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To Be Or Not To Be A CET?
maxdamage asks: "After reading an earlier Ask Slashdot article and the responses, I am very worried about my future career plans. This fall I am going into CET, which is essentially a cross between a CS and an Electrical Engineering degree. According to these responses, CS majors are doomed to spend their lives waiting tables. Does a computer related engineering degree give hope or should I change to a more general engineering program, before its too late?"
Here is the short answer if you are looking for big money IPOs and have little interest in computing technologies above and beyond that then don't do it. If you have a real passion for how computers work both hardware and software then the CET degree is for you. Jobs are to be had but employers are wising up to the flakes that have plagued the industry for the past 10+ years.
I'm assuming your talking about the DeVry University program and as they are local I can only tell you my experiences in the Dallas area. They are profit motivated, the recruiters get paid commission (CET/EET/Bio are the most expensive programs), and they have a few teachers who ought to be elsewhere, their registration system blows rhinos. If you read all that and thought so I just want to learn then I would say don't worry any more about it and just go for it you will be glad you did.
10 years from now, the last thing you want to do is realize you majored in a subject you don't like and you followed a career path that doesn't suit you. Don't major based on the pay scale of job opportunities -- major based solely on what you want to be doing in 10 years. Choose a major and a career path that will make you happy, and you will rise above the pack.
If all you are interested in is money (which some people find an enjoyable pursuit), then you are in the wrong field. Get a law degree, accounting degree, or a business degree. Those tend to work with a lot of money, and they never have a short supply of it. No matter where our world goes, we'll always need lawyers, accountants, and businesspeople.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
And also, no degree will provide a guarantee of success.
The pluses and minuses have a lot more to do with your ability to get along with other people, your ability to think through problems properly, and your willingness to do the things you are asked to do.
Ultimately, I think that studying and working within two obscurely related disciplines will make your skills more valuable and usable though. Whether that's CS and EE though - the relationship is perhaps too obvious. CS and CE might be a more worthwhile choice right now.
My employer looks at a number of things that are not related your GPA, which school you went to, etc., when looking at new college grads:
1. Work ethic - are you willing to take responsibility for getting your work done, asking questions when you don't know something, willing to contribute when you have a good idea?
2. Ability to work in a team - we don't have any individual projects. Work with the team, try to get along with your co-workers.
3. language skills - do you speak a second language? In the industry in which I'm employed, a second language is very helpful, our customers are from all over the northern Hemisphere. A willingness to travel goes along with the language skills.
4. "business common sense" - like it or not, we're all in this for a profit. The path to this is keeping customers happy while making common sense business decisions.
It's my bet that if you can exhibit a number of these skills after you finish your BS degree, you should have no problem with getting a decent job. So while working through your CET degree, look for opportunities to improve your skills in these areas.
I was discouraged by so many people (even my own Uni!) when I went into IT 125 years ago that it was not funny. All of them were wrong of course.
Look, doom scenarios are normaly wrong, what you read here is mostly innacurate tosh, specially when it comes to outsourcing and levels of unemployment.
Only the bitter and unemployed have the time to rant, all the others are too busy making a living.
Success is combined with a lot of luck, of which you have no control.
So study whatever you want, enjoy it, and drop the idea that what you learn will somehow 100% influence what you earn.
There are people with no education whatsoever who became millionares for having one good idea or for being in the right place at the right time.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm happy, I have a beautiful fiancee, I just finished a 4 year term as Art Director for a software company and I'm currently bidding on several large projects while waiting for the right company to find my resume. I've never found it hard to find interesting and lucrative work to do. Having an open and active mind and a willingness to apply found knowledge is all you really need in this world of ours.
If there is one thing you absolutely need to learn early in life is how to learn, how to find the information you need, how to comprehend and apply that information and how to express to others, in a language and terminology that they appreciate, the total of your learning and knowledge.
GO learn how to do these things and get a degree, any degree, if you want to be able to prove that you are capable of them without having to demonstrate them. Then go and apply for jobs you think are interesting or lucrative. If you apply for enough jobs of this sort you will find one that appeals to you. Do you really care if it uses all the skills you learned in college? Most of those skills will be nearly obsolete in 5 years. The skills that won't be obsolete are the ones concerning how to learn. You can always teach yourself how to do any job. Just remember that it will take you a year or two of study to really understand that new job well enough to earn money at it. Plan ahead.
Personally I think people should change jobs significantly every 5 or 6 years. Start in CS, move to Marketing, switch to engineering and manufacturing, run your own business for a while, teach at a community college, buy a farm, fly a corporate jet, become a paralegal... why not. None of them are really that difficult but they do take some specialized knowledge to do them well, probably about 2 years of serious study will teach you what you need to know for any of them.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I graduated with a degree in Music composition and performance, which I very much enjoyed. I took other classes all across the board, trying to get everything I could out of college. When I graduated I got a job as a Java developer (based mostly on non-academic programming projects I did). Now I'm doing quite comfortably.
I may get an MBA a bit down the road, since it would make a nice complement to my programming experience (and what I've already learned about how business works, on the job)... but the point here is that if you're bright and hard-working and show some initiative, you can get *something*, which will give you experience, which is what most employers want.
Yes, degrees matter (and can affect your salary), but having or not having one doesn't doom you to failure.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.