BEng the new BA?

lg123

In ireland, is a BEng the new BA?

with the huge surplus of engineers at present is a BEng essentially worthless?

dan_d

Strange question! It's definitely not anymore, but there was a phase of there being a lot of engineering grads. Still don't think so though, as people don't wander into engineering because they couldn't come up with anything else to do....which is something you will sometimes find in Arts*

*(Please note that I am not applying that generalisation to all Arts students, as I know that's not the case for everyone)

Offy

With wages as low as they are it might as well be.

KealanOCarroll

Wages are crap everywhere though...

Anyway, everyone who doesnt know what they wanna do with their lives is doing arts...well at least they are in my year anyway...

Doin the leavin now, have CAD Engineerin in UL down on the CAO....followed by every other engineering course they do....have my heart set on engineering, hopefully do a masters or whatever....some postgrad anyway....then IF all goes to plan my dream job would be R & D or Design....Dads a Mech Eng graduate but he's in managment...something i NEVER wanna do:P

Engineering will always carry more weight than arts tho, even if there is just as many graduates from each....arts is like 9 hours a week, Engineering is 38....speaks for itself

Offy

Offy wrote: »

With wages as low as they are it might as well be.

Plenty of engineers about earning loads of cash.

Offy

RoverJames wrote: »

Plenty of engineers about earning loads of cash.

True and plenty more are working for far less that average. Have a look in this section where some engineers are earning €18,000, hardly worth spending four years in college for as Tescos pay more and no degree is required. Those four years in my opinion should yield more than a job that requires no qualifications.

Offy

Offy wrote: »

True and plenty more are working for far less that average. Have a look in this section where some engineers are earning €18,000, hardly worth spending four years in college for as Tescos pay more and no degree is required. Those four years in my opinion should yield more than a job that requires no qualifications.

Supply and demand, when there is no demand and loads of supply graduates are hardly in a good position. Even when things were good starting salaries were always bad. Many of the modern engineering course are p1ss poor anyway, that's half the problem.

Offy

RoverJames wrote: »

Supply and demand, when there is no demand and loads of supply graduates are hardly in a good position. Even when things were good starting salaries were always bad. Many of the modern engineering course are p1ss poor anyway, that's half the problem.

True and the other half is that many engineers are also p1ss poor so employers are slow to offer higher wages accross the board. A degree today doesnt mean the same as a degree twenty years ago.

Powerhouse

lg123 wrote: »

In ireland, is a BEng the new BA?

with the huge surplus of engineers at present is a BEng essentially worthless?

The worthless BA is a bit of a meaningless cliché to be honest given that there are so many permutations and combinations in a BA - it is not a generic qualification. The toliet graffiti can be a bit trite in that sense.

Qualifications have no intrinsic worth in terms of employment. Their worth is determined by availability of jobs and number of graduates. In this day and age there are less jobs and mountains of graduates from countless colleges. How many colleges including Unis and ITs offer Engineering? There must be upwards of 20 colleges in this country churning out Engineering graduates whose numbers must nearly rival Arts graduates at this stage. Even with a strong economy it would seem difficult to absorb all of these, especially at high salaries.

There are thousands of very highly qualified people currently unemployed who would have had terribly high notions about their qualifications' value in the abstract but have learnt a hard lesson.

conor86

Powerhouse wrote: »

How many colleges including Unis and ITs offer Engineering? There must be upwards of 20 colleges in this country churning out Engineering graduates whose numbers must nearly rival Arts graduates at this stage.

You are right, not every one studying engineering is going to be an engineer, which says a lot about are third levels. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”. I get very worried when ever I hear knowledge base society!

Do you blame the institutes for running the courses after all their in business to servers their own interest? Are do you blame us?

dan_d

conor86 wrote: »

You are right, not every one studying engineering is going to be an engineer, which says a lot about are third levels. “The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”. I get very worried when ever I hear knowledge base society!

Do you blame the institutes for running the courses after all their in business to servers their own interest? Are do you blame us?

Who's us?
Not every engineer has to be an engineer. Why would they?And not many IT's are churning out engineers....they're churning out technicians/cert/diplomas some of the time (and I'm not getting into an argument about one or the other, and what's better or worse, we already discussed this, see here
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055830714&page=3)
Don't really understand the last part of your post conor86.

conor86

And not every engineer that wants to be an engineer will be one!

That’s my beef

djpbarry

lg123 wrote: »

In ireland, is a BEng the new BA?

with the huge surplus of engineers at present is a BEng essentially worthless?

I don't think so, no. Engineering degrees are still held in high regard and rightly so in my opinion; you've got to work for a BEng. Maybe not as hard as you would have done 20 years ago, but certainly harder than most BA graduates (with all due respect to BA graduates). I graduated with a Bachelors in electronic engineering in 2004 and it was certainly something that prospective employers fixated on in interviews. Having said that, I ended up temping in offices on little more than the minimum wage for about 12 months, but the BEng definitely opened a few doors.

djpbarry

Powerhouse wrote: »

How many colleges including Unis and ITs offer Engineering? There must be upwards of 20 colleges in this country churning out Engineering graduates whose numbers must nearly rival Arts graduates at this stage.

There's still quite a wide gap. According to the HEA's recently published Key Facts & Figures 2008-09, about 2,800 people graduated with honours degrees in 'Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction' in 2008, versus about 4,800 in 'Humanities and Arts' and a whopping 8,500 in 'Social Science Business and Law'.

Ninja101

KealanOCarroll wrote: »

Doin the leavin now, have CAD Engineerin in UL down on the CAO....followed by every other engineering course they do....have my heart set on engineering, hopefully do a masters or whatever....some postgrad anyway....then IF all goes to plan my dream job would be R & D or Design....Dads a Mech Eng graduate but he's in managment...something i NEVER wanna do:P

Being a manager is a natural step in the career of an engineer. Any monkey can crunch numbers or whizz around on a computer. After a few years of it, the novelty wears off. The sooner you embrace the responsibility of management the better for your career, and the more options you have.

Dubh Geannain

Ninja101 wrote: »

Being a manager is a natural step in the career of an engineer. Any monkey can crunch numbers or whizz around on a computer. After a few years of it, the novelty wears off.

Nah. Don't agree with this

Ninja101 wrote: »

The sooner you embrace the responsibility of management the better for your career, and the more options you have.

But I do agree with this. It's a funny thing but the less visible your output becomes the more you get paid... sometimes.

petethedrummer

Ninja101 wrote: »

Being a manager is a natural step in the career of an engineer. Any monkey can crunch numbers or whizz around on a computer.

That's rubbish. Utter rubbish.

I wish it were different but most engineering managers I have met lack any skills in the area they are supposed to be managing and/or lack any management skills.

lg123

petethedrummer wrote: »

That's rubbish. Utter rubbish.

I wish it were different but most engineering managers I have met lack any skills in the area they are supposed to be managing and/or lack any management skills.

Which part is rubbish? the natural step statment is a fair one, not 100% but pretty much true.

petethedrummer

Sorry I don't post here often. I don't agree that anyone can number crunch and whizz around a computer. I meet many engineers that can't even use word properly, nevermind more advanced engineering packages.

As for management being a natural step, I'd agree. But I wish most of the managers I have encountered hadn't taken that step. I've had senior engineering managers select project managers with ZERO technical knowledge of the subject but who had jumped up cv's and some vague bulsh!tty management ideas of their own. And its a nightmare to have to explain even the simplest concepts to them. There are of course some wonderful exceptions and a those people are a pleasure to work with.

Anyways I'll bow out of this. I don't post enough here to get into a big debate.

Turbulent Bill

lg123 wrote: »

Which part is rubbish? the natural step statment is a fair one, not 100% but pretty much true.

Becoming a manager isn't something that every engineer wants - many want to progress to a senior technical role instead. The issue is that program/project management is automatically seen as being more valuable than technical expertise by most companies. As a result the best technical people are 'rewarded' by being moved into management, which they don't have the skills for and hence perform badly. It's similar (but not the same) as the Peter Principle.

Some companies are seeing the light and using a flatter project structure, with dedicated project managers and technical specialists on each team. The theory is that managers manage and engineers engineer, with balanced pay and responsibility for each. Not sure if it works perfectly on the ground, but it's a start.

CatFromHue

this kinda reminds me of a place i used to work.

the technical lead of the project team also inherited the project manager role as the previous project manager left on not so good terms.

while the technical lead was very good at that he used to get his ass kicked sometimes for not being a great project manager. eventually he was replaced as a project manager and then the company sent him and a few others on a project managers course!!

i believe on the course he said "oh, thats what i was meant to be doing" a few times!

in relation to the op's question i dont think an engineering degree will ever be the same as an arts degree. if you look at the amount of companys who run graduate programs in non engineering areas who quite like having engineers work there is a good indication as to why.

graduate

Any monkey can crunch numbers or whizz around on a computer.

Absolutely not true, I couldn't agree less, most many Irish people are strikingly non numerate.

Becoming a manager isn't something that every engineer wants - many want to progress to a senior technical role instead.

There are plenty of opportunities for engineers to redirect into technical business jobs, without becoming general managers, I know a few who have done the MSc in Business Analytics for instance.

Turbulent Bill

graduate wrote: »

There are plenty of opportunities for engineers to redirect into technical business jobs, without becoming general managers, I know a few who have done the MSc in Business Analytics for instance.

That's the thing, there are some engineers who just want the 'technical' rather than the 'technical business' jobs, i.e., to specialise in the science and technical aspects without any reference to the business end. This is only really valuable in companies with a serious R&D focus, which need constant innovation. As an example, Bell Labs (in the glory days) always had a strong group of very experienced technical people to develop next-generation 'stuff', only some of which ever came to market.

Personally I prefer some business input, but there is an issue in many companies where technical experience and skills are not properly rewarded and recognised. People are moved to general management, with their technical successors re-inventing the wheel.

ardmacha

That's the thing, there are some engineers who just want the 'technical' rather than the 'technical business' jobs, i.e., to specialise in the science and technical aspects without any reference to the business end

But surely engineering is an applied discipline, it always has some cognisance of user needs whether these be the traffic requirements of a bridge or a business analysing its data. The Bells Labs example is as close to Science as much of traditional engineering. Someone who can bridge the technical and business ends will always be in more demand than someone with only one of these skills.

Pittens

That's the thing, there are some engineers who just want the 'technical' rather than the 'technical business' jobs, i.e., to specialise in the science and technical aspects without any reference to the business end. This is only really valuable in companies with a serious R&D focus, which need constant innovation. As an example, Bell Labs (in the glory days) always had a strong group of very experienced technical people to develop next-generation 'stuff', only some of which ever came to market.

Most silicon valley companies have the same structure even now. Engineers can progress to be senior scientists and earn as much as high level managers. Which is correct.

And of course specialist contractors earn quite a bit as well.

An engineering course is not designed to be a management course. It seems a waste of time to train people to exacting standards and expect them to be managers by latest 35, since that is 12 years after graduation. Where else does that happen? Do all doctors abandon doctoring to manage after little more than a decade? That is, in fact, a waste of people actually doing the work, which is the enigneering. The real work is the engineering work, some can be grunt, some can be clever - all of it is harder than a Gannt Chart.

( if this seems like sour grapes - at 34 i have been a Director of Engineering, and have just been asked to be a CTO in a startup. The startup will be all engineers. If we need a project manager we will ask the office manager to do prince2 and pay her 5k more. I am really clear about this - project management whilst important, is trivial, compared to the real work of actual engineering).

Pittens

Someone who can bridge the technical and business ends will always be in more demand than someone with only one of these skills.

By and large the engineer is taken out of engineering entirely and into project management. That is a waste. Only small companies, and some silicon valley large companies get this right. The technical guy should go to client meetings with the project manager, or salesman, or brief them on their return or beforehand. then let him engineer, else why even need the degree?

dan_d

I think the point here is that engineers are perceived as problem solvers, people who think outside the box. It seems to be expected they will pick up management as a matter of course, maybe easier than other disciplines. Of course it's not right either to just dump someone in a PM role with absolutely no training at all.

Mind you, I'm really speaking about outside Ireland. In this country engineers are perceived as anyone who wears a pair of Snicker's trousers:D (I await the inevitable backlash - please remember my background is civil!!!!)

rebel.ranter

All an engineering degree is is a ticket for entry. The vast majority of engineers jobs out there will only rely on a tiny fraction of what you have learned during your time at college.
The degree is proof that you have a good understanding of logic & basic principles, analytical skills & above all else decent memory retention skills.
Any job function you end up in as an engineer is usually a niche area & the longer you stay at it the more niche your skills become. That is the main reason (IMO) that most engineers branch out into project management or other management career paths. That does not mean that engineers make the best project or line managers.
I have both an Engineering degree & a business management degree, I would easily say that the business degree has more relevance to the working environment than the engineering one. The knowledge acquired would seem to be more widely applicable. Where as with the engineering one a half or a quarter of a module might be initially relevant for a role.
Also with engineering, from my experience you have to constantly tran to keep up with the latest industry standards to remain valuable & relevant.
I think engineering courses need some form of non-technical modules added to them to better prepare students for the workplace too, sometimes it's not the technical stuff that is difficult to master, it's the people you have to interact with that cause problems. There's plenty of material out there that could form a valuable additional learning module for engineers.
Is a BEng the new BA? Not in a million years, the effort & understanding required is vastly greater. I do think the Engineering course I did in the 90's was out of date at the time & that a more meaningful course would have been something with a specialized element to it, but then you are in even more danger of becoming pigeon-holed.

Turbulent Bill

ardmacha wrote: »

But surely engineering is an applied discipline, it always has some cognisance of user needs whether these be the traffic requirements of a bridge or a business analysing its data. The Bells Labs example is as close to Science as much of traditional engineering. Someone who can bridge the technical and business ends will always be in more demand than someone with only one of these skills.

I completely agree that engineering is an applied discipline - practical considerations are as important as theoretical ones. However the user needs should be built into the technical requirements for a project, not just the business parts. For the bridge example, traffic analysis, growth projections, maintenance etc. are technical requirements for the bridge design and need experienced, dedicated staff to consider them all. The trap of moving engineers into project management is that there successors don't have enough technical experience to weigh these all up, and the new PMs don't have the time or access to spot problems and resolve them.

The people in Bell Labs did do some basic science, but they also had the background in ordinary telecoms products and knew where the science might be used.

I'd agree that engineers should have good business sense (especially in small companies), but you should only wear one hat at a time.

Turbulent Bill

Pittens wrote: »

( if this seems like sour grapes - at 34 i have been a Director of Engineering, and have just been asked to be a CTO in a startup. The startup will be all engineers. If we need a project manager we will ask the office manager to do prince2 and pay her 5k more. I am really clear about this - project management whilst important, is trivial, compared to the real work of actual engineering).

I think project management is important (and difficult), but has been rightly trivialised by many engineers because it's usually so badly implemented. Poor commmunication, unclear objectives, arbitrary assessments of priority and importance - I've seen it all. Real PM should help everyone do their job better by focussing on their own area. As it stands it's just another obstacle to getting your job done.

Would you seriously get your (presumably non-technical) office manager to do PM - recipe for disaster?

Pittens

Would you seriously get your (presumably non-technical) office manager to do PM - recipe for disaster?

No. But I have worked with very non-technical PM's. Just talked to a woman this week ( external to my company) who had to have the term API explained to her.