nonsense on the engineering board. Like I said earlier, your negativity for engineering is comical coming from a kid with an accounting degree. I will remind you again, statistically, engineers out earn accountants at every point in their careers and every engineer that I know, and I know a lot, has always had stable employment and has been well compensated throughout their careers. The same can not be said about the accountants that I know. Instead of worrying about a profession that you know nothing about and doesn’t effect you at all, you should be worrying about accounting.</p>
<p>Of course your mom makes more than the earlier quoted salaries and so do these surgeons. Are you not familiar with cost of living? It is NYC. Everything is inflated. That isn’t even close to a valid representation of national average salaries. An engineer would make more there too.</p>
<p>And back to EE, please understand that it says right there in the BLS Occupational Handbook that EEs face low job growth due to outsourcing. It is not me saying it. EEs are projected to have 2 percent growth over the bext 10 years, which is sqat since that this means there will be less new jobs created than the number of new EEs entering the market every year.</p>
<p>In contrast, petro engineers are projected to see growth of 18 percent and environmental engineers will see growth of 31 percent. Biomedical will see 72 percent growth. EEs, along with Chem Es, will see the LOWEST growth of all engineering majors.</p>
<p>So if your going to spend 4 years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars on a degree, would it not be in your best interest to enter a engineering speciaty that will have decent growth? </p>
<p>Comparing it to biomedical and environmental is not even a fair comparison. Those are much newer fields and so they are still in their startup/growth period as an actual career path. Of course they are growing like mad. That makes sense.</p>
<p>Here is the real issue: BME and EnvE are almost completely different than EE. Why would someone interested in EE do something completely different than what they are interested in? That is no way to go through life.</p>
<p>And didn’t you earlier say that the BLS has an agenda and can’t be trusted? ;-)</p>
<p>They won’t get a job anyway because they wouldn’t have graduated due to not putting enough effort into courses they weren’t interested in. For me at least, in college, I did horribly in classes that I was forced to take, but did not like. If I was not interested in any of my courses, I would probably still be in college right now!</p>
<p>Homer, you don’t address anything that people are telling you here. See my post #90. Get off the engineering board already. You are not adding anything to this thread and your bias against engineering is totally baseless. This is ridiculous coming from someone who knows absolutely nothing about engineering. Anyone reading this thread should completely disregard your baseless rhetoric. I get it, you are trying to make yourself feel better by bashing other professions but for the last time, give it up already.</p>
<p>Most of the people on this thread actually graduated a while ago and are working in the field. I count 7 people that I know of that are out of undergrad and are either working or in grad school (and 11 different people posted on this thread).</p>
<p>EDIT: 6 people that are working, 1 in grad school, 3 unknown - probably undergrad, plus Homer.</p>
<p>BS and MS in mechanical engineering from a top 20 research institution and years of industrial and consulting experience. Every company that I have been with offers excellent opportunites for engineers and I have not once seen outsourcing effect job opportunites or the profession in general. You are questioning an engineer with an advanced degree when you are a kid with an accounting degree. This is hilarious! Way to make yourself look even more foolish. You should really just stop.</p>
<p>NEWSFLASH: I know what I am talking about and I have the experience/credentials to back it up and you do not!</p>
<p>So then why is there so much info on the web about engineer outsourcing from reputable sources like Harvard and Duke if you claim it is not a problem? Certainly it is not all made up… On one hand you say there is no outsourcing probem, but on the other you have reputable engineering professors saying it is a problem.</p>