electrifice

I have just begun my undergrad in EE and I'm a bit surprised to find a bunch of really unhappy or burnt out EEs. It is probably the hardest degree at my school so that explains part of it, and some people clearly made the wrong choice. However, I can't help but feel that EE itself is "dying" in some respects. Sure, there's a lot of jobs and applications for the degree and I'm not concerned about the job market... but is there anything left in EE to explore? I have a very limited knowledge about this but it seems to me that there isn't as much exciting research/development going on in this field as in some other fields of engineering, like ChemE... Even CS or CSE/ECE have the world of quantum computing to explore, not to mention all the exciting jobs that await CS majors in large companies like Google and Apple. Personally, I would love to work at the edge of technology, in some way or shape exploring new ways to do things... not just simply applying all the math and physics we are taught in school because that would get boring after a while.
I really like EE because of all the physics and math involved so I'm sure I've made the right choice of major... but what is there to look forward to in the world of EE?

MR_JR

Pretty much everything you mentioned above would be accessible to an EE major - plenty of EE's work at apple/google and EE majors are ideal to get involved in cutting edge nanotech research. Even fields like alternative energy whcih you might think is the realm of chemE's are open to EE's - it's really one of the broadest and most versatile engineering degree's out there. So I wouldn't worry!

ken285

This seems oddly similar to a recent post about the future of civil engineering. Anyway, EE is such a young field that there are PLENTY of things out there to explore. If you're curious, try looking at some IEEE journals about recent research.

UriA702

Any engineering degree is versatile. The sheer difficulty in obtaining an EE degree in itself is enough to get your foot into the door in many industries. There are many other fields you can go into with an EE degree simply because it shows you are capable of doing whatever you put your mind to.

Luminaire

except getting laid!

ZING!

sabatu

Has Revenge of the Nerds taught you nothing? ^^

..although I think they were actually computer science majors..

proton

there are a lot of electrical engineering problems that are being researched in grad school. man doesn't have all the answers.

proton

what i was trying to say is that there are still lots of unanswered questions

dLo

Areas of Research listed in my school's catalog:
1. Quantum Electronics and Quantum Computation
2. Communications and Signal Processing
3. Control
4. Wireless Engineering
5. Learning Systems and Computational Finance
6. Optical Information Processing
7. MEMS/NEMS Sensors and Actuators
8. Digital Signal Processing
9. Computational Vision
10. Nanofabrication and Design of Ultrasmall Devices
11. Distributed Information Systems
12. Data Compression
13. Integrated Circuits
14. Networking
15. Wireless Communications
16. Biophotonics

Far from a dead field and if you stick with it, there's a lot of really cool stuff going on.

electrifice

It seems I was wrong after all. Thanks for the list dLo, I will look into those areas and see if something piques my interest.
btw, does research in these areas require a phD and an academic career?

proton

you can research stuff while still an undergrad. i know of some people who applied and they helped research at the university.

but generally a phD stands for "philosophy degree" and the degree is basically a research degree from what i understand