Should I get a second BS or go for MS?

Engineer80
Tue, 05 Mar 2019 21:11:59 +0000

Engineering technology is not engineering. Career prospects and growth with an ET degree are significantly limited as compared to an engineering degree. There are other threads on CC that discuss ET vs. Engineering in detail, I would encourage you to take a look at them. In my experience in the aerospace industry none of the companies with which I have worked gave design responsibility to ET degree holders, the few we had were lab technicians and assistants, drawing checkers, maintain engineering documentation, and other ancillary functions but none were design engineers. The relationship between ET and engineering is analagous to that between a physician’s assistant or a nurse and a physician, a paralegal and an attorney, etc. ET holders perform useful and necessary functions but they are not replacements for engineers.

I once taught in a public university that offered both engineering and engineering technology. This particular school was known as a safety for students who could not get into the higher ranked public and private universities in the area. Many needed a part-time program, which those higher ranked schools did not offer being full-time for undergraduate only. A significant number of the engineering students - particularly, the part-timers - were marginal and were not doing well in the engineering curriculum. To avoid losing those students the school suggested to some to transfer to the ET program - it doesn’t have the high level proof-based calculus, calculus-based physics, theoretical science, calculus-based nondisciplinary and disciplinary engineering courses, etc. The school told them or at least implied to them that they would have the same opportunities as engineering graduates. I had a heated debate with the dean at the time telling him that that is just not true - and to suggest that to the students is doing them a disservice, and frankly, dishonest.