Going back to school to get an Aerospace Engineering degree at 30

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

I need a little advice here. I am considering going back to school to get an Aerospace Engineering masters. I have an undergrad in finance and a MBA. I also have another unrelate masters degree. It’s not the school that scares me because I have clearly had a lot of it. It is the hurdle of my age and entering a new field. I will most likely have to take a year (24 credits) of undergrad courses before I am considered for the Masters program. This likely makes it a minimum 2 year process for me. By the time I graduate I will be 32-33. I am currently a management consultant and specialize in technical project management. I think my background would help me manage engineering projects.

The reason I want to go back is I love space and rockets. I would really like to work for one of these companies pushing the boundaries. It seems more private companies have entered this area so a job may be a little more accessible than it was in the past. I would like to do this online so I am looking at Alabama, Auburn, MS State, and Florida. All have online programs. I’m leaning towards Alabama because of the expense.

Is it worth it? Are these schools good or would I wasting my time and money?

2

Tbh I wouldn’t do that. It’s better to apply for program management, project management, or business development positions for aerospace companies. You’ll get to work “with rockets/planes” albeit not on a technical level.

3

Years ago, somebody wrote to Ann Landers (or Dear Abby, they were twins and I don’t remember which it was), and said I am 30 and I want to become a doctor but it will take 7 years and at the end I will be 37, what should I do? And the columnist wrote back and said bascially, if you don’t go to medical school, in 7 years you will still be 37 but you won’t be a doctor.

I can’t comment on the path you have chosen in terms of the schooling, but 30 is young - you still have twice your current age or more to be in the work force so taking a year or two to position yourself in something you will enjoy doing for that amount of time makes sense to me, at almost twice your age.

4

Keep in mind, when reading responses in this forum, that engineers tend to be a conservative bunch… :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t do this unless you have a passion for engineering. After all of the time and money spent, you may find issues landing an entry engineering position. Hiring managers could be turned off by your other degree’s, and feel you wouldn’t be happy in an entry level engineering job.

“Is this person going to want a pay cut and work a grunt job, or will they quit and go back to consulting/project management?”

Then you will find yourself working and competing with “kids” who are 10+ years younger who may also have BS/MS degree’s. After several years, with success, you may move up to an engineering management role, and from there into a project lead role. Or, you may find that you’ve moved up to a technical project manager role, which is something you’re already doing today…

On the other hand!

A technical degree could help you move up from a technical project management position, into a senior leadership role within an Aerospace company (or any company). This includes roles in finance, project management (who’s managing all of the project managers?), etc. If that’s your goal, and not being someone who’s a first level engineering manager or Engineering “Director”, then it makes sense.

This would be similar to an engineer that adds an MBA in the middle of their career, to become eligible for more executive level positions. You’re looking for the credentials, not to master Matlab.

Think about your career goals, and how this will progress them over the next 10 to 20 years.

Good Luck!

PS: If you’re looking for the credentials, instead of an Aerospace degree, you may want to look into an Industrial Engineering degree. You may find it a much better fit, and you may need to take less undergraduate courses.

5

Unless you are independently wealthy, I think you should seriously consider seeing what you can do with your finance degree and the MBA (and the unrelated masters degree). Adding school debt (or possibly more school debt) at age 30 seems unwise.

6

I wouldn’t be adding any debt. I will pay for these courses each semester I take them. I have enough in savings to cover them and will continue to work full time throughout the program since I am looking at only online programs.

7

What’s your career goal? Do you want to be an actual engineer or in management? If you want to lead programs then your role as a project manager now should be enough to qualify you for a lot of management positions in aerospace companies. Many engineers strive for that and leave “pure technical” work when given the opportunity. You don’t necessarily need an engineering degree to get close to the planes. My dad has a bio degree and is the program manager for 4 very large programs for one of the big 3 aerospace companies.

8

I’d say a happy mix of both. I think the degree in engineering will help provide me the extra boost. I still want to be part of the technical aspects but from a managerial role (If that makes sense at all). So this may be a little open ended question, to work for companies like NASA, SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, etc. and lead projects for them, what would I need? I figure a technical degree give you a BIG leg up as you would understand all the intricacies involved.

9

You would need an engineering degree (with a very good GPA) to do what you want to do. Key work here is lead projects, not manage them. and then at some point you would need a masters in engineering.

Personally I did the reverse, which is much less time consuming as you will need a lot of undergrad classes (at least 3 years worth), EECS then MBA.

10

Gator88NE has a good point. “A technical degree could help you move up from a technical project management position, into a senior leadership role within an Aerospace company (or any company).”

As an elderly person who still dreams, I’m gonna be irresponsible and encourage you to pursue this dream at the ripe old age of thirty. Otherwise you risk techmom99’s prediction and in 7 years you will still be 37 and may not be in the aerospace management role you dreamed of. There are a lot of engineers out there with MBA’s.

As suggested, Industrial Engineering may be an option as will programs called management engineering with applications in the ME or manufacturing directions. For a listing of 100% online ABET accredited programs see: http://www.abet.org/accreditation/new-to-accreditation/online-programs/. Arizona State University’s Engineering Management (BSE) may be s realistic options. They should be low costs and are highly regarded.

11

I wouldn’t go back to school at age 30 for an Aerospace Engineering degree. I would for a CS degree, and might for an IE degree. You’d probably find it easiest to get a job in an aerospace company with a CS degree. For people who already have a Bachelor’s degree in a different field, there are graduate CS programs which pretty much consist of the same CS classes an undergraduate CS student would take. But you wouldn’t be hired initially as a manager.

If you go back to school for a graduate degree in IE (which is what I did,) make sure it’s as technical as you can make it. Some are more management focused, while others are more technically oriented. Sounds like you already have the management end of things under your belt.

When I worked at Boeing, my manager had a graduate degree in Industrial Engineering. (I don’t know what his undergrad degree was in.) My manager at a smaller aerospace company had undergrad and graduate degrees in Electrical Engineering. At both of those places I worked in groups that specialized in computer simulations of flight radar subsystems, which leads to another point - at aerospace companies, you’ll likely be working on particular subsystems of the larger system. So you won’t be designing rockets or airplanes, but rather you’ll be focused on smaller things like the struts for front landing gear, cockpit flight displays, or the flushing mechanism for the toilet in a space capsule.

It’s very important for managers in tech and engineering companies to have had hands-on engineering experience, rather than just academic degrees. Otherwise, you won’t have credibility with the people who are working for you.

12

“I am looking at only online programs.” - I knew there were many online programs these days, but I didn’t realize there were any for engineering. Since I did the on-campus traditional way, it’s hard for me to picture the online equivalent. Do some research to make sure your target employers value them as much as you think.

13

Gotcha so I think what you’re saying is you would want to eventually be an engineering manager, leading the project/program from a technical perspective rather than the entire thing (business, finance, customer reqs, and technical). If that’s the case you would need some sort of stem degree ideally engineering. Tbh based on what you want industrial engineering may not cut it as that is not close to aerospace or any of the traditional engineering majors. Applying for non purely technical managerial positions would still give you exposure to it without you having to get another degree. You won’t take a pay hit and you’ll be able to progress your current career. The unfortunate part is if you want to be a functional engineering manager rather than the program one is that you’ll need actual engineering experience and that means you’ll have to take an entry level engineering job since you can’t be a senior engineer if you haven’t done it before. Again there is always outlier cases. I personally don’t feel it’s worth it. Taking Engineering classes while working full time is going to be hard. It’s already hard taking them as a full time student.

14

@colorado_mom You’ll be surprised by how many (non-thesis) online engineering MS programs are available. Unlike BS programs, they are becoming much more common.

Likely due to a combination of technology advances and credential creep…

15

Oh… I forgot this thread was about Masters. . I guess this is why I was thinking BS - “I will most likely have to take a year (24 credits) of undergrad courses before I am considered for the Masters”…but that is just prereq, not degree. .

Now I can see how MS programs (non-thesis) might be practical via online method. DS is taking classes for possible master certificate. He attends night classes on a real campus, but I think there is option to view them later online.

16

I say do it if you want to. My dad went to medical school after practicing engineering (BS/MS MIT) for 7 years. It worked out fine for him. :smiley:

What I don’t understand though, is how does one get a technical MS with a non-technical BS? Even if you do a year of prerequisites, you’ll be vastly less prepared than the students who have a bachelors in ME or AE who are also working on their MS in AE.

17

I think I’m going to go for it. I realize the odds are stacked against me and that I may not be as prepared as some others. It was that same way when I started a business at 24 and ran it for 4 years. It was insanely hard but through the adversity I learned more about leadership and myself than I could have ever dreamed. I am definitely not the conservative type. I’m willing to fall on my face and fail. I just had my first child and if I put myself in the position of giving advice, it would always be to go for it even if you fail. So I think I’ll take my prerequisite courses and see if I can handle them. I’ll probably try to take them all online so I can continue to work full time. After looking around I’m having a hard time finding the Calc II, Calc III, and Old Diff Equation classes online. Ideally I’d like to take them from the cheapest place possible since they are just prerequisite courses. If anyone knows a place that offers those online, please let me know.

18

Even though they are “just prerequisite courses,” don’t discount them. They are fundamental to much of what will follow. Unlike many other majors where the prereqs are just a barrier to the “real stuff,” those classes will be the basis for big parts of what follows. Don’t discount them or take them lightly or everything that follows will be very difficult. Good luck!

19

“I just had my first child” - It will be tough to work full time and classes online. But that won’t get easier if you wait. My main concern is that you really don’t understand what you are getting into… and still risk not getting accepted into an MS program. . Nonetheless it won’t hurt to try a few courses to see how it goes. .

20

He’ll be able to find an online MS programs, as there are lots of schools with those types of offerings. They view the online graduate programs as cash cows, so they try to get as many students as they can handle.

I don’t know if they’re considered technical degrees, but in my graduate IE program, we had a student with an accounting degree and another with a finance degree. They made it through the program. I guess they’d had enough math as undergraduates to be able to handle the coursework. Then there was another guy - don’t ask me how he got accepted - who was an art dealer. He only made it through a couple of classes before disappearing.