Maths or civil engineering degree ?

[Thekatzenjammerkid]

DS2 ultimately wants to work in civil engineering. He also loves maths and actually wanted to study it at Uni but now reckons that to become a civil engineer he needs to study engineering at Uni and that a maths degree just wouldn’t be that useful.
Is that the case ?

I'm not quite sure what world that poster is living in, Tizer, to not understand the creativity of engineers and other STEM folk! Nor that 40-50K isn't a great salary for someone with that level of education, intelligence and responsibility beyond youngish grad age.

Lifelong civil engineer here.

We followed the first year pure maths course when I was at uni, and I did consider swapping for a while.

I have found that you get pushed towards project management as you progress in your career. which may or may not be welcome. If you want to earn the big money, then that is the way to go but you spend little or no time doing actual engineering design work.

edited to add: I don’t use maths in my day to day work but you need an understanding. Everything is computer aided design anyway, so the days of sitting and calculating with a pad and a calculator are long gone.

Thanks for all the replies. Ds was really impressed with the advice 😏
He’s now found out that he has 2 weeks of work experience in the summer, one at MBDA and the other at Arup. Hopefully that will give him a good idea about what an engineering job involves.

To @asdasdasdsadad, @TizerorFizz and others

I agree the MIT maths salaries are high partly because the financial sector recruits there intensively. How many find their own paths into other jobs as well. I think the main fact is that it is MIT.

I was comparing engineering salaries to both the Continent and North America, where they are higher. In some countries one says ‘Engineer Tizer’ as a mark of respect, the same way we use other professional titles. I’d wager there is a correlation with pay.

I agree that computer scientists must also find their own paths and yet this is not seen as a problem, because of perceived need. I think that is accurate overall, with some patches of softness.

My research is pure maths-adjacent, @asdasdasdsadad , and I as well as many others find the subject creative as well as elegant. Engineering and applied maths are as creative, each in its own way.

@poetryandwine You are correct about titles being used and the respect and salary that goes with it. I see the word “engineer” used on these threads by posters whose dc are probably graduate engineers. In other words, working their way towards chartered status. They are not fully qualified engineers at the highest level. We don’t use “Chartered” as we use the word Doctor. So engineer means literally anyone who fixes something above the role of mechanic is referred to as an engineer. It’s even more complicated when we have Chartered, Incorporated and Technician/Graduate engineers! At least we understand what a Doctor is with a similar length of training but engineers are complicated and suffer from comparisons with repair technicians.

@Thekatzenjammerkid Arup are a worldwide powerhouse of a consultancy. Well worth spending time there. Is MBDA civils? Arup design and deliver huge infrastructure projects and will no doubt showcase those.

There are smaller companies who welcome dc for work experience on a more ad hoc basis. More everyday projects! Always worth a look on line in your area to see who else might give dc an insight.

@TizerorFizz i think MBDA is weapons/missiles so not civil engineering. Any port in a storm basically ! Thanks you your excellent advice. Really appreciate it.

@Thekatzenjammerkid Yes. Thats what I thought. You will find local consultancies that would do some work experience. Often in the vacations from uni too. Many are happy to see good future employees!

DH was always quite keen on architecture but in the end preferred civil engineering. Obviously decades ago now, but he was Chartered civils by 25, and then went to work with an older chartered engineer and they set up a consultancy. Back then he did structures and civils and by 28 was chartered in both. I think that’s almost impossible now. Most have to choose one or the other. Not sure he had to do much for FCIHT! Just tick their boxes.

What is also interesting is that as you get older, you can get the younger engineers to do the number crunching via the computer programs. The skill is actually knowing that it’s the best solution and will work for the client. Everyone can design something but coming in on budget with a solution the client can build actually matters. Site supervision matters. Getting it wrong is very very costly.

@TizerorFizz you , @ErrolTheDragon@poetryandwine have greatly misunderstood my post. Elegance = creativity. What I was trying to get across was that people do not 'think' so. Because there is no visual output, such as beautiful buildings or turning gears. But to create an elegant mental model of something, or a formula that covers all paths, that is creative. I did not do a maths degree but did graduate level pure maths. You don't need to explain my own creativity to me!

@TizerorFizz your reference to a 'finance job' is my point exactly. I don't know what the definition of 'good salary' is. Is it compared to the 'highest paid' roles, like finance? Or higher than the median? Not clear. The finance you are talking about (well, I presume you mean high finance and not accounting) is limited to a handful of roles in London, well big cities have corporate finance but that doesn't really pay the big bucks either. I often see engineering roles in places where the cost of living is low and 50K is double the median salary. Would you argue that it's still 'low-paid'? I think it really depends.

Also higher up the scale, it's less about the job, and more about people management. So even if you wanted to include accounting in the definition you can't really compare an 'engineer' individual contributor to, say a Manager in a Big4 accounting firm, or middle manager in a big company finance department. As a PP said the big bucks are in project management, you said yourself the value add is in managing budget etc. They are different skillsets. Sadly, it is the same across most industries experienced individual contributors are just not valued as much as management.

@poetryandwine Computer Science is a strange one. A relatively young discipline, but also many who succeed don't even have a CompSci degree. There's a big debate going on its relevance in the industry. Very, very few people are real 'computer scientists' solving interesting problems a lot of the work out there is cruft and just requires common sense.

Salaries are higher for everything in North America. I don't know much about erm 'the Continent' so I can't comment. But in my developing country of origin engineers are treated with great respect because it's one of the few ways to make a good living. We don't have a major finance industry, highly paid tech roles or anything like that. It might be the same thing in other 'poorer' European countries. Don't know.

@asdasdasdsadad Whilst not all grads working in a financial role will get starting pay in London of £45,000 for starters but many do. They will be earning double this fairly quickly. Depends who they are working for but non engineering jobs that engineers aim for (and many don’t do engineering after university) are getting very decent salaries. Or why not stay in engineering if pay was equal? In other areas of the uk the salaries will be closer. Uni attended makes a huge difference regarding career choices too. Oxbridge engineers certainly don’t all become engineers. It’s not seen as particularly prestigious by many of them.

Salaries matter in the SE due to housing costs.

I am the mathematician child of a civil engineer.

I would say that for a civil engineer, maths is a tool - the main tool but still a tool - that they use to solve problems.

For a mathematician, maths is the beautiful but wild beast that they are trying to tame.

So it really depends on whether he wants to be a carpenter or a lion tamer. 😁

I am now a carpenter - I use my maths skills as a tool (I am an actuary) but I will never regret my university years as a lion tamer.

Yes, but the London/SE is only relevant if the majority of engineering jobs are concentrated there. Like finance (e.g. private equity, investment banking). Of course each branch is going to be different (a lot of chemical engineers make the big bucks working offshore , for example). But engineering is similar to other fields with private companies that don't really pay a 'London' premium, or a big one, anyway. It is not 'engineering' which is low paid, but the other fields that are paid too much. Why would any private company pay more than it has to, in order to get employees? It's not like doctors, teachers, nurses who are acutely needed and whose pay is a matter of public policy.

As to why engineering graduates choose other fields, you are assuming that they all wanted to become engineers in the first place. However, engineering is seen as a rigorous and prestigious degree. It's also very popular.
The second highest numbers of degrees awarded for STEM, behind subjects allied to medicine. Computing is its own category, coming in third.

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/19-01-2023/sb265-higher-education-student-statistics/qualifications#:~:text=More%20qualifications%20were%20awarded%20in,sciences%20saw%20the%20lowest%20proportion.

As I mentioned above in developing countries (that many high achieving BAME may have a background in) it's one of the few 'acceptable' professions. But also. It's very well known. Everybody knows that engineering exists as a degree, they may not know that, say 'marine biology' or 'environmental science' exists.

I have encountered (and hired) many engineering graduates who never had any intention of actually becoming engineers. They didn't really know what to do at uni. Capable of STEM subjects and thought it was more employable. Out of the STEM subjects, engineering sounded more practical, knew loads of people with the degree earning lots in various fields. End of thought process.

As an aside @ErrolTheDragon salaries aren't related to intelligence, education level, responsibility and all that. So many idiots fail upwards and end up becoming CEO's. Also academic intelligence and education doesn't necessarily mean you deserve a higher salary. It's about output , supply of candidates and for private companies it's about what the market will bear. Few would want to work offshore if it didn't come with a big salary for example.

@asdasdasdsadad In most areas of engineering, salaries are linked to responsibility. For civil engineering senior people should have oversight. It’s like saying you pay hospital consultants less than porters. You pay for responsibility. If you run a succesful company of course you pay yourself well. You take a lot of risk and responsibility for the company. DH got a 2:2 when most did. Not an academic genius. Turned out he was pretty good at building up a consultancy from scratch. It made plenty of money too even if the owner was an idiot falling upwards.

Ah, I did misunderstand your post @asdasdasdsadad - totally agree with the pure creativity of that sort of maths! And in my scientific niche we have creative mathematicians working in more applied areas too.

@Thekatzenjammerkid Here are some graduate civil engineer apprenticeship to give him some ideas Apprenticeships

Thanks for your clarification yesterday, @asdasdasdsadad . And I certainly agree with you that pure maths is elegant. To me, elegance is more of a synonym for beauty but this is a minor difference

@ElizaB22 All those apprenticeships are level 6. That’s BEng. It’s not acceptable to say to a young person that these are the same as MEng. They are not. The apprenticeships lead to IEng. Not CEng without a masters. Of course apprentices might be sponsored for that, but they might not. This would mean they won’t achieve the highest level of engineering qualification. Apprenticeships are good for the right people but they do need to be compared against MEng degrees.