<p>Sure. US import 75,000 engineers a year. Imagine if that happens to be lawyers or doctors. what the impact will be in their compensations?</p>
<p>Most of the (adult) engineers I know don’t care about prestige at all. My husband (PhD Mech Eng) had a nice career in the defense business after teaching at the college level for a couple of years, loves to putter, is a computer whiz, and never gave a thought to how his profession was viewed. The Penn State engineering grads I know are generally getting good job offers- they aren’t in the 6 figures, but they are solid offers.</p>
<p>I agree with you, MOWC. Whatever happened to pursuing a career simply because you like it, and not worrying about what other people think of? </p>
<p>It also begs the question when it comes to prestige. There’s a whole host of CC’ers – often high schoolers or college students, but sometimes adults – who are very concerned with every move they make being viewed as prestigious by others. Clearly they are trying to get into some kind of prestige club, and they think that if they make certain moves (go to Harvard, become an i-banker, make lots of money) they will join this club of extremely prestigious people and everyone will bow down to them.</p>
<p>But people who are truly prestigious don’t <em>chase</em> prestige. In fact, being overly concerned with what other people think is a very middle-class value, and not prestigious at all.</p>
<p>My H is an engineer (BSME). He has spent his entire career working at a nuclear power plant. He keeps the electricity on so all those prestigious people can do their prestigious jobs.
He likes to think his job helps the world go 'round. Not prestigious in everyday life but pretty important to everybody when the lights got out:)</p>
<p>Being a doctor or an attorney doesn’t automatically equate to raking in the dough. People go into these fields, and then for whatever reasons decide that they don’t want to (or can’t) pursue the top jobs. And raking in the dough in either of these professions doesn’t make someone prestigious. I see plenty of ads on buses for ambulence chasers. Some of those attorneys are making a pile of money, but no one in the industry would consider them prestigious. </p>
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<p>This one goes in my collection of great CC quotes. Yale isn’t one of the great powerhouses of physics, but if an undergrad can get their degree and still be saying the same thing, then I think they’ve found a career where both prestige and wealth will follow.</p>
<p>Count me among those who work as engineers because they enjoy it. Engineering has afforded me a very nice life.</p>
<p>I get well-above-average pay, rarely work long hours, am secure in my job because I have skills that are hard to replace, get to have fun solving technical problems, and don’t worry about work in the evenings and weekends.</p>
<p>I have everything I want, have time for my kids, and feel valued because my company literally could not function without me (or one of the handful of people who have the same critical technical skills).</p>
<p>I earn my keep yet still have time to post on this forum, go out for lunch, etc. I have time for my kids and the money to do things with them and give them a nice home.</p>
<p>If I want to work a lot harder, there are plenty of opportunities for me to go into upper management, or get paid even more by developing even more high-level skills that fewer people have. But if I want to keep living the nice life I already have, that’s a fine option, too.</p>
<p>If I get tired of this career, I am qualified to teach high-school or community-college-level math and physics, which is always in demand. On the few occasions that I’ve been unemployed, I’ve had no trouble finding clients as a consultant. This is due partly to my ability to communicate and present myself well, which many engineers don’t, but that’s an indictment of those individuals, not the engineering profession.</p>
<p>Engineering is a WONDERFUL profession!</p>
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<p>Great point. And to focus on doctors for a moment, Doctor X could make $150K / year and Doctor Y (in the same specialty) could make $500K / year just based on how well they run their business practices, do they do speaking on the side, do they teach, etc. But who would know that Doctor Y makes more unless Doctor Y flaunts it? In which case, what is “prestigious” about flaunting wealth? No one’s impressed by the mere presence of lots of money. Plenty of people have lots of money, big whoops.</p>
<p>My H is an engineer (BSME). He has spent his entire career working at a nuclear power plant. He keeps the electricity on so all those prestigious people can do their prestigious jobs.
He likes to think his job helps the world go 'round. Not prestigious in everyday life but pretty important to everybody when the lights got out </p>
<p>I bet more people will respect engineer more when they lost electricity because of power plant tripped and there is no technical staff to fix it. This includes the teenager in Texas who has to suffer 100 degrees plus temperature without A/C in summer.</p>
<p>“much of physics is actually quite simple”</p>
<p>This is a true statement in principle as the goal of physics is to find the laws of nature in “simple” mathematical terms. People’s difficulties in understanding physics is to a large degree that many of the ideas are not intuitive.</p>
<p>“This is also something that contributes to the false concept that engineering is prestigious, just because something requires math does not make it difficult in fact much of physics is actually quite simple. The stuff we were learning in Physics B I had done when i was in eigth grade. And contrary to the idiotic poster who seems to be insulting me by insulting my intelligence, I am fully capable of handling an engineering curriculum heck these were the primary things I was doing during my summers of high school:”</p>
<p>I’m sorry, where did I say that when something requires math, it automatically makes it prestigious? And really, consider this astounding fact, maybe my high school was different than yours? I did pretty well in the class, but when we would watch videos and sometimes solve problems that took a minimum of 30 minutes that were on the level of someone in grad school, I developed an immense appreciation for what engineers do. A lot of the smartest people I know are doing their bachelors in engineering. I cannot believe that it is okay to mock and sneer at the people whose job it is to design skyscrapers that don’t crumble when 200 and 300+ people are in the building and brigdes where literally tons of weight is going across it everyday. If engineering was as easy as you make it, we’d have a hell of a lot more engineers in the world, especially in the US.</p>
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<p>Yes. For some. I-banking, management consulting, and at the grad school level, certain law firms. For others, other schools are better choices. And for yet others, a name school doesn’t make a difference at all. </p>
<p>People who aren’t very sophisticated, however, aren’t really aware of the whole range of professions. They see i-banking, mgt consulting, doctor/lawyer/engineer and think that they’ve pretty much exhausted all the possible things one could be AND that they’ve pretty much exhausted all the possible ways one could make a decent amount of money. That’s why they pursue certain colleges like lemmings. Those colleges are fantastic, don’t get me wrong – but how low-class to be in constant search of “prestige” through the eyes of others.</p>
<p>I can’t believe all these passionate posts about how one career is better/more prestigious than the other and how one group of people is smarter than the other. Just like finding the right college, it is ALL ABOUT THE FIT. </p>
<p>If you like what you do and how much money you make and how much control you have over your time then you are lucky indeed. If you don’t, well then even if you are highly respected in society and rolling in wealth- you are unlucky.</p>
<p>If I could eliminate the word “prestige” from the English language, or at least from this forum, I would be very happy. It is getting really old.
Everytime I go to a management meeting here at the wonderful company which employs me, I silently laugh at some of the posts on this forum and the obsession with “prestige”. Our CEO (was Fortune 200 company, now smaller due to economy etc) is one of the truly gifted and respected leaders in corporate America. This is evident every time he opens his mouth. His skill at leading our company and his compassion for his employees is truly admirable. He is smart, smart, smart. He went to LSU (got an MBA from a no-name in Louisiana later on). We have senior VPs from Humboldt State and Stephen F. Austin. They are awesome executives. Our General Counsel graduated from a second tier (at best) law school and is highly regarded in corporate America. My law partners went to Alabama, Sacramento, Vanderbilt, Washington and UChicago law school. We don’t make huge dollars since we chose to work in-house, but we are happy and challenged by our work and by the leadership of our company.<br>
The prestige-thing can only take you so far.</p>
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<p>Indeed, and MOWC’s post is wise too.
The only people who are so drawn to “prestige” are the wannabes, anyway. They really think that going to a particular college is going to put them on the path to happiness and great riches. They haven’t a clue that money and prestige don’t buy happiness.</p>
<p>Well, as a lower-class parent, I can say that I don’t mind if my children chase prestigious colleges like lemmings. I’d like them to do it for intellectual reasons, but regardless these schools have a proven track record. As such, they are most definitely a good choice for the ambitious lower class kid who otherwise would be unlikely to have access to the same great opportunities as those afforded an Ivy graduate. Upper-class kids have parents with wealth and connections who can guide and help them whether they attend an elite school or not. We can’t. A lower-class kid learns more than academics at an elite college. He learns etiquette, manners, an ease around important people, a sense of his own potential, and more. A snob is someone who looks down on wannabes.</p>
<p>PS. I’m not referring to basic manners like not picking your nose in public, but propriety related to experiences like playing golf or dining at an exclusive restaurant.</p>
<p>TheGFG- I’m not sure I fully agree. Upper class is broadly defined. Not all of us have the connections of the Perots or the like. We may have just had nice, solid careers. A lower class kid might find quite a bit of snobbery at these elite schools. My kid feels “poor” at his Ivy, and he is in with a group of friends who have more disposable income than I could have ever imagined. He broke into this group easily, but he is definitely the charity case. I’m not sure how much etiquette he’s learned, either. (at least I haven’t seen it…) :)</p>
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I never saw any evidence of this at my Ivy. Actually, etiquette and manners are not what I remember about college.</p>
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<p>I really question whether or not people truly hold this conception about colleges. I can only speak for myself, but when I was applying to college I was looking pretty much at the money. I only applied to four schools: UTexas, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. Because I wanted to go to a school with a nice financial aid package and that certainly has worked out. </p>
<p>I mean I honestly doubt people are going to hire you solely because you went to a top school, you also have to work incredibly hard while you are there and when you get out.</p>
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<p>I think lower class people have false conceptions that somehow wealth builds refinement and it quite simply doesn’t. Some of the wealthiest people drive to school in hummers, and BMWs with their stereos blasting and party (and drink) like crazy. If anything the more money people have the worse they behave because they have the resources to do worse things. Like the school down the street (which is dominated with rich kids) has a cocaine problem. I doubt low income schools have a coke issue to deal with.</p>
<p>And one of my good friends father is a oil businessman (400K a year) and her mother works in stocks (got 1 million one year) but they are some of the nicest most down to earth people that you would ever meet. So really wealth doesn’t mean much, and there really is no difference in how rich kids and poor kids act.</p>
<p>TheGFG, having come from a lower-class background myself, I understand your reasoning. I don’t agree as much as I used to, however.</p>
<p>I got my bachelor’s degree at a run-of-the-mill state school, and then a master’s degree at an “elite” school. The elite school was more rigorous, and the people connections were better, but in the long run, my career has depended pretty much equally on the education I received at both schools. One has not helped me a whole lot more than the other.</p>
<p>My advice would be this: Don’t put yourself in the poor house just to send your kids to elite schools. It won’t be worth the sacrifice. Instead, focus on where they feel most comfortablethe all-important "fit"and choose the best one you can afford with a tolerable amount of financial pain.</p>