Does It Suck To Be An Engineering Student?

Pickens writes "Aaron Rower has an interesting post on Wired with the "Top 5 Reasons it Sucks to be an Engineering Student" that includes awful textbooks, professors who are rarely encouraging, the dearth of quality counseling, and every assignment feels the same. Our favorite is that other disciplines have inflated grades. "Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films," writes Rower. "Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores." For many students, earning a degree in engineering is less than enjoyable and far from what they expected. If you want to complain about your education, this is your chance."

Comments

Re:at least you're learning

[Rukie]

I'm in a mechanical engineering degree. In the past 10 years, fewer than 10 people have recieved 4.0 gpas. It is ridiculously difficult. The classes are ridiculously difficult. However, by the time I graduate RIT I'll know this stuff so well.. I spent all weekend on 3 problems. what the heck! lol It takes me two hours to write a decent 10 page paper, it takes me 10 hours to answer 1 math problem. I definitely agree, other fields have inflated gpas, but you know what, I know a hell of a lot more than someone with an inflated grade, and that makes me proud.

Re:NO IT DOES NOT

[boris111]

As an engineering student that took a film class as an elective I can attest to that! I would write papers that had A's while the students to the left and right of me earned C's. My paper comparing Hidden Fortress to Star Wars scored especially well. Alfred Hitchcock was an Engineering student BTW.

Re:You are Freaken Arrogant!

[Man On Pink Corner]

You really think Math, Science and Engineering students can make better films?

It depends on the definition of "better." Some of Hollywood's most influential directors, from Stanley Kubrick to Jim Cameron, were/are hardcore engineering geeks. But most movies made by geeks end up being made for geeks... more like Primer, in other words, than The Terminator.

It would suck if nerdhood was the only point of view represented in the film industry.

Bologna.

[Weaselmancer]

I paint and let me tell you that to get inspiration for a painting is hard. And please don't get me started on "how I could do that in five minutes." If you think like that then you actually don't understand art.

If you're talking about the "looks like 5 minute art" being the modern variety, then I must call shenanigans on you. Modern art is bollocks.

Disclaimer: I'm not an artist. What I know about art you could fit in a thimble. But, I'm an engineer and scientist, and I have tested this. Albeit accidentally.

Over a dozen years ago I went to the Met in NYC with a girlfriend. At the time I had long hair, was only slightly balding, and wore military clothing with lots of pins all over it. I looked eccentric. I looked...like what you'd think of when you think "artist".

So we're at the Met. And to make my SO laugh, I start doing my best "LA Story" impression on the modern art display. I was a little louder than I should have been (I blame the extra-fun Manhattan bars for this). Other people could hear me - I didn't know this. I began spouting nonsense.

"It says a lot by saying a little. It's artistic without being artsy."
"It's amazing how much of a conversation you can have with just green, isn't it?"
"You can see the effort but not the grace. Yellow can be so unforgiving."

And so on.

What I didn't realize was that other art people were looking over my shoulder and nodding at every single thing I was saying. I had the weird hair and the odd jacket. And nothing I was saying was making sense. Since it was all zooming over their heads, they erred on the side of caution and assumed I was a genius. And I had improved their day with my "insight", which was nothing more than half-drunken babbling. When I turned around and saw a half a dozen people following me around, I knew I had learned something important:

Art, modern art anyways - is a load of rubbish.

It's the emperor's new clothes.

So what?

[raehl]

They will, however, get better grades with less native ability

Why does that matter? They're getting better grades in film classes. Being mad that students in film classes have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes makes about as much sense as being mad that students in 2nd grade have an easier time getting high marks than students in engineering classes.

This disparity is corrected for in the real world - try getting a job with a 4.0 film degree vs. a 3.0 engineering degree. You'll get any job the film degree candidate can get, with the possible exception of jobs where the film degree's GPA doesn't matter (actual film jobs, where they are evaluated primarily on their portfolio of work, an area where anyone who actually has any talent in film is going to kick your (or my) sorry engineering ass.)

More generally, if you really feel that someone else is getting a better deal than you, stop bitching about it and go do what they're doing! Enroll in the film program, get your easy A's, finish college with a 4.0 in your major, and enjoy your years of paying off your student loans while working as a car salesman/insurance agent/whatever else Liberal Arts majors do to actually feed themselves when you could have gotten that same job not going to school at all!

You have to understand what a Liberal Arts major is. For a very select few people, it's a stepping stone to being a professor, or research, or something else at the top of the field. For the vast majority however, a liberal arts degree is an opportunity to do some partying, find a mate, and prove that you're able to show up on time. So yeah, you can get a 4.0 liberal arts degree much easier than you can get an engineering degree, but you won't be able to be an engineer with one!

Re:This isn't high school

[ATMAvatar]

No one who has an opinion worth a damn will ever look at a Liberal Arts major with a 3.8 and think it's equivalent to a 3.8 in chemical engineering.

The clerks handling academic scholarships do.

There are states that offer scholarships that require one maintains their GPA above a certain level. While the types of students who would earn an academic scholarship aren't the types that would switch to a relatively easy Liberal Arts major to maintain the scholarship, it is commonplace to see students taking LA classes to pad their grades and maintain scholarships. This incentive to take irrelevant (but easy!) classes should not exist.

You must be a liberal arts major...

[raehl]

Given the ease with which you made up and propagated that bullshit, there's a good chance you have or are on your way to having a BA.

But lets try getting you to provide some real information.

List for us World Leaders and CEOs who only have a Bachelor of Arts degree. I'm sure there are a couple. Now figure out (if you ever learned how to do this) the percentage of CEOs and World Leaders (or even members of congress) who just have Bachelor of Arts degrees. To keep the problem manageable, you might consider only looking at Fortune-50, -100, or -500 companies.

Here, let me help you:

Fortune Top 10:

- Wal Mart: Lee Scott, Business degree
- Exxon: Rex Tillerson, B.S. in Civil Engineering
- General Motors: B.A. in Economics, MBA Harvard
- Chevron: David O'Reilly, B.S. Chemical Engineering
- Conoco Phillips: JAmes Mulva, BA in Business and MBA
- General Electric: BA Applied Mathematics, MBA
- Ford: Alan Mulally, BS and MS Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
- Citigroup: Vikram Pandit, BS and MS in Engineering, PhD in finance
- Bank of America: Ba Finance
- American Intl. Group: MArtin J Sullivan, degree unknown (he's british)

So out of the top 10, you have four engineers, four business/finance, and one applied math guy.

*ZERO* Liberal Arts majors. Maybe we can give you one out of 10 with credit for the math guy, even though it was APPLIED math.

So for CEOs, looks like engineers kick liberal arts major ass. For Heads of State, I think you'll find that the vast majority of Heads of State have MBAs or JDs (or BLs) in developed nations, or are the children of political families in lesser-developed nations, or are former warlords in even less developed nations.

But, with a statement as stupid as "ALL of the heads of state in the world today are, or can be considered Liberal Arts majors", (ALL? Really? Don't make it hard to be proven wrong or anything...) I doubt you're going to have much to say here, even if you did use your Liberal Arts training to insert your 'cover my don't know anything ass' statement of "or can be considered". Can be considered? Either they have liberal arts degrees or they don't!

It must really gall you how you just got trounced by an engineer though.