007 The Problem with Choosing the Wrong Engineering Major | Engineering vs Engineering Technology

Speaker A: There are two types of engineering degrees. There's the engineering degree, which most of us are familiar with, and there's the engineering technology degree, which is a little different and also has some similarities. Now you can find these degrees in electrical, mechanical, chemical and computer. Those are the most common. But some schools also have other types of engineering or engineering technology degrees. There are some differences between the two. Your standard engineering degree is more theoretically based and the engineering technology degree is more based upon practical applications and day to day running of operations. If you look online, there's a rivalry between these two degrees. Like anything else, the, uh, engineering technology people like to say that the engineering degrees are completely theoretical and they're not practical in the real world. And these people are completely out of touch. And then you have the engineers who like to call the engineering technology degrees a bunch of technicians who are really engineers. And this becomes really confusing. And when you start looking at different schools, because different schools offer different types of programs and some may be more technical and some may be more theoretical and that could vary more by the school than the program itself. If this is the type of information that you find useful, it'd be great if you could hit that subscribe button because I have a ton more stuff that I'm going to be coming out with over the next several weeks, months and even years. I started to question my degree. So sometime during summer vacation after my freshman year, I received a letter from the engineering school about a program that I could partake in. And it started about three to five days before classes. And it was to help engineers get a more practical hands on idea of how things work. Now some of the things it suggested was I could learn how to change a tire in a car, I could change the fluorescent light bulb and, and I just kind of laughed at this because I just got done changing the water pump on my truck so I could go to my construction job the following day. So anyhow, it wasn't that big a deal. And I had my classes for my sophomore year and my sophomore classes were actually going to get into some real engineering as opposed to just all the prerequisites you have to take your first year. Purdue actually flunks out 50% of the students their first year through their physics program. So I was pretty excited. I did really well in the physics class and bumped me right into the full on engineering program. So I thought I'm perfectly in the right direction. However, when I got deeper into my sophomore year, it seemed like all I was doing was a bunch of theoretical work that was Just math and lecture halls. And I wanted to do something a little more practical. I wanted to make things, I wanted to invent things. Since I was a little kid, that's all I wanted to be. I wanted to be an inventor and I want to be Leonardo da Vinci. And I know that's a little different. I didn't want to be a helicopter pilot. I didn't want to be a professional athlete. And what I wanted to do had never really changed. As I got into the second semester of engineering school at Purdue, I learned about something called the Purdue Grand Prix. And this is a go kart race they have every year. It's actually a pretty serious race and anyone who's a student can enter it. And at, uh, this time I was living in a fraternity and I found out there was a shed in the back. And I asked what was in the shed, and apparently that's where they had all, uh, the go kart racing parts. And about 10 years before I was living there, they got a big sponsorship from Budweiser which allowed them to go buy a bunch of new stuff. They got a new car, they got a bunch of tires, they got a new one, uh, hundred CC Yamaha engine and some high end clutches. So I'm like, okay, cool, let's go look out there. And I go in there and I don't think anyone had been in there in years. And everything was just a mess and everything was thrown around, but I thought, I can do this. Let's try to pull this together. And I start rummaging through everything and I found some clutches and I found an engine. And I didn't know anything about go kart racing, but I thought, I can put this together. So I found a clutch and it wasn't set up right and it needed to be drained of fluid. So I took it all apart, I learned how it worked, and I found a clutch, uh, kit that we had in the m, uh shed. And this clutch had not been touched in 10 years, so it needed new all friction plates. So I'm sitting in my bedroom and I'm rebuilding clutches and I'm taking carburetors apart and rebuilding carburetors. And I get super excited. I'm like, I can actually do this. But then I ran into the problem of tires. These tires had been sitting outside in the heat and in the rain and in the cold and gone through winters and hit 20 below zero. And these tires were just hard. They didn't have any traction. They're worn out. And as, uh, a college student with about 10 bucks to my name. This wasn't going to be easy, but the whole point of this explanation here is that I kind of realized that my interest was more in the hands on. I wanted to do things, I wanted to make things, I wanted to get that car on the track and I wanted to race it. What I didn't want to do was spend the less rest of my life doing math and sitting through lecture halls. It just wasn't appealing to me. And it really occurred to me that I was a, uh, true born again redneck. So that's about the time that I found out that Purdue's engineering program is actually extremely theoretical. And this is for a couple reasons. One of the reasons was that During World War II the US government came to Purdue and said we need more high end theoretical researchers because of uh, the military program. So Purdue kind of adjusted their program in that direction. But then they also created the School of Technology. So their School of Technology was where they kind of offloaded all the practical application stuff. So I was actually in one of the most theoretical engineering programs in the entire nation. So not only was engineering a little more theoretical than I wanted, but, but I was in the worst possible program for that of anywhere. So at this point I'm getting towards the end of my sophomore year and it's time for me to go pick out some classes. So I went and talked to my counselor and I told her I wanted to take some manufacturing classes and I wanted some more practical, hands on stuff. And she told me they didn't really offer anything like that. I had already taken statics, dynamics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and a lot of really theoretical stuff which was very useful but not very interesting for me. And at that point she said, well, how about the School of Technology? And I had no idea what she was talking about. I had never heard of the School of Technology and I think I never heard of it because I had high SAT scores, I had high grades, I took all the advanced, uh, mathematics, the calculus, the physics, the chemistry in high school. So I was just naturally pushed into this engineering program and engineering technology wasn't even a consideration. So I worked so hard to get into engineering and, and hear this counselor suggesting that I go into engineering technology. And I think she understood what I was feeling. And she said, well, one thing you have to understand is Purdue is a very good engineering school and they ranked somewhere maybe in the top 10, maybe slightly over that top 12, 13. She said, but the engineering technology program is undisputed number one program in the nation. So that caught my interest and she sat down and showed me the curriculum and I started looking through it. And it's cnc, machining and welding and machine shop and plastics and automation controls and hydraulics, pneumatics, all these parts that you would use to put together a machine and make it do something. Now I had spent years and years and years as a kid racing radio controlled cars and, and this just seemed like a natural evolution from what I was already doing. So I spent my whole life building things and I just figured when I was a kid that I'll get older, I'll go to engineering school and then they're going to teach me how to make things. However, that's not how it really works. Now engineering school will, uh, teach you how to make everything right. But if you went into engineering school not knowing how to change the tire in your car, you're going to come out of engineering school not knowing how to change the tire of your car. But you'll probably know how to look up what the torque specifications need. Now this doesn't mean the engineering technology is a technical degree from the standpoint of, uh, they're going to teach you how to be a welder or they're going to teach you how to program CNC machines. Yeah, there's a little bit of that there. And they do explain it to you, but what you really do is you learn it in the book and then you go to a lab for a couple days where you program something or you weld something or you machine a part and it gives you enough understanding of these processes that you can go into industry and you can work with a machinist or welder or programmer and understand what they're doing and not be completely ignorant. Where in engineering you can go through engineering school and then walk into a factory and just be completely clueless to anything that's going on there. So I was in the mechanical engineering side of things and the right path for me was going into engineering technology. However, if you're going into electrical or you're going into computer, you need to look at the specific programs and decide what you want to get out of it. And you're asking yourself right now, which one is right for me? Do I want to go into engineering or do I want to go into engineering technology? So let's break them down a bit and hopefully demystify this slightly. I want to cover some of the things that you should be considering. If you are thinking about getting an engineering degree. Now, are you more interested in the theoretical or Are you more interested in the practical such as manufacturing or overseeing an assembly line or setting up an assembly line? Or do you like a more fast paced environment where your tasks are going to change a lot day to day and you might be involved with design and manufacturing and logistics if you're more interested in a diverse area. I think the engineering technology degree is a better way to go. Now if you were interested in working in a laboratory where you're going to spend the next five years designing the next newest crazy battery or electronic system, or you want to do simulations for airplanes, then the engineering degree is going to be a lot better. And if you're specifically a mechanical and you want to get your PE license where you can sign off on prints for structures such as buildings or for aircraft like an airframe, then you definitely want to go the engineering route because that's going to be a lot more math intensive and you're going to get the training that you need through the engineering program a lot better than the engineering technology. And also, depending upon the state, they may or may not let you take, uh, the PE license test. If you have an engineering technology degree, it's very state dependent, so you should look into that too if it interests you. I myself, I have no interest in getting my PE license. I'm a designer. I like to design products. I like to build my own prototypes, I like to test them. I like to do the combination of uh, the CAD design and more hands on. So the straight engineering degree was way too restrictive for what I was trying to do. Another question that a lot of people look at is they say what is the pay for these different programs? And it really depends. It's uh, going to depend a lot on the school you're in. Now, where I was at, at Purdue, I want to say that placement for engineering degrees was like 98% and placement for the engineering technology degree was 100%. Now this was a long time ago and that's irrelevant. They basically had almost 100% placement for bulk. The starting pay for the engineering, I think on average was maybe $2,000 more per year. It was so insignificant. So I would not have the pay and the placement be a major consideration for you. What you really want to look at is which program are you going to get through. The last thing you want to do is get into a program that you, you have no interest in completing. You also need to look at the jobs that are available to you when you get out. You don't want to get a degree and then look at your job Potential and say, I really don't want to do that. Because right now, between 50 and 75% of people with a college degree are not working in a job that requires that degree. So it doesn't matter how good a degree you get if you have no interest in using it, and even more so if you have no interest in completing the program. So if you're trying to figure out where your interest is, then ask yourself if you had the option over the weekend to go to a math A thon competition or work on building a race car, which sounds more interesting to you? Now, if you say, I'd rather go to the math a thon, then I would say go the engineering route. You are definitely going to be a lot more comfortable with the engineering degree than the engineering technology degree. However, if you say I want to build the race car, then you have to ask yourself a little more information. Do you want to design the next theoretical, uh, cam lobe on the engine, or do you want to design the next battery for the next EV race car? Or do you want to oversee the putting of that car together, getting out on the track, running some labs, and then coming back and evaluating everything and figuring out how to improve it? And if you like that second option better, then I would say go with the engineering technology degree. And if you're more excited about what's the newest, coolest research that the world's working on, and I want to be part of that, then you might be better off with the engineering degree because you're going to find yourself in a research laboratory more, and it's going to be more, uh, mathematical and more theoretical. And if that's what excites you, then I should definitely look in that direction. You may also want to ask, are you trying to get into management? And a lot of people will have an opinion that one of the degrees is going to get you into management better than the other. And I don't believe that that's the case at all. So if your goal is to get into management, I don't think it really matters which direction you go. Your soft skills as far as managing people and communication, that's going to be far more important than what degree you get. So I would not use that as a determining factor in any way. And if you don't think this is true, look at a lot of people who go into management. They don't have degrees in technology at all. You may have an English degree or a history degree, and you end up as a manager in a technical area, any degree with a Technical background is going to be far better than any degree that doesn't have one. And the fact that you can get into these areas without a technical degree from a management standpoint should just prove it right there. Another thing to consider is that STEM degrees such as engineering have really good placement and they pay really good right out of school. However, oftentimes as your career goes on, you may start to fall behind some of the other people who do not have a STEM degree. Because a STEM degree will carry you all the way through your career, but it's not going to get you to the higher paying jobs on its own. That's when you need to learn management, you need to keep learning new skills and how the world is changing. So from that standpoint, your degree is just a starting point. It's a good starting point and it's a better starting point than most degrees. But it's not the end all be all. So having the mindset, especially now in the world of AI, that you have to adapt is going to be me. I'm Kilken than getting the exact right degree at this moment, as I mentioned before, my focus is on product design. If that's something that interests you, I have a library of resources that I've put together that are completely free and there's a click down in the description if you want to download them. So another question you often get which degree is easier? And once again, that's not a straightforward answer for me. I can tell you the engineering technology degree is easier because it suits me better. Now, if, uh, you're really good at math and you think calculus is easy, then maybe the engineering degree is easier. But if you think setting up an assembly line is easier than calculus, then the engineering technology degree is probably going to be easier for you. Another thing to consider is most of the engineering technology degrees offer both an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree. So if you're really trying to get into industry quicker and don't want to go through a full four year degree, that might also be a good option. It gives you a head start over everyone who didn't go to school. But you don't have to go through the full four years in order to just get out into the workforce. A lot of people will look down upon the engineering technology degree because they say it's not ABED accredited. And there's a lot of companies that are going to require an ABET accredited degree in order to get a job with them. However, that's not true across the board. Uh, the program I went to at Purdue was ABED accredited and a lot of other programs are also. So that is not necessarily a limiting factor. And like I said before, what you really need to do, you need to look at the program at the school that you're interested in, ask them if it has the accreditations that you need, and also look at the curriculum, also look at the placement. Then the next question is, should you even go to school at all? And I can't answer that for you. I can tell you, when I went to school we didn't have all these free resources like YouTube where you could just learn everything for free. Now things have changed and obviously you can learn things for free and the price of tuition has gone through the roof for a lot of people. It may not be worth spending the money, but if you're going to spend your money on a degree, engineering or engineering technology is one of the best ones you can get as far as your return on investment. If you're trying to get a corporate job, I would definitely try to get a degree because everyone right now is getting a degree. And if you don't have a degree, you're going to get ruled out right away unless you have some major connections. Let's say you just want to be an entrepreneur and you don't think you need a degree. And that very well might be the case. You may not. And if you say, well, I can just learn all this stuff on my own, so what's the difference? Well, most people don't have the discipline to go through all the specifics that an engineering program is going to run you through. And if you think you do, then go for it. But you might be better off just getting a degree at, ah, a local university so you actually have something to back it up with. So let me know if you have an engineering or an engineering technology degree or are thinking about getting one.