Educating yourself on the web!
Educating yourself on the web!
Engineering is a high profile career in which there is a huge demand for employees. An engineering degree opens up all kinds of career opportunities. Given the huge demand for engineers you would think that there would be lots of online engineering degrees available. Unfortunately it isn't possible to become an engineer by getting an online degree. There are lots of engineering degrees available online, they just won't qualify you to become an engineer. If you want to become an engineer you are going to have to attend a traditional university.
In order to become a professional engineer there are some pretty strict academic requirements that have to be met. At the current time it is not possible to meet these requirements with an online degree. The primary reason for this is that in order to become an engineer requires that you learn about the basic sciences first. That means you need to do laboratory work. This just isn't practical with an online degree. Another factor in the shortage of online engineering degrees at the bachelors level is the desire of the engineering profession to limit the number of new entrants. Engineers know that if they can limit the number of new graduates entering the profession it will force wages to rise. They do this by tightly controlling which academic programs are acceptable to qualify for a license. If an online program allowed graduates to qualify for a license the engineers would lose this control.
There are however a great many online engineering degrees, however these are aimed at people already in the field. At the bachelors level you will see degrees offered as bachelors of engineering technology. This is a degree program that is intended for people who are working as or wish to become engineering technologists. An engineering technologist performs many of the same tasks as a professional engineer but does it on a more limited scope. In general a technologist will need to have his work supervised by a licensed engineer. In some cases it is possible to become a professional engineer by working as a technologist but this takes many years of experience.
The other common online engineering degree is the masters degree and these are very widely available. Most engineers get their first job after they complete their bachelors degree but in order to move into the more senior ranks they usually find it necessary to get a masters degree. Since few of them want to quit their jobs in order to go back to school most masters degrees are taken online. Engineering is one of those professions in which there is a lot to know, it is also one of those professions were new technology is constantly entering the field. That makes it critical that engineers frequently upgrade their education, there is always something new to learn.