<p>Does anyone know how much more an engineer with a master's degree would make than an engineer with a B.S. degree? Is it recommended to continue education after your undergrad. degree or just start working? Information on this for Electrical Engineering would be useful!</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm%5DEngineers%5B/url">http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm]Engineers[/url</a>] </p>
<p>An EE in the U.S. with a B.S. averages 55k starting while an MS averages 66k starting.</p>
<p>thanks! if it only takes 1 year to take to get the M.S. then it's definitely worth it to get your master's correct? might as well get a Ph.D too but not sure how long that would take</p>
<p>Remember that those are only averages...so half of the people earn above, and half earn below. </p>
<p>As an engineer you could get a great job without an MS. So I wouldn't go into to debt to get it. However, if you could get a TA or your parents are paying for it, yeah, it will only help you. It will give you a more indepth understanding of your field, which will allow you to become a more compitent engineer.</p>
<p>Get the masters degree...you won't regret it.</p>
<p>Financially, it makes great sense to get a master's degree if you can. A PhD, on the other hand, doesn't make financial sense and should only be pursued if it's something you want to do.</p>
<p>You have to weigh the options. if you take 2 years of to get a masters degree you give up 2 years of salary. so lets say theoretically with just a undergrad you make 50K a year and with a masters you make 55K a year.</p>
<p>You will make 100K in the first 2 years, while spending on tuition for a masters degree. Now think about it, thats a lot of $5000 to make up the lost 100K. Its really 20 years of work, to make up for the lost 2 years. Worth it, I think not, unless you do it for non financial reasons. If we can get that 20 years down to less than 5, then I can understand it. You also must take note that engineers salaries don't increase much. </p>
<p>An example from the BLS site on Mechanical engineers.
Bachelors = 54,128 annually
Masters = 62,798 annually</p>
<p>First 2 years of work with just undergrad, $108,256</p>
<p>It will take 12.5 years to make back that salary lost in the first 2 years.</p>
<p>but dr.horse, that doesn't factor in different salary caps. from what i've read the masters has a lot more room to move up in salary than the BS.</p>
<p>More importantly than anything mentioned so far is the <em>type</em> of work. Masters degreed & Bachelor degreed people generally have different types of jobs.</p>
<p>furyshade, then a better option is to do a masters at night or along side work. But what you said makes sense, I still don't see it as worth it.</p>
<p>dr.horse... i'm not surprised you would say that because you have already said in another thread that engineers really dont even need degrees w/ all the on-the-job training that they get. </p>
<p>if you want to have the potential to take on more responsibilities, do more cutting-edge work, and make more money, then go for the masters. </p>
<p>actually, in the future (not Jetson's future but near future), it may become the new standard for engineers. the disciplines require more and more concepts every year, so continued education is necessary to stay on the edge.</p>
<p>Go for your Master's if you want to. Financially it may not benefit you for many years. But if you go to school while working full time your employer may pay for tuition and you can continue to earn salary. </p>
<p>But there are reasons to go for a Master's outside of money. Some people actually enjoy school and bettering themselves.</p>
<p>I stand by my statement of engineers not needing degrees. There is nothing stopping a employer from hiring a individual as a engineer without a college education, unless that position needs the engineer to be licensed by their state.</p>
<p>Also while I have said I have worked as a engineer, which is true. I currently do not and am currently a masters student. Though my masters is not in engineering, its in computational economics.</p>
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I stand by my statement of engineers not needing degrees. There is nothing stopping a employer from hiring a individual as a engineer without a college education, unless that position needs the engineer to be licensed by their state.
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<p>Of course. A person doesn't need a degree for any job that doesn't require some sort of certification. But the fact is certain things are just too difficult to teach to ourselves from a textbook. If it were that simple nobody would pay for college. We'd all just buy textbooks and learn from home. </p>
<p>I can't imagine teaching myself engineering.</p>
<p>A master degree count as having one year of experience. A Phd counts as having 2-3 years of experience. So with advanced degree your salary starts out higher than with a BS degree.</p>
<p>If all you want is a decent engineering job and good pay then the most painless way of doing that seems to be getting just the B.S. degree. That's simply because the Master's will not make a significant change in your earning potential, in most cases. In getting a Master's you lose 2 years pay, plus cost of tuition, plus two years of experience. If money is a major concern then you could probably find a better way to invest that ~$200,000 and the two years.</p>
<p>Good reasons to get a Master's, however, are:
1) You want a more in depth understanding of a certain discipline (for whatever reason)
2) You want an easier time in getting to jobs that involve more interesting work
3) You want a possibly more diverse/flexible set of opportunities (ie: you could teach)
4) The thought of getting into the real world scares you (not sure if this is a good reason)
5) You want to go for a PhD
6) You want to do research</p>
<p>Consider the additional pay an added incentive, but not a primary one. The average engineer does not need an M.S. because it gets too specific, and an average engineer can end up at any number of different jobs where he/she will get training + experience that will probably differ very much from the BS and MS curricula. Also, engineering is more about experience than knowledge... so the M.S. is a bit irrelevant because it does not give you real world experience.</p>
<p>My response is simply based on what others have told me and what I know about engineering jobs. I've yet to work as an engineer.</p>
<p>JoeJoe, most of my friends, including myself are book learners. We would rarely pay attention in class, get together the night before a test and learn all the material. Its not that bad man.</p>
<p>I agree... So far, going to lecture has not helped me. It is nearly impossible for me to stay awake for more than 10 minutes in most of my classes, I simply don't learn like that. I learn almost entirely from books or from discussion sections or, very rarely, from office hours.</p>
<p>I agree that a person can very nearly teach themselves anything taught in colleges these days (yes, even engineering). However, it is very very very hard to stay on task. It is hard enough staying on task when you know you have a midterm tomorrow! So, while I agree that it is possible to teach yourself engineering, I don't agree that college is useless. Its useful for social networking and connections, access to a very diverse pool of knowledge and experience, lots of facilities and labs, name recognition, research opportunities, new ideas, cutting edge research, and a piece of paper that proves to others that you are competent.</p>
<p>Notice that I don't include learning or education in the benefits of college... this is because you CAN teach yourself mostly everything, but you need to be a most excellent self-motivator (plus you need some sort of direction and/or curriculum), which I find to be quite impossible. So in the end, college might as well be useful for learning as well.</p>
<p>"Dr. Horse" your statement is ridiculous. Engineers most certainly need degrees, at least anyone who is going to do any real engingeering. Otherwise engineers would become a bunch of glorified technologists.</p>
<p>While I am sure you could learn everything by yourself, I doubt all but a few people would. Engineering requires such a broad knowlege that schools are finding it harder and harder to squeeze everything into 4 years. </p>
<p>Also, before you can really study engineering, you need a huge academic foundation, made up from Calculus, Chemistry, Physics etc. Thats not the kind of thing you pick up on the job (i.e you wont learn Stokes theorem on the job). This "foundation" often takes students 2-4 semesters to complete. Without any certification, how would you be sure that people actually studied these critical topics, and didnt just try and skip them?</p>
<p>Also, you are supposed to learn more in college than just course specific material. You are supposed to learn how to think.</p>
<p>While engineers could technically do without college, and I'm sure some people could learn everything by themselves, I prefer the people who are going to design bridges or nuclear reactors in my state to have been to college.</p>
<p>If you are not sure, I think the best way to find out is to try working and see. When I was in the MS program, about half the class got their degrees sponsored by their work... in other words, they got their BS, got a job in the industry, hit some sort of ceiling where the only thing that was in their way to a promotion was the MS degree, and the employer agreed to pay for the education with a condition that they will return and continue working for them.</p>
<p>I think if you set off in a career path that do not require an MS or even a phD to impress your employer, your degree is probably sufficient. If not, you will find out when you have to go for the MS degree and then you can make the decision to come back to school (and hopefully someone else will pick up the tab). My point is that you don't need to plan for every freakin detail at the moment. Just let things happen and see where you go.</p>