Most prestigious job/company in high-tech

[noimagination]

<p>

Uh, please read my posts again. I specifically identified the possibility that finance undergrads could return back to school to obtain master’s degrees in engineering, whereafter they would presumably would be eligible for numerous engineering jobs. Is that not feasible? I can think of plenty of science and math majors who later earned graduate engineering degrees; a finance undergrad major is similar to an applied math major. Heck, like I said, I even know one girl who majored in English and then earned a master’s in engineering…at MIT. </p>

<p>I therefore don’t see how a finance undergrad earning a grad engineering degree would be any more remarkable from an capabilities standpoint than would be a math undergrad earning a grad engineering degree. But capabilities is not the issue, for the problem is not that the finance undergrad couldn’t earn a grad engineering degree, but that he wouldn’t want to, because he makes more money in the finance industry. That’s the crux of the issue. </p>

<p>At the end of the day, plenty of engineers enter the finance industry through graduate school - either an MBA program or a MFin. However, few if any finance undergrads enter the engineering industry through graduate school, even though they certainly could. The question then is - why?

Okay, I see what you are saying now. A few thoughts:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I’m actually not so sure that many engineers enter the finance industry through graduate school. Realistically, only a very small number of top MBA programs will put their graduates on this track. Many engineers do indeed obtain MBAs, but I think they more often do so with the aim of moving into general managerial positions, possibly even at their current employers.</p></li>
<li><p>As you point out, not many finance graduates pursue graduate studies in engineering. Regardless of the reasons, this makes a finance degree appear unusual and possibly unwise for a student considering engineering. On the other hand, an engineering degree easily and frequently translates into an MBA. Thus, a student with interests in both engineering and finance is probably far more likely to major in engineering as an undergrad and then switch via grad school instead of getting a bachelor’s in finance.</p></li>
<li><p>Some percentage of engineers and scientists who end up in finance work as quantitative analysts. These individuals usually have PhDs in STEM fields. This is a completely different situation from our main discussion, but may account for some of the transfers.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Still, this is not a key point.

Uh, did you read my post because it addresses your point emphatically. Again, all I have to do is point to the misallocation of educational resources devoted to (purportedly) prestigious engineering programs where many of the students will not actually work as engineers. Ask yourself - why should MIT and Stanford continue to run high-powered and high-prestige engineering programs for students who won’t actually be engineers? What societal purpose does that serve? Society would be clearly better off if educational resources were allocated to those students who are actually going to utilize those resources. If Idaho State engineering students are actually going to work as engineers and MIT students are not, then the Idaho State engineering students should actually receive the bulk of the world’s engineering educational resources. </p>

<p>Here’s the core irony. You yourself have admitted on other threads that certain engineering programs have greater resources and prestige than others and that, ceteris paribus, prospective engineering students should prefer those schools. But if students at those schools do not actually choose to work as engineers, then that panoply of resources and prestige is wasted on them, which means that there is no reason to prefer those schools at all. That is a clear matching misallocation and hence a clear loss of societal value. We should then start to see rankings where Idaho State is ranked #1 in engineering, such that prospective engineering students will prefer to head there.

1. Lots of things are true ceteris paribus. If all other factors truly are equal, then the remaining variable is really the only way to choose short of flipping a coin. A difference need not be large to be significant in some situations.</p>

<ol>
<li>Let’s not overemphasize the issue. You’ve mentioned MIT and Stanford. Princeton and Northwestern fit the same classification. But if you look at the top 25 engineering programs (USNews or NRC '95, take your pick) I suspect that the vast and overwhelming majority of graduates pursue engineering careers. Not finance, engineering. Last year, Purdue graduated more engineers than MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and Northwestern combined.</li>
</ol>

<p>I’m not aware of ever having argued that a significant difference exists between Purdue and MIT in terms of engineering reputation.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>One of the primary reasons to choose a higher ranked engineering school is additional employment opportunities following graduation. But, [as</a> you have pointed out](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/11187577-post53.html]as”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/11187577-post53.html), companies aren’t likely to prefer schools where they cannot hire anyone. Thus, if top engineering programs do indeed confer hiring benefits for engineering jobs, we can conclude that many students at these schools do in fact pursue careers as engineers.</p></li>
<li><p>To expand on #3, many of the reasons a student might choose a higher-ranked engineering school actually have very little to do with their eventual ability to contribute to society. Obviously this becomes somewhat subjective as we discuss what exactly constitutes a meaningful contribution to society. But even if I think attending MIT over Idaho State confers some advantages for the student, I have never argued that it offers advantages for society as a whole. And you’ve never proven that it does, either.

Let me give you a clear example. A venture capitalist is reviewing 2 business plans, one written by an MIT alumni and the other written by an Idaho State alumni. The overwhelming odds are that he will choose to fund the former, due to the prestige of the engineering degree (granted, he may choose to fund neither, but if he funds one, it is far more likely to be the former). Like it or not, venture capital is a highly elitist and brand-centric industry. The ISU grad may well have had the better plan, but he’s left unfunded. If he had the name brand of MIT to support him, he might have been funded. That represents a clear misallocation of societal resources, as investors will think that the MIT-backed plan is superior to the ISU-backed plan.

That’s a legitimate issue. But the best way to solve it would be to change the way venture capitalists evaluate business plans. Even if you could somehow get all MIT graduates interested in engineering, looking more closely at the content of the plan would surely be a superior way to ensure that the best plans are chosen.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>And, let’s face it: reforming the venture capital system is hardly less realistic than whatever it is you are advocating we do with higher education or engineering salaries.

Or take employer recruiting. The most prestigious engineering employers such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and the like recruit heavily at MIT, but as far as I know, less heavily (and perhaps not at all) at Idaho State. But if MIT continues to produce graduates who do not actually want to work as engineers, then those recruiters would be better off recruiting at Idaho State. Maybe some guy at Idaho State would be the best possible fit for the next job opening at Facebook, but we’ll never know because Facebook won’t recruit him. Again, that’s a clear example of a societal mismatch.

You can look to what I - and you - said above. If Facebook were incapable of getting the engineers they need at MIT, then they will get them elsewhere. The fact that this isn’t occurring clearly signals that they are successfully getting people at MIT.</p>

<p>If a problem does in fact exist, it will solve itself as firms recruit engineers slightly further down the rankings because they can’t get MIT grads.

No, it only serves to prove my point further. However incompetent they may be in reality, clients think they are competent. After all, clients keep hiring them. Hence, if you believe in price signals, then those top engineering students who become consultants/bankers are apparently providing exactly what clients want them to do.

Eh? I don’t really see how this matters. Let’s try an example: John from MIT gets a degree in mechanical engineering but chooses to work at McKinsey. The job he might have taken at Boeing gets filled by Jane from UIUC, and the electric utility that would have employed Jane now hires Jerry from Idaho State.</p>

<p>Now, you have previously claimed that John ends up working as part of a team at McKinsey that produces poor results. I’m wondering why we should want him working as an engineer instead of Jerry.

It’s not distressing only to me. I think it should be distressing to all of us - and indeed, is. After all, engineers are the backbone of the nation’s technological and innovation base. Barack Obama himself stated that he would like more talented kids, rather than become bankers, to become engineers - that is, to actually work as engineers and not just earn engineering degrees and then become bankers. David Cameron and other leaders of the UK have publicly lamented the erosion of British technological leadership as, in recent history, the best students in the UK would rather become financiers rather than engineers, which surely goes a long way towards explaining the current travails in the British economy, and frankly, the American economy as well.

Speeches by politicians attempting to rally support have zero credibility as evidence.</p>

<p>I’m going to ask you a simple question: are there currently more entry-level engineering job openings than entry-level engineers capable of doing them?</p>