<p>Why is the prestige of engineers lower than for other professions? What can be done to improve the prestige of engineers and attract more of the top engineering graduates to actually become engineers and not lawyers and bankers?</p>
<p>Pay them more.</p>
<p>^ITA with that.
I don’t think this problem has anything to do with prestige. It has to do with pay.</p>
<p>I agree with the two posters above me.</p>
<p>And really, the pay of engineers isn’t really bad. The hourly rate is quite good, IMO. I know several people who are looking at $40/hour pay rates out of school.</p>
<p>The prestige of engineers is lower because you only have to worry about getting a bachelor’s to get a job; whereas in law, etc., you have to get into grad school. Therefore it seems easier to get an engineering degree/job.</p>
<p>Raising pay and education requirements will raise the prestige of engineers.</p>
<p>The prestige of engineers are fine, but it’s the money that’s lacking.</p>
<p>[Harris</a> Interactive | The Harris Poll - Doctors The Most Prestigious Of Seventeen Professions And Occupations, Followed By Teachers (#2), Scientists (#3), Clergy (#4) And Military Officers (#5)](<a href=“http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=261]Harris”>http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=261)</p>
<p>ElectricTech hit the bulls eye there concerning the pay. And yes, I agree that engineer’s pay could be better…</p>
<p>Let’s just say I would actually consider sticking with engineering if I could get payed as well as a doctor or lawyer…until then I’m off to law school =O</p>
<p>Maybe I live in a bubble, but…I see the relatively high pay, and the high level of prestige, to be attractive features of engineering.</p>
<p>It’s not the level of pay that investment bankers, but when my salary in my first job out of college puts me in the top 30% in the US, income-wise, I’m certainly not going to complain. And unlike with med or law school, I don’t have to take out huge loans to pay for several expensive years of education beyond undergrad.</p>
<p>Engineering is a humbeling profession and is a labor of love. The things we do, for many of us, we would probably be doing even if we were paid a fraction or two less. With that said, I am going to be moving out of it and getting a job that pays more because I now have a family support and I’m tired of watching some history major with a new suit and a pie chart getting more than me. Perhaps I will come back when my millions are made and my family is comfortable.</p>
<p>Smart is as smart does.</p>
<p>“but when my salary in my first job out of college puts me in the top 30% in the US” fine, but considering that “The national college graduation rate is 27.2 percent,” (source: [Most-Educated</a> Cities in the United States - MSN Encarta](<a href=“http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities]Most-Educated”>http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/elearning/?article=educatedcities)) that’s no longer that impressive.</p>
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<p>I’m not trying to win a contest (though I realize that my wording wasn’t great). I’m saying that I get paid plenty. I can afford to live in a very nice neighborhood, go to restaurants/concerts/movies/etc when I like, travel some, take classes, and have enough left over to save/invest a quarter or more of my take-home income every month. As a rookie barely out of college. Seems like a fine deal to me.</p>
<p>Lawyers and doctors have a reputation of raking in the money, but there’s a pretty huge range of salaries. The median salary for members of the law class of '06 who reported their salaries to their law schools was less than 90% of what I make, and a lot of them have law school loans to pay off.</p>
<p>To make sure that I’m not completely off base, I mentioned this conversation to some of my engineer friends. They also thought it was weird that engineers as a group would complain about being underpaid.</p>
<p>Lol, scorp, I was about to post that too. However, it doesn’t complete refute the statement, because that top 30% is irrespective of age. A new engineering bachelor’s makes more than 70% of all workers, even the ones nearing retirement. That’s not so bad a place to start out.</p>
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<p>Just make sure you get into a top law school to be able to afford those tuition bills when you graduate.</p>
<p>[Hard</a> Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers - WSJ.com](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html]Hard”>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119040786780835602.html)</p>
<p>I am a power plant engineer and I don’t see a lot of prestige in my job. Young engineers aren’t exactly eager to work in power plants. We get paid well but the pay can be higher in other industries. Also, the work can take a lot of time out of your personal life, especially if you work on a lot of outage projects. But I enjoy my work and I plan to stick with it. The pay is just enough to get by right now (paying off school loans and supporting my wife while she is in school). Going to grad school for business is an option but while a business job may be more prestigious, the extra school loan debt would be a heavy burden to carry and I doubt the personal satisfaction from a business job would make up for that.</p>
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<p>I think that nobody disputes that engineering is a pretty good deal financially for the average grad fresh out of school with just a bachelor’s degree. On average, it certainly is a better deal than most other bachelor’s degrees out there, at least to start.</p>
<p>However, I think that what frustrates people about engineering is that, frankly, there aren’t many opportunities to vastly increase your salary. Star lawyers and star businessmen can make 7 figures or more. Star engineers can’t. Even if you’re the best and hardest-working engineer in the world, you’re still never going to make what a top lawyer or businessman can make, unless you decide to get into management or you join a startup company (but then you’ve basically become a businessman yourself). </p>
<p>Some of you may recall ariesathena, a former chemical engineer who is now in law school (or may have graduated by now). She used to tell a story about how even those engineers who had worked for her old employer for 20 or 30 years were still making less than what the median salary is for grads from her law school just to start. Now granted, she is going to a rather prestigious (and hence lucrative) law school. But that just reinforces the point that while engineering salaries may start off relatively high, they don’t really increase very much from that point on. You start bumping up upon the salary ceiling relatively quickly in your career. </p>
<p>I think this is why you see many of the engineering students from the best engineering schools (i.e. MIT, Stanford, etc.) not really wanting to work as engineers, but often times instead choose other career paths like management consulting or investment banking. They perceive that, sadly, engineering probably does not provide the sort of career development and opportunities that consulting or banking provides. It’s sad that most engineering companies seem not to want to provide strong career development opportunities to their engineers. But that’s the reality.</p>
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<p>So true, and it is why I am trying to make my exit.</p>
<p>What’s even worse is that you see your friends or peers who had struggled through the math you wized through doing financially better with more rewarding careers in fields that require math. Why did I become an engineer? Because I was good at math and science. Well big whoopdiedoo, I should have used my talent at math to buy me more family time and get a job in finance or insurance. There’s challenges in those industries, maybe nothing as exciting as in engineering, but there’s more reward.</p>
<p>Wow, lol… both of you are doing an excellent job depressing thousands of engineers…</p>
<p>And scaring a lot of aspiring engineers as well…</p>