If one were sure they wanted to do engineering, they would not get a B.S. in General Engineering. They would get the rigorous B.Eng degree (equivalent to today’s engineering bachelor’s degree). This alternative option does NOT benefit anyone who would be majoring in engineering in today’s system.</p>
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I did not mean they would be rolled up into one. I was simply using M.S. as a catchall for any engineering related masters degree in today’s system.</p>
The traditional accredited BS route would require fewer years of schooling than the unaccredited BA/BS + accredited MS route. The traditional route would therefore cost significantly less in tuition, and would also be the fastest route into professional employment.
Not at all. The accredited BS route would get you into the workforce a few years faster (thereby adding several tens of thousands of dollars to your lifetime earnings) while avoiding a few additional years of college (thereby saving tens of thousands of dollars in tuition). The financial incentives to follow the traditional accredited BS route would be significant.</p>
<p>I also have a fundamental problem with changing the current B.S. to B.Eng as a professional program, because as it stands now, a B.S. in engineering is a degree that can be used towards a lot of things. If the degree is marketed as purely professional, it cuts down on the versatility. Even if the curriculum is the same, the outward appearance is different.</p>
<p>This is a horrible idea. The entire time I was in school I dreaded taking the Humanities courses because, frankly they were a waste of time. Sometimes I wanted to explore other Engineering classes beyond my concentration. For instance, I wanted to try taking Microwave Engineering classes which was outside my Signals and Systems concentration, but couldn’t because of the Humanities requirements. It’s not like I am not interested in anything else besides Engineering but I see no point in spending 3 months learning about Latin American History when I can do it by myself at home reading books and articles. I am a history buff so I read a lot of history books anyway. But when in school studying to become an Engineer I want to explore THAT field and THAT field only.</p>
This is a great example of why Engineering majors should allow for a more well rounded college experience. Anyone who tries to dismiss a position solely stating what “I” think and how “I” would feel about it clearly wasn’t prepared by his or her college on how to get be successful in the real world. </p>
<p>The lack of preparation for the real world that is present in must engineering curricula is precisely the reason that business majors tend to out-earn engineering majors later in life. It’s not that a business degree magically becomes more valuable in one’s thirties and an engineering degree becomes less valuable but rather that most engineering curricula only prepare you for entry level engineering jobs and ignore the rest. </p>
<p>We like to talk about how the United States is in trouble because we don’t make anything anymore and we only push money around. Perhaps the rigidness of the engineering degree is a key cause of that problem. The fact is that it is impossible to get the full college experience, that is certainly an asset in the real world, in many engineering programs.For example, Studying abroad to a country that isn’t English speaking is nearly impossible any time during your 4 years of Ugrad and going ANYWHERE abroad is often impossible in the last two years.</p>
<p>Umm…let’s not pull out presumptions out of our asses, okay? How do you know how I was prepared by my college to become an Engineer? Or if I would be successful in the “real world”?</p>
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<p>Let me remind you that going to college is not about getting the college experience, it is about pursuing studies into your chosen field. Actually, I take that back, maybe for rich people it is. For someone like me, the reason for going to college is to get a job after graduation.</p>
<p>As per your contention about the rigidity of Engineering curriculum and its existence being the reason for our troubles - on the contrary, the countries which are beating us today in the Engineering game (China, India etc.), not to mention many other countries, have a much more rigid educational system in Engineering. It is only here in the US that we seem to give more focus on being well-rounded and water down the curriculum by choice to spit out college degrees. In the past, the curriculum in the United States was much more intense and rigid, and we performed well in the field of science and technology. Today, sadly we have lost that competitive edge. </p>
<p>Now I don’t mean that we shouldn’t be well-rounded, but let’s face it: the point of getting a degree is to get a job or to pursue further studies in the area. Engineering is one of the few majors in the Bachelors level where getting a decent entry level job is very possible (even in this economy). Let’s not water down it anymore and focus on real, technical skills. If a candidate wants to become “more” well-rounded he/she has his/her entire life and spare time to do so. University is 4 years, and we pay big bucks for it - it’s a short time so let’s use it for what it was intended for. And there are plenty of good universities in the US which focus on Liberal Arts education. If you are one of these persons who wants to pursue this type of education by all means attend one these fine institutions. I just don’t want public universities turning into copycats of these colleges - as a result watering down the Engineering curriculum even more.</p>
<p>I am not saying that turn an Engineering degree into a technical degree. It’s essential to have writing courses, economics courses and even a few humanities courses. I was merely objecting to the idea mentioned in the article about a General engineering degree with more humanities courses.</p>
The vast majority of existing undergraduate engineering degree programs are accredited by ABET. As such, they are already regarded as professional degrees, just like ABA-accredited JD degrees or AMA-accredited MD degrees. An ABET engineering degree has specialized professional accreditation, and has preferred legal status in all states for purposes of licensure (whether an engineer pursues licensure or not). </p>
<p>So ABET undergraduate engineering degrees are already professional degrees. It doesn’t matter whether they are called “Bachelor of Science” degrees (as at most schools) or “Bachelor of Engineering” degrees (this title is already used at some schools, including Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, and many SUNYs) or whatever else. The name doesn’t matter, the accreditation does.</p>
It’s not a hypothetical idea. Many well-known schools, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth, already offer unaccredited BA degrees in “Engineering Sciences”, as an alternative to the accredited BS degrees in “Engineering” (which remains available as well).</p>
<p>The non-ABET BA degrees are clearly distinguished from the ABET BS degrees; they do not have the same accreditation or market value. However, they are popular with students who want to pursue careers in fields like technical management or patent law, as opposed to engineering itself. </p>
<p>If the BA degree was supplemented with an accredited MS degree in engineering, then it would be considered equivalent to an accredited BS. </p>
<p>Despite what the article may imply, no one is thinking of eliminating the traditional 4-year engineering BS. There is, however, growing interest in providing alternative options. There’s nothing wrong with more options.</p>
<p>Okay, how does a business degree magically endow preparation for the “real world” through the “full college experience”? Why do I not get the full college experience just because I choose to study engineering? </p>
<p>Of course, I could never get the college experience by discovering my love for endurance sports and starting a triathlon club and competing in triathlons, going to basketball games and parties with my friends, and continue to self-study Russian while doing well in my biomedical engineering (and humanities) coursework, right? I am sorry I broke your assumption. </p>
<p>I am tired of people assuming that engineers can’t communicate or be engaging individuals just because of what we study. Just because I didn’t take a fourth of my classes outside of the hard sciences (biology/chem/physics/math) and the applied sciences(engineering), doesn’t mean that I am not a well rounded individual. I will admit, at the very least engineers all engineers have a quirky/nerdy streak, but I would like to say that makes us interesting :P</p>
<p>Yes, we have to cram a lot of hard material into our four years of studies. But that is because we have to be competent with an increasingly large technical base.</p>
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<p>This I will agree with. If you keep on doing the “typical” engineers job, you will stay making roughly the same salary. My father, who deals with the production of composites on military airplanes, has a salary that has leveled out around 70K per year, with raises that just barely cover inflation. In order to make more money, engineers need to continue their education and/or go into management. In order to make more money, you need to be more valuable to a company.</p>
<p>The same can be said for many different degrees, though, including business majors. There are a lot of people with business degrees that are stuck at the same low-level position, because they aren’t prepared to take the management and higher-level positions.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with Corbett on this; we are not creating a more diluted workforce, because they are not going to be certified the same; and even if you say that it is pulling away individuals who would normally be certified, many engineers go into technical sales/investment banking/law school/med school anyways. These individuals want the technical base and problem solving skills that engineering provides to apply to their fields, as mentioned in the article. And who knows, it may just lead to more people taking engineering, and continuing their education to getting a more technical degree. While that educational path may not necessarily be for me, I know people that would thrive in that situation who dropped out freshman year.</p>
<p>Of course we can’t communicate and are not engaging. Only the business administration majors are capable of that feat. Didn’t you know we are supposed to be loners, geeks and nerds. We never get out of our room, can’t talk to girls, are anti-social and play WoW 24 hours? </p>
<p>Maybe that explains why the most common undergraduate degree among S&P 500 CEOs is Engineering.</p>
<p>The fact that many engineers go into other fields like buisness proves the fact that engineers are competant enough to face the real world. I would venture to say even more so than buisness majors. How many buisness majors do you see taking engineering jobs? None. How about engineering majors taking buisness jobs? A ton. Using that thought process one could easily say that engineering is preparing for the real world due to its versatility more so than most other majors. This blows purpleandprouds theory out the water. Interesting thought to think about IMO.</p>
<p>PurpleAndProud, I questions the level of knowledge you have about this subject after what you just said. You really think that the US is falling behind in the engineers it produced because the programs are too rigid? Did you miss the part where all the Asian and Indian students who want to get a Ph.D. and teach come here for school and then go back to their respective country? The engineering programs in this country are absolutely top of the line on the world stage.</p>
<p>Actually, the better explanation for why the U.S. has been producing fewer quality engineers is that a lot of the more talented students pursue more lucrative career paths. In India, being a scientist is one of the most prestigious jobs you can have. People aspire to that. It is similar to here where people dream of getting an M.D. but it is super-selective so not a ton of people actually get it. Here in America, it really isn’t nearly as respected of a position like it used to be or like it still is in India. People, driven by the dollar, decide to go into other fields that are perceived to be more lucrative or more prestigious.</p>
<p>And Corbett, I would argue that having a board of accreditation does not make a degree a professional degree, it just standardizes the curriculum nationwide so as to assure people (employers mainly) that those degrees have learned a certain set of basic skills. Most professional degrees only lend themselves to a certain subset of professions. An MBA is about the only professional degree that sticks out in my mind that spans many industries and job descriptions, but it still only applies to management and similar positions. An engineering degree is much more versatile than most if not all existing professional degrees that I am aware of. I am not familiar with the B.Eng programs that exist already and how (or if) they differ from a traditional B.S., but I will use the example of the M.Eng vs the M.S. in engineering. In the United States, the M.Eng is a purely professional degree. You take a similar course load to an M.S. but you are not required to write a thesis or do any independent research, and getting the degree is generally terminal, i.e. an M.Eng does not lead into a Ph.D. should that be one’s ultimate goal. The M.S., on the other hand, involves that independent research, the goal of which is to expand knowledge in the given field. M.Eng is about gaining expertise via coursework to help advance yourself professionally, and M.S. is about gaining expertise via coursework and hands-on research both for personal gain and for the advancement of a science. Now, if ABET starts accrediting M.S. degrees, that doesn’t suddenly make them professional degrees.</p>
<p>boneh3ad, it is not my intention to alter anything in the current system. It makes no difference in my proposal if we keep the current B.S. designation and just name the other degree the Bachelor of Arts in Engineering Studies. The name makes no difference to the proposed option. </p>
<p>In any case, I had already viewed the current engineering degrees (B.S. and B.Eng) as professional degrees, along with nursing, architecture, business, etc. My undergraduate degree was technically a Bachelor’s of Engineering, and the job prospects were just as varied. Employers saw no difference between a B.Eng and a B.S.</p>
<p>The only part of the college experience that engineering may hinder is the study abroad experience. However, my university and being other universities realize that and are starting to implement programs that teach engineering classes overseas. My professor took a sabbatical last year and part of the time he taught an engineering elective. </p>
<p>Still, who says you have to take an engineering class when you study abroad? Engineering majors still are required to take some humanities, language, fine arts, etc courses so you can study abroad and take those courses.</p>
<p>As far as not being able to pledge a Greek organization or “have fun”. That is bullcrap. I have plenty of friends, myself included, that have actively involved in several campus organizations and definitely have time to party. If you are an engineering major and missing out of such then you are spending too much time in the books.</p>
<p>As an undergrad business major I can shine a light into the other side. When I got into college even though I was always talented in Math and Physics (in fact Math classes were the only classes I ever got consistent A’s on) I considered majoring in Engineering for less than two seconds. As an 18 year old (immature) I was not sure about what went into engineering, I never really knew what engineers did and what the job was like. No one ever explained to me the creativity and design involved in the job. Therefore engineering was not a very attractive major for me. On the other hand I felt that I wanted to be a “business man”, In my mind I knew pretty well what went into being a business profesional, making exciting deals, forecasting financials, wearing suits and getting paid a lot of money. I felt that business was an exciting field to get into because the business field was marketed highly in TV shows and such. </p>
<p>I guess what I am trying to say is that Engineering fields lacks the marketing that business/law and medicine gets. If more highschool kids are exposed to engineering early on (maybe in highschool) and if our culture promoted science and engineering more then all the enrollment problems would be solved. When it comes down to it I bet anything mroe people would rather design and create things (engineer) than crunch numbers (business).</p>
<p>I hear this often and I’ve seen some professional engineering societies trying to correct this by establishing outreach programs to high school students (and even middle school too). More outreach programs are needed as well as more mentors. I was lucky to go to a math and science oriented high school where we had actual courses that introduced us to engineering. </p>
<p>However, we didn’t have any engineering firms involved at all in any courses or extracurricular activities, unlike other fields. Merrill Lynch was heavily involved in a semester project in my economics class, which made the class great (especially considering I had little interest in the subject matter otherwise). There was this after-school mentoring program by a state agency that employed architects; we went to their office weekly and learned a lot about that field. </p>
<p>The culture is of course difficult to change, but individually we could all make a difference with a little work.</p>
<p>I think for pretty decent proof that having a TV show will help out inspire interest in a field, just look what CSI has done for forensic science.</p>