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.

djpbarry

Pittens wrote: »

Just talked to a woman this week ( external to my company) who had to have the term API explained to her.

So what? There are plenty of technically-minded individuals who would not know what 'API' means.

mikhail

djpbarry wrote: »

So what? There are plenty of technically-minded individuals who would not know what 'API' means.

I'm an EE PhD, and I couldn't recall exactly what it meant without looking it up. There's a real problem with technical people assuming their highly specialised knowledge is more widely known than it is.

experiMental

KealanOCarroll wrote: »

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

It's not your area of expertise or your qualification that carries the weight, it's YOU who is carrying the weight. You simply have to produce high quality work, no matter what you have studied. If about 2000 graduates in Ireland can't get jobs in engineering, then it's partly their fault. Sure, recession is to blame, but there are more factors.

One of the reasons is, that engineering as a field is becoming more globalised. Many major companies recruit candidates from all over the world. So given this situation, those students who can't get jobs should look at foreign graduates or institutes that are producing the best work, and try to match that standard.

And you don't necessarily have to match that standard on your own, you can team up with someone else who is good, and enter competitions or try to publish your work in major papers. It will not work out 100%, but through trying, you will get a better insight into the "mechanics" of how people and the economy perceives your efforts. It may take you 10 years to score a job that you wanted after graduation, so you really have to be committed.

123easy

Engineering is a dead end career and a complete waste of time for talented people. Even during the boom salaries were crap compared to the proper professions. Not to mention the efforts of the IEI to completely dilute the MIEI title by giving it to people with diplomas. Some idiot even decided that it would be a good idea to call diplomas degrees! wtf?

Any students considering engineering as a career run a mile. Thats the best advice you will ever get. Dont listen to the Govts drivile about engineering as a career.

Turbulent Bill

123easy wrote: »

Engineering is a dead end career and a complete waste of time for talented people. Even during the boom salaries were crap compared to the proper professions. Not to mention the efforts of the IEI to completely dilute the MIEI title by giving it to people with diplomas. Some idiot even decided that it would be a good idea to call diplomas degrees! wtf?

Any students considering engineering as a career run a mile. Thats the best advice you will ever get. Dont listen to the Govts drivile about engineering as a career.

Engineering is a dead-end career if you don't have an interest in it. Lots of study, long and difficult work hours, poor pay compared to other professions etc. Objectively you'd be mad to do it...

However lots of people do have an interest in it, the very reason people look at engineering in the first place. It's not and never has been a get-rich-quick (or even get-rich-ever!) career, but can be immensely satisfying if you like the area.

breadmonkey

123easy wrote: »

....compared to the proper professions.

Thanks for the heads up. Would you care to list the "proper professions"?

mikhail

Turbulent Bill wrote: »

Engineering is a dead-end career

100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2005 were engineers by profession. 75 had studied business administration, compared with 50 economists and 35 accountants. Heck, it's not that long ago that every single member of China's ruling council were engineers.

There's a lot of grunt-work in engineering which is not particularly well paid here (nor especially in the UK, though the US pays better), but a good engineering course is a fine education and there are lucrative careers to be made out of it.

123easy

breadmonkey wrote: »

Thanks for the heads up. Would you care to list the "proper professions"?

Am, ones that pay more than peanuts and provide job security. Law accounting, finance, medicine , dentistry and such like.

mikhail wrote: »

100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2005 were engineers by profession. 75 had studied business administration, compared with 50 economists and 35 accountants. Heck, it's not that long ago that every single member of China's ruling council were engineers.

There's a lot of grunt-work in engineering which is not particularly well paid here (nor especially in the UK, though the US pays better), but a good engineering course is a fine education and there are lucrative careers to be made out of it.

The fact that 100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2005 were engineers by profession is rather irrelevant to the many engineers who are on the dole here.

mikhail

123easy wrote: »

The fact that 100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2005 were engineers by profession is rather irrelevant to the many engineers who are on the dole here.

Yeah, but it's relevant to anyone who's being told the qualification is worthless. The fact is that of the dozen or so of the class I graduated with (UCD a few years ago) and am still in touch with, all but one with has a steady job, and the remaining guy is chasing his dreams, doing part time and temporary stuff to get experience in what he wants to do. Not all of them are working as engineers, but they're all working. Maybe the guys being pumped out of the ITs with diplomas (sorry, "ordinary degrees") can't get work, but to quote an engineering maxim, GIGO.

lg123

I mostly agree with 123easy’s earlier statement. There are a few other career directions I would have chosen if I knew when I was filling out the CAO, what I know now. Its not the WFC, recession, or the poor money that make me feel like this. The profession is no longer a profession, every monkey calls themselves an engineer. Even when filling out my tax return recently (Aus), I had to tick a box as to my occupation, engineer was in the fourth grade. The other big thing is the job security issue.
A friends little bro is considering engineering and was asking me for advice. My advice will be, unless you have a huge passion for me, steer clear.

djpbarry

123easy wrote: »

Am, ones that pay more than peanuts and provide job security. Law accounting, finance....

Law, accounting and finance are all ‘secure’ industries at the moment? Are you kidding?

lg123 wrote: »

The profession is no longer a profession, every monkey calls themselves an engineer.

There’s a certain amount of truth in that, but I think it’s largely confined to Ireland. This is possibly owing to the large numbers of so-called process ‘engineers’ and manufacturing ‘engineers’ that have emerged in this country over the last 10-20 years – ‘engineer’ and ‘technician’ seem to have become interchangeable. But ‘engineer’ means something altogether different in the US, for example, or even in the UK, where a much greater diversity of engineering roles exist.

That said, I still think a BEng is held in very high regard in this country and will open far more doors than a diploma will.

Lu Tze

lg123 wrote: »

My advice will be, unless you have a huge passion for me, steer clear.

He he he

There’s a certain amount of truth in that, but I think it’s largely confined to Ireland. This is possibly owing to the large numbers of so-called process ‘engineers’ and manufacturing ‘engineers’ that have emerged in this country over the last 10-20 years – ‘engineer’ and ‘technician’ seem to have become interchangeable. But ‘engineer’ means something altogether different in the US, for example, or even in the UK, where a much greater diversity of engineering roles exist.

To be honest, i think when you say you are an engineer to people nowadays, they are more likely to associate it with fixing your washing machine or servicing the oil burner than infrastructure design or <insert your flavour of engineering here>.

The term has been diluted, holding little to know meaning anymore.

djpbarry

Lu Tze wrote: »

To be honest, i think when you say you are an engineer to people nowadays, they are more likely to associate it with fixing your washing machine or servicing the oil burner than infrastructure design or <insert your flavour of engineering here>.

True, but I think that's just a reflection of a the limited opportunities for scientists and engineers in Ireland.

123easy

mikhail wrote: »

Yeah, but it's relevant to anyone who's being told the qualification is worthless. The fact is that of the dozen or so of the class I graduated with (UCD a few years ago) and am still in touch with, all but one with has a steady job, and the remaining guy is chasing his dreams, doing part time and temporary stuff to get experience in what he wants to do. Not all of them are working as engineers, but they're all working. Maybe the guys being pumped out of the ITs with diplomas (sorry, "ordinary degrees") can't get work, but to quote an engineering maxim, GIGO.

GIGO!! They wouldn't like to hear that!!! As was rightly stated previously the modern meaning of engineer is a guy that attached a satellite dish to your house or someone who fixes your washing machine. Im sorry but I think you need to be smart and work hard to get a good Honours engineering for which there are no rewards or no real professional recognition. You are lumped together with all the people who got Diplomas who can now use MIEI and even worse monkeys with screwdrivers.

Bottom line anyone considering engineering beware of what you are getting into and compare it with other professions. I wouldnt recommend it unless you were really passionate about it but even then there will be nothing out of it so be warned.

Turbulent Bill

mikhail wrote: »

100 of the Fortune 500 CEOs in 2005 were engineers by profession. 75 had studied business administration, compared with 50 economists and 35 accountants. Heck, it's not that long ago that every single member of China's ruling council were engineers.

There's a lot of grunt-work in engineering which is not particularly well paid here (nor especially in the UK, though the US pays better), but a good engineering course is a fine education and there are lucrative careers to be made out of it.

I'd hazard a guess that the ex-engineer CEOs had an interest and passion for the subject, excelled in their area(s) and transferred their skills to management. That they were promoted was all about the fact that they were good at their jobs and suitable for management; being an engineer was incidental.

For an 18-year old filling out their CAO form, looking for money/strong career, expecting 500-odd points and without a firm idea of what they want to do, automatically suggesting engineering as the best option is nuts.

Turbulent Bill

mikhail wrote: »

Yeah, but it's relevant to anyone who's being told the qualification is worthless. The fact is that of the dozen or so of the class I graduated with (UCD a few years ago) and am still in touch with, all but one with has a steady job, and the remaining guy is chasing his dreams, doing part time and temporary stuff to get experience in what he wants to do. Not all of them are working as engineers, but they're all working. Maybe the guys being pumped out of the ITs with diplomas (sorry, "ordinary degrees") can't get work, but to quote an engineering maxim, GIGO.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that the qualification is worthless (or getting back to the OP, less valuable than a BA), more that it's not the automatic ticket to success it was before and it's essential you actually like engineering before you sign up. By comparison other careers can offer the same success (and more) with less effort.

gotBass

My 2cents ( for what it's worth)
I have nothing against BA etc, I think the comparrison is flawed. People do courses because they have an aptitude / interest in the subject. If they don't like it then do something else.

off topic...

Firstly I believe that the title needs protection, I lost a salary hike several years ago because the company said I was not an engineer, they were based in Germany. ( I was already doing the job, with all of the responsiblities.) and lacked only the Level 8 qualification.
When I went through the degree, I then hear the words grade inflation.
To say this ticked me off is an understatement.

I find the abuse of the title at the heart of the problem, why can you go and do a couple of months of a course and call youself an engineer. I have put more than 10 years into my professon and feel short changed - sometimes.

but back to the point.....

What graduates are facing is a general tightening across all areas.
It's simply either a buyers market or a sellers market. when there were more jobs than engineers all was rosey , and I believe that many people bought into the general rubbish that was being touted about. Now with more people than available positions companies are hedging their bets, and paying less.
If this goes too far then we will see a talent drain from the profession , ( we are already exporting good graduates) or a perception from students that engineering is a waste of time because basically after 4-5 years of very hard graft you only make (x)thousand above minimum wage, better to go to an apprenticeship etc.
Other professions will pay more so people will retrain and go there. I can see this happening in the near future.

Will engineering lead you to huge wealth - Probably not.
Will engineering guarantee employment - no prefession will, but you have better than average chances if you pick the right discipline within engineering.
If you have an aptitude for fixing / tinkering / logic / maths & methodical ways of doing things - then engineering is for you.
What you will gain from an engineering degree - thinking about solving problems, which is a transerrable skill.

It's like any profession - you learn in college the basics, then as a grad you go out thinking you know your stuff. Only when you get out in the big bad world you truly realise the depth of your skills, this is the sink or swim point. If you succeed then you'll be for the most part in a good position, and money will follow. Engineering is a profession where continuous learning is required. If you become complacent and think you are the big cheese then do something else, because you'll be mothballed in time.

back to off topic....

One more thing, the use of Celtic cub is bandied about to describe our young grads - this is not fair, the whole system from the time they were probably 13 years old steered them this way, I feel that sometimes they have a right to be a little annoyed when they saw the avarice of the past.
- everything is cyclical, in 10 years employers will be moaning about not having enough people to do work. Let other's rant and rave, we need to think objectively about were we are and how we are to get out of this.

Pure_Cork

Plenty of companies are looking to take on graduates, but not all want to pay them. Pathetic that some companies won't even pay minimum wage to graduates. You'd earn more working in McD's or Tesco than some of the paying jobs. I know I earned more when I was 16 than some engineers are making now.

dan_d

Hang on a second here lads.

I think I had my 2 cents on this quite some time back, but flicking through some of what's written here, I have to post again!!

A BA and a BEng are 2 totally different things. A BA and a BComm are 2 totally different things. A BEng and a medical degree are 2 totally different things.

Setting that difference aside, I think what the OP is asking is, is the BEng becoming a very common degree in this country. Would I be right? There's a couple of answers to that.

During the celtic tiger years, being an "engineer" was extremely common. That did not mean you had a BEng.This was discussed in a previous thread about the IEI - I've linked to it before. "Engineers" was (in my field) a general title for anyone working on a site setting out, let alone in a consultancy. Now that I'm job hunting (and yes I have a BEng), the term engineers on recruitment websites throws up jobs that are in anything from fitting windows to telesales, and whatever may fall in between.

The reality is that Irish people haven't a fecking clue what an engineer does. As with many things in this world, if it's not flashy, with a big car, massive salary and lots of land, we don't really want to know either. Doctor, surgeon, lawyer we understand - and we're still quite close to the days when our grandparents and often our parents, were taught to worship the local medical man and lawyers, because they were educated and wealthy. Farmer is probably next in line in importance, and teaching (though that's "easy"). We are so backward in our approach to things it's ridiculous.

Like it or not, engineers build this world. They solve the problems. BP's oil spill problems - engineers working on it. The burst water main in Dublin city centre the other day - reported as the "engineers working full time on the problem". Haiti earthquake - volunteer engineers and doctors were called for.Mind you, we're only publicly called on when problems appear.

Ireland, as I said before, has no concept of what engineers do. In many other countries, engineers have far more respect, but equally, far more demanding standards on their qualifications. In several European countries, the title "Ingenieur" or "engineer" is used the same way as the title "doctor". Your business card says "Ing. Dan_d". In Canada, you cannot call yourself an engineer until you have taken their "Professional" exams, (equivalent to our chartership), upon which you get a stamp with your name on it, and a ring - even if your qualification is a BEng, or equivalent.In Spain, engineering is one of the toughest courses to get into in college and even tougher to finish out. In Russia, it takes 5 years (and experience) before you are awarded your basic engineering qualification.

In Ireland - well, need I say more. Engineering is an excellent career, and profession. It allows you to diversify into many other fields - financial, scientific and that over used word - management. Whether or not you become a millionaire out of it is up to you and what you choose to do with it.But it will teach you skills that can be applied across many sectors, and leaves a lot of doors open to you.Pure_Cork, of course you made more money when you were 16. We have no jobs for engineers. The only jobs we ever had were for civil engineers, and some for chemical, and the minute the economy crashed, those jobs went out the window. The reason being that construction was booming, we became totally over saturated with civil engineers for the size of the country we are, and then construction imploded. That's the fault of how our economy was built up and not of the engineers themselves. If our economy was built up in a so-called "normal" way, with primary, secondary and tertiary industries balanced as they should be (JC geography anyone?), we would have more jobs for engineers balanced more evenly across the various sectors.

For me, the bottom line is that if I were to fill out my CAO again, I'd still put the same choice down. I think we as a profession, particularly here in Ireland, do ourselves no favours. We do not speak out strongly enough in defence or promotion of our profession. We need to create a stronger system of grading engineers than simply the chartership, due to the fact that there are so many people out there who don't have the level8 qualification, but who do have years of valuable experience.We definitely need to make people more aware of what we do, and to call for the title "engineer" to be regulated. But to simply say "you don't make enough money out of it", is writing off a degree that is versatile, solid, gives you many many options as a career path and will stand to you wherever you go.

Whether that makes it better or worse than a BA or a BComm or whatever, I don't know, and to be quite honest it's irrelevant. At the end of the day it's a good qualification to have if you've any sort of aptitude at maths, or interest in problem solving. For Irish engineers however, the problem is not the degree, the problem is the general level of ignorance in Irish society at what it is that engineers do and the total and complete lack of regulation of the use of the title.

(I'll get down off my soap box now:D)

Pure_Cork

dan_d wrote: »

Pure_Cork, of course you made more money when you were 16. We have no jobs for engineers. The only jobs we ever had were for civil engineers, and some for chemical, and the minute the economy crashed, those jobs went out the window. The reason being that construction was booming, we became totally over saturated with civil engineers for the size of the country we are, and then construction imploded. That's the fault of how our economy was built up and not of the engineers themselves. If our economy was built up in a so-called "normal" way, with primary, secondary and tertiary industries balanced as they should be (JC geography anyone?), we would have more jobs for engineers balanced more evenly across the various sectors.

There are jobs for engineers, there are companies looking for engineers but they're either not prepared to pay or pay f all. Multinational mech-related companies. It's ridiculous.