<p>I’ve got to disagree here. Civil, industrial, and environmental engineering are easy COMPARED to other engineering majors like bioE and chemE. However, they are far from jokes. Especially industrial engineering, which is basically a business degree plus a slew of applied mathematics, statistics, and programming. In fact, Industrial Engineers are probably more proficient in that finance people say is so “difficult and challenging” due to their greater quantitative proficiency. This is especially true for IE’s who focus on Financial Engineering.</p>
<p>Oh, and at least at my college, civil, environmental and industrial engineers all earn more than business majors. And given how badly business majors have been hit by this economic slump, that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.</p>
<p>Engineering is more difficult than business. In some high end business programs (ie: some sort of quant finance program) it might be arguable that it’s harder than engineering…but those are few and far between.</p>
<p>Math is an extreme discriminator in terms of grades.</p>
<p>there are 2 types of what you call IEs. At Michigan we call us IOE. That’s because you can specialize in the traditional Industrial engineering, which is basically a lot of ergonomics and industrial design, or you can specialize is operations research/financial engineering, and you take classes in derivative pricing, corporate finance, stochastic processes and markov chains.</p>
<p>In any engineering curriculum you will have to take a certain number of core courses which will overlap a lot with all other engineering majors, likewise for business students.</p>
<p>For instance, in IE at Purdue - the first two years differs only slightly from EE or ME, so in terms of the first two years you will probably not find a whole lot of difference between engineering majors. Then, in IE we go into two major areas of study - OR(Operations Research) and Systems Engineering, now, comparing either of these two fields with the course loads in business is really not a great comparison. I will say that some of the IE classes such as ergonomics are not that demanding, but at least at Purdue this really isnt what the majority of the IE program is about. Linearizing data, stochastic methods, statistical analysis, etc., is not easy by most peoples standards. On top of all the math classes that other engineers take, IEs also take at least one year of calculus based statistics, usually these classes arent known for being the easiest on campus(normally a 30% retake rate). </p>
<p>So, in response to industrial engineering being a joke - I would extend an offer to you to give it a try and see just how much of a joke it really is. Then, when youre getting ready to pull an all-nighter, like I am tonight, and wondering how the hell youre going to make it through finals week - report back to me.</p>
<p>I never really understood how Ergonomics became part of the IE domain. I guess it came from the work-study analysis, but really it should be part of an industrial hygiene program. </p>
<p>And for those of you that think Industrial Engineering is a joke, I’d like to see you solve a stochastic programing problem.</p>
<p>“I think accounting and some of the more difficult business majors are probably harder than the easier engineering majors like petroleum, industrial, and civil, but all other engineering majors are harder than business.”</p>
<p>LOL that’s the biggest joke of the day. Seriously?</p>
<p>Accounting is nothing close to ANY TYPE of engineering. I am in industrial and operations engineering, and I have taken 3 accounting classes so far where accounting majors b*tch and whine constantly about how hard it is. I’d take accounting with the inflated curve over stochastic processes, markov chains, calc-based statistics, advance probabilities and simulation, .NET Programming curved to a C+ any day of the week and it’s not even close. If I were on the ergonomics track of the major, maybe, and it’s a huge maybe, it would be somewhat comparable, but i think only 10% of the department actually do human factors/ergonomics…and who actually considers ergonomics as engineering?</p>
<p>I can’t believe some of you actually believe business is harder than engineering. Thats ridiculous. Most business majors don’t get past calc I while engineering majors have to take up to calc IV in addition to physics, programming, chemistry, etc. Anybody could survive as business major as long as they put in some effort. No matter how much you try in engineering, you still may not be able to survive.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why people say that engineering has difficult math. At my school engineers usually have to take Calculus I-IV, Discrete Math, Tensor Calculus, Stats, and DiffEq. While none of those classes are easy, I don’t see how DiffEq is much more intellectually demanding than Calculus. </p>
<p>I actually though DiffEq was an easier class because it was more beautiful and I had an easier time studying. </p>
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<p>There are probably people who can’t survive as business majors, but in likelyhood they would find engineering to be much harder.</p>
<p>Well business can be pretty difficult with all the jargon, math, statistics, and management courses. Engineering is basically physics and math so if you are good at that stuff it’s pretty straightforward IMO.</p>
<p>The “difficult” part about business is that it’s often subjective. You can read a case, develop a well thought-out and logical plan, and it can be completely wrong. In engineering, either you know it or you don’t.</p>
<p>Of course, some people look at it the opposite way. If you have no idea how to solve a problem, engineering is completely unforgiving - you’ll get it wrong. Whereas in business, you might have the ability to BS your way through a partial answer.</p>
<p>I think you’re all comparing apples and oranges here. The styles of learning for engineering and business are where all these differences lie. Engineering is highly conceptual, whereas business is memorization-intensive.</p>
<p>I think engineering is no more innately difficult than communications; it is dependent on the quality of the instruction, how hard the teacher decides to make it, etc etc. If my freshman year english professor decided she wanted her students to bust their butts, she could’ve made it happen by altering her curriculum. She didn’t because, well, that just isn’t done that much in lower-level humanities.</p>
<p>However, more conceptual subjects such as engineering tend to have a reputation for being harder, simply because our K-12 education system doesn’t do the best job of preparing kids for that style of learning, whereas it does a much better job of preparing them for memorization.</p>
<p>I also think we’re somewhat biased because there’s probably a greater chance of being successful with an engineering degree than with a business degree, simply because when you study engineering, you’re pretty much studying what you will be doing in a lot of your jobs. With business, it’s much more variable out in the workforce and there are a variety of different jobs into which business majors trickle, so preparation from a classroom perspective is inherently difficult.</p>
<p>With that said, as a double major in engineering and business, I struggle with engineering more. But only because of the reasons cited above.</p>
<p>I haven’t had much memorization-intensive courses… maybe the IT course. </p>
<p>IMO, engineering concepts are trickier to grasp because you must understand a science and math to higher degree than you might need to in business, excluding advanced economic and financial topics. Harder? Business is more a social science + math, if you find it harder to understand why someone does something than how that thing was done than business may be harder. Engineering focuses more on the how and ignores the why, in some cases to the detriment of man.</p>
<p>I just remember that I was always happy to get some non-engineering classes in my schedule, because I knew they would be easier! I also recall my non-engineering friends studying much less than I did.</p>