Replies

Hodar. "A business degree is far easier, the pay and job security are comparable; why would one go into the technical field?"

Ninian Dryhope. My daughter will graduate from Rice in the spring with a degree in Chemical Engineering. She already has a job offer with a salary and signing bonus much higher than what the business grads are going to get. And her company will pay her tuition to get her MBA or Master's degree. You are being illogical.

Hodar's observation about comparable pay seems on the money, IMHO. In Fortune 2000 companies newly hired technical employees may reach the company's nominal pay grade sooner, but in the end it seems that everyone regardless of background winds up with about the same pay, give or take a relatively minuscule incentive amount.

Your daughter may actually get promoted faster with an MBA because technical people tend to get stuck in various nooks and crannies of a company doing mission critical work. Meanwhile MBAs get promoted possibly because companies find it easier to find a another person to fill the recently promoted MBA's currently vacant nontechnical position.

Bottom line, if you become an engineer solely to try to make more money than others in a company you may end up stuck in a job that you hate.

IMHO of course. An opinion that when taken with 3 quarters may buy you a can of Coke. ;)

Since you have no idea of the time value of money, it is obvious that you, unlike me, do not have an MBA.

Average starting salaries for class of '05

Chemical Engineering - $54,256
Business Administration - $39,448

http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/15/pf/college/starting_salaries/

That is more than $15,000 per year available for investment now, not later. Even if I were to buy your assertion that the typical business administration grad and the typical chemical engineer grad both top out at the same rate after twenty years or so (and I do not believe that because what separates the business grad and the cheme grad is the willingness of the cheme to work harder and a higher native intelligence and intelligence linked with hard work yields results), by the time their salaries converge, the cheme is sitting on a much larger nest-egg.

In addition, as I indicated, there is nothing keeping a ChemE from getting an MBA or a Law Degree if she ever decides to do so. Intellectual Property is a field of law that is available to engineers that is not available to business administration majors. A ChemE with an MBA is much more highly regarded than is a Business Administration major who goes on to pick up the MBA.

If one is a dork who is content to sit in a cubicle with your pocket protector and star trek memorabilia, than yes, you are only going to go so far, but if one has the social graces and verbal ability (she had a verbal SAT of 740 and has nothing but A's in English classes) of a typical Rice graduate, one is not going to be confined to a cubicle for very long.