I’m transferring from a JC in a year as an engineering undergraduate and would really like to get into tissue engineering as that sounds really exciting over any other engineering majors I’ve looked at ( I really have a passion for biology). However, I don’t think I would be into going the med-school route, so if I don’t end up doing pre-med what are my job outlooks in the bio-engineer field as a tissue engineer. Is it worth doing? Should I go for another engineering degree first and then specialize in graduate school??
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics is expecting 10,000 job openings in biomedical engineering during 2012-2022, which makes the prospects of employment in it reasonably good (and for what it’s worth, I do see a lot of jobs when I google “biomedical engineer”), although the numbers of expected openings in most of the other engineering disciplines are considerably greater.
On another thread (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/974087-general-engineering-degree-vs-specific-engineering-degree.html) someone asked, “Is it possible to have a general engineering degree and be able to switch between fields when you get actual work experience? Is there some sort of core/fundamental education between all of these fields that I can learn, and when the time comes I can focus on particular fields through my work?” The responses were generally negative to a “general engineering” degree and advocated specialization even at the bachelor’s level.
While trying to appreciate what they said, I’m still wary of specialized degrees. The problem is that after graduation, if your resume states “BS in biomedical engineering” that will obstruct access to jobs that aren’t biomedical engineering, but which you would like to work at anyway, should you happen then not to find many openings acceptable to you (for reasons such as geographical area, for instance) in biomedical engineering.
I (arbitrarily) looked at Boston University’s biomedical and mechanical engineering BS programs’ course requirements. I see that the latter includes a course in each of electrical circuits, fluid mechanics, probability and statistics, materials science, and electro-mechanical systems design. Those courses seem to be both the stuff of general engineering and readily applicable to biomedical engineering. At that particular university, a mechanical engineering student is to take 16 units as a senior in “Advanced electives,” which no doubt could be taken from the biomedical engineering courses that interest you. The optimal, I think, is to be able to do either mechanical engineering or biomedical engineering when you graduate, and this would be better facilitated by getting a mechanical engineering degree, with biomedical courses to point to when applying for biomedical engineering jobs, rather than the other way around (biomedical engineering with mechanical electives).
I picked mechanical engineering for the comparison because of its applicability to biomedical engineering and its high projected employment (98,000 openings expected 2012-2022), but you could look at the courses required for (and electives allowed in) electrical and industrial engineering degree programs to see if those tracks would accomplish the same things for you. Materials engineering is projected to have only 7,500 openings 2012-2022, so I wouldn’t particularly recommend that.