Are universities doing a disservice to students by offering a major in BioMed Eng?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>From many here and in some other places, I’ve been advised against majoring in Biomedical Engineering. The people who’ve advised me on this are people who have experience in the field in some way and they often cite that the reason for advising me against majoring in Biomedical Engineering is because it tends to be too broad and acts almost like a sampler of a wide range of subjects.* As a result, they claim, those with a bachelors degree in Biomedical Engineering will often have a hard time finding a job and if they do find one without further studies.</p>

<p>That said, are universities doing their students a disservice by having Biomedical Engineering majors for undergraduate students? Would it be better that universities simply offer tracks within more traditional engineering majors for some focus in the Biomedical engineering?</p>

<p>*One thing that I noticed is that with many Biomedical Engineering programs the various courses as a whole generally have a few prerequisites if any. But in the case of Mechanical Engineering programs, the course work has to follow a significantly stricter order due to the large amount of prerequisites for upper level courses. This many tie with the idea that BioMed Eng is a sample of various things while a more traditional major such as Mechanical Engineering is more focused and the course work builds strongly upon each other.</p>

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<p>Note: I am referring only to undergraduate Biomedical Engineerin programs and no graduate level ones.</p>

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<p>Asking a question is like asking if the university is doing a disservice by offering a major in African studies or anything else. You can choose to major in it or not, the school isn’t doing a disservice by offering it, unless you think that the only major a school should have is CS or something. </p>

<p>At my school it seems that BMEs who want to do BME-type stuff also major in EE or MatSci or something, and the rest are pre-med.</p>

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<p>Most universities/colleges will tell applicants that a Masters is usually required for employment in the field(BME). They should only pursue the BS if they plan on earning a MS or other professional degrees (like med school). On our college tours, the engineering advisors have been pretty upfront about this.</p>

<p>Some universities still will not offer the degree (instead requiring you complete your BS in EE or ME, before apply for your MS in BME), but the demand has really increased over the last few years…</p>

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<p>Good points. I agree with you guys now</p>