<p>hey engineers (and friends of),</p>
<p>i'm finishing up my B.S.E.E at USC in a week (!!!) and i'll be going on to the 5-year Masters program next year at USC in Electrophysics. </p>
<p>...but i've already been thinking about what i'll be doing in the years after the Masters. of course, there's working life, but after an internship at a big company, i'm not 100% sold on that yet. i've been thinking about a PhD, but i'm not sold on a life in academia. at the same time, after looking at the classes i'll probably take in my Masters, i'm not sure i'll learn everything i want to learn. if it were up to me, i'd just scoop up as many Bachelors and Masters degrees as i could until i felt satisfied with what was in my brain, but that's not an option!</p>
<p>(if you were wondering, i wish i could also get bachelors in MechE and Philosophy, then various Masters degrees in EE related fields like Microwave electronics/Electromagnetics, Analog IC design, maybe DSP. i guess my philosophy minor will have to do for now :P) </p>
<p>so i've come across the Engineer's Degree as an option that lies between in space of Masters and PhD limbo. supposedly it's a terminal degree targeted toward knowledge for professionals as opposed to academics. it gives me the chance to take lots more classes that i'd be interested with minimal emphasis on the research. but i haven't been able to find out much about it besides what Wiki says. does anyone have any experience with this degree?</p>
<p>I received one of these through work (Mechanical Engineer, Columbia University). A coworker “generously” voluteered that it gives PhD/DEng folks who won’t get through their dissertation something to fall back into. The Masters used to be this eons ago. I did it to get more academic focus on fluid and thermal science than my MSE had, and as a bit of a technical refresh. </p>
<p>It also looks like it is offered by high-end schools only like Stanford, MIT and so forth. Sadly it appears to baffle most HR departments.</p>
<p>-tem</p>
<p>Just to clear one thing up, a Ph.D. does not banish you to a life in academia.</p>
<p>If anything, most people with PhDs wind up not spending the rest of their career in academia due to the lack of positions.</p>
<p>“if it were up to me, i’d just scoop up as many Bachelors and Masters degrees as i could until i felt satisfied with what was in my brain, but that’s not an option!”</p>
<p>I feel exactly the same way, haha.</p>
<p>I am familiar with the Engineer degree, although it seems to be quite rare in practice. I do not think that you will get the same respect or credit as a PhD, despite its parallels with the MD and JD degrees. You will probably always be considered as equivalent to someone with a masters who then got a certificate or some extra coursework.</p>
<p>On the bright side, improving yourself never hurts - if the extra study makes you a more proficient engineer, that itself will have the real impact over your career. The degree only matters when you first take the position, after that it is all job performance, so perhaps this type of degree will help you in the long run if not immediately.</p>