Electronic Vs Electrical Engineering
Q: I recently visited Cal Poly Pomona and discovered that they have a Computer/Electrical Engineering major and an Electronics and Computer Engineering Technology major. Whats the difference between the two majors? What different jobs do you go into after graduating?
A: -I cannot speak for Cal Poly or any other University, but I do know that engineers with a strong electronics/computer curriculum background are weak on power. I presume the opposite is true. That doesn’t mean that an electronics engineer cannot practice power design, just that he/she will have to learn many of the principles without the benefit of a classroom. -Though I never attended Cal Poly, I've known several of their graduates. The most recent graduate I know graduated 15 years ago so my information might be out of date. The Engineer category gets a thorough background in typical electrical engineering material: a full calculus sequence; engineering physics, differential equations, etc. The Technology category gets abbreviated training in electrical engineering material: little or no calculus; simplified physics, little or no differential equations. This subject, the difference between engineering and technology majors, has been discussed in these NGs before. It's apparent that _some_ so-called technology majors receive about as rigorous training as the engineering majors. It depends on the school or the particular campus of a given school. Throughout these discussions, Cal Poly was not mentioned so I don't know the particulars on this school except for the older data that I've already described. Today they might be stronger in the technology area than I described, but I doubt it. I might add that in days past (more than 15 years ago) Cal Poly engineering grads were excellent. Unlike graduates of other schools, newly minted Cal Poly engineers could hit the ground running. They could operate all the standard instruments and they needed less hand holding with their first design assignments. On the other hand, graduates of bigger name schools often couldn't operate an oscilloscope. And, they were so deeply imbued in the finer points of circuit theory that someone always had to explain practical things to them. For example, unless there's some good reason not to, just assume the base-emitter drop will be 0.6 volts--don't grind through the Ebers-Moll equations to do a simple amplifier design. As to employment possibilities, technology grads are often hired into an engineering department just like engineering grads. However, design assignments tend to be doled out in accordance with each engineer's knowledge and ability. Because technology grads tend to receive assignments requiring less analysis (due to their less rigorous math and physics education), they might never develop skills in this area while their engineering-grad counterparts do get such assignments and grow professionally from such work. As a result, engineering grads tend to receive recognition and promotions more quickly than technology grads. -CalPoly is an excellent school, and they've doubtless done as much with engineering technology as anyone could have. Since the question comes up now and again, I wrote the following diatribe a few years ago for someone who was wondering if he should transfer from EET to EE. It might be of some interest, if not any practical use: .................................... EET (this means Electrical Engineering Technology) has an exceptionally strange history. It's partially based on the difference between a college and a university in Europe: these are identical in the US, but you get a somewhat different degree from a European college than you do at a European university. This difference roughly corresponds to the difference between EE and EET in this country. Technology programs exist in the mechanical, electrical, civil, and computer engineering domains. EET was established in the US in the 1960's and 1970's as a reaction to the establishment of a movement to accredit engineering schools separately from the institution as a whole. The wisdom of this idea has proven questionable, but it was highly regarded years ago. What the accrediting organization (now known as ABET, for Accrediting Board of Engineering and Technology) did was to require engineering professors to have doctorates. The results were that many good engineering professors who were not particularly research-oriented lost their jobs. Engineering became a research pursuit, and attracted many mathematicians and physicists who were, how should we put it nicely, not such practical people. Industrial experience counted far less than it had in the past, and engineering journals became increasingly obscure and, well, impractical. So what to do about "practical" people, such as those who knew how an automobile worked? Especially, what to do with tenured professors, whose tenure could not be revoked just because someone outside the school decided to change the rules? The answer was "engineering technology", which has been variously defined as "applied engineering" or "training for engineering technicians (whatever they are) or other rather circular terminology. Actually, the idea was pretty good. Technology could have been used as a bridge between engineering and the liberal arts and business communities, or to establish new programs not quite suited to engineering school (industrial engineering or telecommunications, for example). One particularly successful program at many schools has been construction engineering technology, which really doesn't have a counterpart in engineering. But they generally screwed it up. Schools at which both engineering and engineering technology programs existed almost instantly started to dump their large populations of engineering school dropouts into technology programs. Thus the programs got filled up with dumb kids, or those with drug or alcohol problems. The textbooks were accordingly dumbed down, and the faculty was discouraged. Technology professors and students have lower status than engineering faculty and students. Attempts at dignifying technology programs by adding graduate degrees have met with very limited success. There are a few master's programs surviving, but an attempt to establish a technology doctorate at one prominent Western school met with universal derision. Industry has blown hot and cold as to whether a technology degree is as good as an engineering degree. Most heavy industries didn't care much (they always got the dumber engineers anyway), and these supported technology through the years. The defense industries wouldn't touch technology graduates. The last few years, however, have proven very interesting. First off, ABET seems to be a tad uncertain. Their new "2000" program pretty well reverses their old philosophy and seems to say that perhaps engineers should work with crass, earthly things like machines. Secondly, engineering schools