<p>My question is about Lafayette's engineering program. They are a small liberal arts college that has about 400 engineering students. Most of their majors are grouped: Chemical/Biomedical engineering, Electrical/computer engineering, civil/environmental engineering. I think Mech E stands by itself.</p>
<p>With this type of program: are students better off because they are more versatile, or are they at a disadvantage because they are less specialized?</p>
<p>They are not ‘combo’ majors. Think of them as non-specialized majors in the field. As second year ECE major, I am currently taking classes from the CS department and ECE. From what I know, a lot of other colleges offer the same major (and similar curriculum), nothing out of the ordinary. I never knew ChemE is now call Chem and Biomed and CE now has environmental component to it. I believe biomed and enviornment are only the small components attached to the original major. If you look at the required courses for each major, they are usually pretty general. For a LAC, I don’t think you can go deeper than that.</p>
<p>At an engineering info session last spring, the acting dean of engineering described them as combinations of the two fields, due to the small size of the program. I mean, you can do CS engineering or EE at other schools, and he made it sound like the Lafayette program combined the two into a single major.</p>
<p>Actually, your description of your major sounds like you are studying both computer and electrical engineering at one time, while at other schools they are separate programs.</p>
<p>It is pretty common for schools to have the following:</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering as Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Civil Engineering as Civil and Environmental Engineering
Electrical Engineering combined with Computer Engineering or Computer Science</p>
<p>Of course, each major have several subareas, and students choose in-major electives depending on the subareas that they are most interested in. For example, an Electrical and Computer Engineering major may take in-major electives emphasizing computer topics, or in-major electives emphasizing more traditionally EE topics like power systems, communications, and semiconductor electronics.</p>
<p>Agree with ucbalumnus. The programs mentioned by the OP at Lafayette are all ABET acredited; therefore, their curriculum must meet the specific requirements of the acrediting agency. BTW, according to their website, Lafayette has about 600 engineering students (not 400) out of their total enrollment of 2400 undergrads.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science can all be distinct majors, though every school has its own flavors of it. I think Berkeley does EECS which is electric engineering & computer science, while Carnegie Mellon combined electrical & computer engineering, and CS had its own school. I know CMU’s Civil Engineering program also included environmental, as well.</p>
<p>I think what happens a lot is since the lower-level classes are similar, they group them all together for their freshman and sophomore years and then let them start to specialize within their choice of the two for their junior and senior years.</p>
<p>It suggests to me that they aren’t big enough to offer enough breadth of classes so that majors must necessarily grouped and be broader than at a larger school. Larger schools have sufficient population to allow one to be more focused if one chooses. </p>
<p>Which way is better? Personally, I think a larger school with more flexibility is better even if the student ends up taking broader strokes because at least the student has options once he or she knows more and can choose. But there are clearly benefits to being in a smaller school in terms of personal interaction with faculty.</p>