Is a BS/MBA program worth it?

Some schools like Purdue and Rensselaer offer a combined 5 year program for engineering and business. I want to go into management so would these programs be worth looking at? Also are job prospects with this combination good?

Hmm… I don’t think you’d go right into management without job experience first. (Others here will know more). I’d suggest you check with the career center at each school to see what the propsects are with those degrees.

I agree with Colorado mom. Without job experience a company isn’t going to give a new grad a manager’s role. Better to finish with your degree and if you are fortunate, your employer may help pay for your MBA or masters in an area that is applicable to your job.

My husband did a 5 year program - ORIE undergrad with an MBA at Cornell. He went right into a management role…albeit 30 years ago ; ). Our daughter is a chem e and considering an MBA as well, but her co-op is a pre-leadership development program which is a feeder to the company’s LDP program. MBA not needed initially, and the company will contribute if she goes back later so she’ll most definitely work before getting her graduate degree.

IMO, work experience is more important than the MBA but if you can get both, that should open some doors.

I agree with the above posters to look at the career center reports.

We need to separate “engineering manager” (one who manages other engineers) from an “entry level manager/supervisor”. Upon graduation, a not insignificant number of engineers will take “supervisor” roles, that don’t involve managing other engineers. Typically in manufacturing or logistic industries.

Engineering graduates don’t have to take a standard “engineering” job, companies do recruit them for other roles, like sales or entry level “management” type position.

I’ll give you three examples of typical outcomes for a BS/MBA.

  1. They go into consulting (or technical sales) and not a standard "engineering" role.
  2. They go into an entry level management position (but not one that involves managing other engineers).
  3. They go into a standard engineering role, where the MBA may prove helpful several years later when they move into a management role (not necessarily managing other engineers). It's saves them the effort of pursuing an MBA while working and/or raising a family.

The BS + MBA, then enter the workforce route, is more popular, for example, with Industrial and Systems Engineers (ISE), than Mechanical or Electrical engineers. ISE’s are also much more likely to take an entry level supervisor role, than a ME/EE.

Instead of going BS + MBA, you can go BS +MS (engineering). This is the recommend path if you want to pursue a standard engineering career. They MS will prove much more useful, in the early part of your career. It’s can also save you the effort of earning your MS, while working and/or raising a family. You will always have the option of pursuing an MBA or executive MBA, later in your career.

You can also earn your BS and then go straight into the workforce. Then you can either earn your MS (engineering), or MBA, after you’ve been working for a few years. The advantage here is cost, as your company may pay for it. You will also have a better sense of where you want to take your career.

After working for several years in the workforce, you would have the option of pursuing an “executive MBA”, which has several advantages over a standard MBA (time/flexibility) but typically requires that you’ve been working for several years before applying to the program.

Lots of options!

Good Luck!

@momofsenior1, isn’t your husband an IE? If so, I believe they follow differed rules than all other disciplines.

Yes @eyemgh - OR&IE.

It depends some on what your son wants to do and if you have the money for 5 years of college. Some students might prefer to learn accounting or finance as a business discipline and others might prefer to learn say fluid dynamics, which would require a masters in engineering.

I don’t think RPI business college is doing to lead to a big time management consulting role, but believe it or not, a bachelors in history at Williams College with a minor in statistics will lead a student to management consulting.
Banking, management consulting and Wall Street jobs are gained through connections. RPI has some connections to those sorts of jobs, being close to NYC.

Purdue does have connections, in business, and their grads do go to finance positions in Chicago frequently as I understand it.

I would ask the schools about these programs and where graduates land. Purdue and RPI are very reputable schools. They will give your son an honest answer about where the five year engineer/management students land.

Colorado school of mines offers project management as a follow on to engineering. Those students may go into
data science, for instance. and not necessarily become engineering managers right away.

I see MIT graduates going to Uber as “product managers” with a bachelors in EECS.

So its very company and school dependent. I believe Purdue has a plan for their 5 year grads, ask
for placement statistics. Also, if your son is not yet a freshman, he will have time to decide for himself if he wants to study circuit design, mechanical design, operations research, and /or accounting and finance and management.

Students really need to be allowed to pick a major. You can suggest things, but the student will apply to graduate school, and by the way, they will likely need good grades at Purdue or RPI to get into this 5 year program, unless its a special preprofessional one that he gets into automatically from high school, he will still have to prove himself once he gets into the engineering curriculums at Purdue or RPI.

Don’t think too far ahead !

@Coloradomama, fluid dynamics does not require an advanced degree per se. If one wants to do higher level work in fluids, then a MS or PhD would be helpful. Suffice it to say, every ME and AE at every school that offers those degrees will have taken at least one and probably more fluids classes. As a ME undergrad, my son took two.

In most programs, MEs are only required to take one, while AEs are required to take two to three fluids courses. MEs also have a heat transfer class, which has a substantial fluids portion. The students in such programs are expected to have a good working knowledge of the topic but are by no means experts.

But that’s not really relevant to the topic at hand.

Aeronautics firms like Boeing tend to hire masters and PhD level aerospace or MEs with advanced coursework in fluids. Look on indeed to see what education is needed for various engineering jobs.

Bachelors level mechanical engineers run Solid works, by and large,might work in manufacturing for automotive industry, or write code, more likely, for an engineering firm in aerospace, where mechanical knowledge is useful.

. It takes a PhD to do anything complicated in fluids. That includes all meteorologists, who are fluid experts, weather prediction is all fluids. It all takes a PhD, to understand enough about fluids to have a job that is using fluid dynamics.

In Today’s world, there are few really interesting jobs for engineers with bachelors degree in any field.
So to work in a semiconductor clean room today, need a PhD in EE, materials, or chemical engineering. To work in pharmaceuticals often need a PhD in immunology, or chemical engineering, unless one is doing facilities management, where a bachelors degree may be OK.

In electrical design, no one can get any good job without a masters degree, where they specifically learn circuit design tools like system verilog.

Civil engineering is the one field where a bachelors degree can get you a pretty good job, often in consulting with a lot of travel. Need to get a PI to do that type of job, so pass an exam. Could work for a municipality as well, as a civil engineer.

Software Coders of course, can work with a high school or college degree. If one learns to code well in a number of languages, no college degree is necessary, as lots of CMU dropouts in Silicon Valley prove over and over. No one cares about degrees for some types of jobs that involve a lot of coding skills. There are more jobs than people, but the very best jobs are still reserved for PhD. see Linked in, Microsoft Labs Redmond, Google deep learning
and others.

Just do a search on engineering and PhD in linked in and see what pops. You will find thousands of data science jobs that all require advanced degrees.

Linked in is a useful database to discover exactly who is hiring engineers, and what degrees are required for each job. It will be surprising to lots of parents on here, that PhDs are in high demand, because, its that complicated and specialized in today’s world.

This was true in the 1980 too, when I got a PhD in engineering, but its only more true today.

With CS being somewhat the exception, but all depends on exact skills. Someone without a degree could
be totally left in the dust, if they cannot change with the times. Engineers reinvent themselves every ten years today.
That may move to ever five years in about 20 years. Stay tuned!

I’m sorry, but you simply aren’t correct.

Yes, companies like Boeing hire a fair number of people with MS and PhD degrees to do complex aerodynamics, but they hire plenty of those with only a BS as well.

There are a lot of meteorologists with PhDs as well, but most don’t need one. A PhD is certainly not required by your local TV station to be their meteorologist.

This is coming from me, a person with a PhD in fluid mechanics who runs a research lab that trains PhDs in fluid mechanics and has every interest in drumming up interest in the field. It simply isn’t required.

Engineers, nearly across the board, do not need an MS or PhD to get a high-quality job. The flip side of that is that engineers, perhaps more than any other field, can benefit from earning a PhD and still work in industry quite easily and not “doom themselves” to academia. It’s all about personal interests and career goals.

“In Today’s world, there are few really interesting jobs for engineers with bachelors degree in any field.” - That probably depends on what the student finds interesting. For grads (like me in 1984) not interested in research etc, I think there are still lots of opportunities with BS.

I would disagree with this. While the barrier to entry for software and programming is lower than for most other disciplines, it isn’t nonexistent. Yes, dropouts have founded some huge software companies, but that isn’t the norm and is not what the average person should expect for themselves. A college degree is pretty much necessary for most areas besides web design and front-end web development. Individuals without a degree sometimes can and do make it into other roles traditionally requiring a degree, but again, this is not the norm. Furthermore, some areas (like robotics, AI, and machine learning) are extremely difficult to break into without an advanced degree. The software engineer without a degree is increasingly becoming a thing of the past.