Fellow Mac people, I wanted to know what is so great about Engineering Management. I know its very popular and what the basic idea of it is, but I'm not sure if its something that I would want to go into. I THINK I'll have the marks for the program, which is not the problem. I like the idea of both business and engineering courses spread out since business also interests me, but I'm not sure about Management. Are there any upper year engineers that can provide some insight?

TL;DR Is Management worth it?

Really that's only something you can answer. Management students can tell you about the courses they take, but if you don't enjoy the direction of those courses, then you shouldn't take it.

Management isn't an "elite" path through engineering --- as much as it requires you to be successful in first year. Granted, the pathways it helps to open up are often higher paying, bu they're also not necessarily technical. Often, management students stray from from engineering and end up in business and management fields, and you have to decide if that's something you're interested in.

Nothing is great about it. You take extra year, filled with commerce and some Eng&Mangement courses. The courses are basic, and might allow you to get a very low level accountant job, or help you run your own small level business. But, most of them are about bullshit and less actual doing things, aka you read a 300 page book, answer 100 questions taken out of the ass, hope you get them right, you get bell curved. Rinse and repeat with another course. There are a few exceptions tho, also that mostly applies to commerce courses. However, Eng & Management courses are generally easy, fun and allow you to fix your marks. But there's not many of them, and 80% of your 12 extra course load is boring ass commerce crap. And if you don't give a damn about commerce, you are likely to damage your average with them. Damage it a lot.

Also the employers won't pick you over non-management people with experience for managerial job, simply because you have Management thing in your degree. For the most part, if you get a job, you do engineering job, not paying attention to management. So why pay extra 10 grand for it?

Frankly I think it's extremely overrated.

(Yes, I'm in Management myself).

It's about getting that "title" thats about it. You can still do business stuff without a management degree with experience

You folks are funny.

Yes because every single engineering course you take will be fun, exciting, and meaningful. Give me a break, according to this idiot's logic everyone who's in a business program is wasting their time doing dumb courses that don't mean anything, yet however we live in a society where business positions make more money and are more successful than engineering ones. Management definitely gives you more room to breathe and spread out your workload. Commerce courses generally are easier than engineering ones, and if you have an interest in business then pursue it, it never hurts to learn things about other professions and courses other than the required ones for your program. The more knowledgeable you are in various fields the smarter and more successful you will be, whether that be engineering, business, humanity, geography, economy, etc. doesn't matter, learn as much as you can.

Yes because every single engineering course you take will be fun, exciting, and meaningful.

In engineering many courses have different structure, different teaching styles. Many of them also offer hands on, and problem solving experience. Also just because some of them aren't taught well, doesn't mean all of them are bad, so far I had maybe 2-3 ball apple courses.

90% of commerce courses you have in Eng&Man are the same shit:
- read the book
- memorize questions
- do 100 question in 1 hour on the midterm
- get bell curved

Yeah like I said in my previous post, some offer something different. But 90% are the same. If you like memorizing questions, and find them easier, more power to you. I prefer doing art that is engineering projects. Being creative is the real freedom, no?

And don't tell me about society. Our society is not something you should rely on. Please tell me, what happens in 5-10 years, when hundreds of thousands, that now find business sector more successful, will graduate with business degree? Don't you think, it will overflow the market? What will happen in 20 years when some jobs, like lets say accounting will be done by computers? You think it will hit their pockets a bit? The business sector only works for as long as our society works, if something happens like a war or a natural disaster, you are out. Engineering on the other hand will always be there.

If you are interested in taking business courses anyways, I would really recommend it. I was planning on taking them as electives so it made sense for me and I still don't know whether I want to try to take a more business or engineering oriented path out of school. I found it gave me a different perspective on how they actually run and I have never second guessed taking it.

RSK makes a good point. Technically it does space out your eng courses over 5 years and it could be seen as a lighter load for some ppl

ACTUALLY, Management students are highly regarded by employers and by their fellow students, and those bulls*** courses you are talking about are simply gateways into other managerial opportunities. If you are in management and you don't feel like the courses are worth anything, it's likely because you're not leveraging the opportunities you have.

i.e. The investment club, which looks at different sectors and companies and has teams report back on different investment opportunities on a regular basis. An engineering student brings a unique perspective to that, and Management gives you a bit of a leg up when you start off in that club.

Any engineering team: Accounting and financing. If you're not ignorant of what you learn in those classes, you can balance the books for any engineering team, and bring your engineering perspective to expenses and income sources.

Mars Apprentice: They take engineering & management students every year for a reason... the management background is needed to work with the business students, and the technical background is a rather helpful tool for the teams.

I don't understand where you get off by thinking Management is absolute bulls***... But to be so ignorant about the opportunities it opens up, and to try and spread that ignorance --- it's silly. There are many opportunities to apply the management background. If you're disappointed that the courses didn't give you those opportunities directly, it's sort of your own fault for not getting involved where you could apply the background theory and develop the skills you want. I listed a fraction of the available extra-curricular opportunities above, and there are many more...

Disclaimer: I'm not in Management --- I just know I appreciate the management students and the value they have added to a variety of extra-curricular groups because they did management.

And engineers are being brought in from other countries for less, what's your point. Look around you everything relys on money and how to make the most/save the most. No body gives a shit about your toy car project or other "art" you designed in a university class. Our society's run by banks and financial institutions, have an understanding in that and you'll be better off, business courses are more useful than learning how to solve differential equations that's been taught the past 100 years, learning things about finance, accounting, economics will give you more useful knowledge about what's around you and how to benefit from it.

The E&M-exclusive courses are pretty crappy. They're so ill-defined and lack so much direction that, at the end of the course, you just crap something out to get a grade. Perhaps a lot of that is designed-in to the course ("experiential learning"), but with no idea what to do and no real instruction, it serves no purpose. Hell; 2AA2, the Communication Skills course, is pretty much pointless, too. Barely any functionality in Excel is discussed and that's a really important tool for anybody.

Commerce classes hold more interest, although a lot of them do share the bullshit vibe, too. Do I care to read a 400+ page textbook on HR or OB? No. Nor do I care to do the stupid multiple choice tests they all embody. A lot of it is just introducing you to ideas and making you aware of it.

At the end of it all, I feel like a more well-rounded individual. It also doesn't hurt that the E&M program means you can do an accelerated MBA at Mac-- 8 months full-time, or 2 years part-time. Sweet deal there.

By the way, it shouldn't have to be about participating in extracurriculars to develop skills and build on the knowledge delivered in class. What if somebody has an evening job to support their education or commutes from out of town? I did the GO trip from Oakville to Hamilton for 2 years and, with so many labs, tests and assignments there was never much of an opportunity to deal with those. Everything necessary should be encompassed in the allocated time, including practical and relevant experience. The onus should not be on me to go out and do it; nor is it my fault that I'm a busy individual with my own life outside this dump of a school.

Originally Posted by RSK1

And engineers are being brought in from other countries for less, what's your point. Look around you everything relys on money and how to make the most/save the most. No body gives a shit about your toy car project or other "art" you designed in a university class.

Last time I checked people with overseas degree require revaluation of their degree in order to work in Canada. Often it means redoing their degree.

No no I'm listening, go on...

Our society's run by banks and financial institutions, have an understanding in that and you'll be better off, business courses are more useful than learning how to solve differential equations that's been taught the past 100 years, learning things about finance, accounting, economics will give you more useful knowledge about what's around you and how to benefit from it.

Pfff, I know right? Damn math, it's so much easier to punch values into an equation in a commerce class, than actually knowing how to derive those equations. Who needs math these days... herp derp! I'll just graduate with my basic 2nd year commerce classes, get a simple accounting job, and then sit in a cubical for the next 10 years, playing Angry Birds and awaiting promotion. Much easier than using your brains! (<- talking about Eng & Management working in business sector).

You can literally punch all these math problems into the computer and get an answer. And it's called outsourcing, you hire other engineers in different countries to do the designing for far less, as well as the manufacturing. Calm down there Tesla you seriously think you'll have significant impacts. Engineering programs have been dumbed down since what they were before, and more and more people are being accepted into them. All it is, is a math degree with some computer science ontop, pretty soon that won't matter either.

How does the computer solve them? How can you improve it? How can you build it? How can you improve your life with it? Once you have the machine, how do you program it? Once you have the program, how do you make your code more efficient?

See how many potential problems a simple thing like "punch it into computer" has?

There are people who see things as inefficient and try to improve it, aka Engineers, Scientists and whatnot.... and there are people like you, who don't care about that kind of things. For example, the business and economics sector. You see, the richest economies of the world (western countries), saw them as a catalyst for their growths and therefore encouraged graduation with necessary degrees. That's why business schools are generally the priority from financial point of view, and also have most graduates (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d...rer=f igures). However, while it's all nice and dandy, where are we as civilization? We really barely moved ahead from technological point of view. Most technologies we are using today are byproducts of the past century, and the biggest technological even happened in the 1960s. Perhaps it's because we value our society's capital movement more than we do our knowledge.

One does not exist without the other. But no, keep going, we sure need 100 million accountants to work in businesses that fail because they have nothing different to offer.

What happens when the US, the world's biggest economy defaults? You will be on the streets. Simple as that, because when hands on jobs will be required, who do you think will be called, an engineer, or a cubical accountant?

Basically long story short. Don't look at what's happening now, everything might change in a fraction of a second. Knowledge and hands on jobs are always the priority over "press A button when the thingy in the monitor tells you so" kind of job. Society isn't the thing you should count on, at any give point in time.