You raise a really good point that I didn't bring up in the story, William K. The best reason to be an engineer is that the work itself, even with its frustrations, is personally satisfying to many of us. Yes, good salaries are important, but most engineers do it because that's where their inclinations lie.
An engineer is what I am, not just what I do. That is probably different from a whole lot of people in the various professions. But while I have been compensated enough to be comfortable, I find the results in the published engineering salary surveys to be quite amazingly high. In fact I find some of them to be a bit hard to believe. Either that or I have been taken advantage of for much of my career.
But I have been able to enjoy the majority of my work most of the time, and I count that as a great value, especially when I look at all of those poor folks who hate their jobs. Being able to look forward to each day is certainly worth a good bit, and having good folks to work with makes a job so very much better.
Of course, in my particular field I covered a wide range of activities, so there was never a chance for boredom to set in.
@Cabe Atwell: Okay, but for every Flo Rida, there are thousands of aspiring hip hop artists whose net worth is zero or less. For every rapper with a Bentley, there are thousands who don't even have bus fare. The likelihood of becoming an award-winning multimillionaire hip hop artist is vanishingly small, even if you are very talented.
On the other hand, if you get an engineering degree and have a good work ethic, you can be pretty confident of earning an income somewhere on the upper end of the middle-class range. I'd say it's a much better bet.
I agree, Tim. It's a shame that more athletes aren't encouraged to use their athletic scholarships to get a good education. Hats off to Missouri S&T for doing that.
Thanks so much for posting and sharing. I hope to reuse this at our Toothpick Bridge Building Contest, AWWA Model Water Tower Competition, and other professional society outreach efforts.
It's great to see these student athletes excelling both on the field and in the classroom, in a worthwhle program that will pay dividends professionally and financially in the years after they graduate. They are debunking the stereotype that football players, especially at the college level, are just dumb jocks. Well done Missouri S&T!
10-1 is a great record. It is interesting to see that they also emphasize the non-NFL salaries for their players. A friend of mine played div. 1 football for a Big Ten school who majored in Art as it had little necessary class time. He now sells used cars.
I agree, Naperlou, it's a great school. I worked with a number of engineers from that school, back in the days when it was called Missouri-Rolla. They've always had solid engineering programs. I think the name change is a good one, by the way.
As energy efficiency becomes more and more a concern for makers of electronics devices, researchers are coming up with new ways to harvest energy from sound vibration, footsteps, and even electromagnetic fields in the air.
The government wants to study your brain, and DARPA wants to use similar information to give robots true autonomy beyond any artificial intelligence developed to date. Sound like science fiction? It's not.
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A quick look into the merger of two powerhouse 3D printing OEMs and the new leader in rapid prototyping solutions, Stratasys. The industrial revolution is now led by 3D printing and engineers are given the opportunity to fully maximize their design capabilities, reduce their time-to-market and functionally test prototypes cheaper, faster and easier. Bruce Bradshaw, Director of Marketing in North America, will explore the large product offering and variety of materials that will help CAD designers articulate their product design with actual, physical prototypes. This broadcast will dive deep into technical information including application specific stories from real world customers and their experiences with 3D printing. 3D Printing is
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