Nouman Abid Chuhan said:

We all should have a clear understanding about it and should not mix them up.

As Simon's sort of suggested, in return I'd ask - why?

In recent discussions with colleagues - with all of us doing precisely the same role - we discovered we had degrees in pretty much every area of STEM between us (and at least one non-STEM). I'll accept that our employment for the first few years after we graduated was different (i.e. dependent on our degrees), but after those few years we converged in the same place. Even for those who go into specialist academic research, it's surprising how often their area of research is quite different from that covered by their first degree.

I'd actually go the other way, I'd prefer to see convergence of STEM degrees to concentrate on scientific method and approach. The subject content of STEM degrees is typically going to be obsolete within a few years of graduation anyway, it's the approach to working with developing information that's the key element to learn and understand. And that, I'd hope, would be common across the STEM subjects (although it sadly often isn't).

I think you and I may have had this discussion in another thread, but I can't find it now, and apologies if I'm mistaken. But anyway I'll repeat what I said then: There are plenty of very successful examples of engineers, working at world class recognition level, who have degrees which are not engineering degrees (or who have no degree at all). Degrees are somewhat interesting when recruiting people for their first job, and having a relevant degree certainly makes it easier getting that first job, but after surprisingly few years track record is far more important at showing how "good" an engineer they are. In practice, recruiters (which I was as an engineering manager for very many years, and still do a bit) and IEng/CEng registration panels don't have a problem judging engineers by their track record. The only people who get fussed about an applicant's degree once they have a few years experience are HR departments who like everything black and white and don't actually know anything about engineering so don't know what basis they are selecting on! (Written as someone who has spent years trying to explain to HR that I'd rather employ a good engineer with an English degree than one with a 1st class engineering degree whose only interest is in project management...unless I'm employing a project manager of course.)

Thanks,

Andy

Nouman Abid Chuhan said:

We all should have a clear understanding about it and should not mix them up.

As Simon's sort of suggested, in return I'd ask - why?

In recent discussions with colleagues - with all of us doing precisely the same role - we discovered we had degrees in pretty much every area of STEM between us (and at least one non-STEM). I'll accept that our employment for the first few years after we graduated was different (i.e. dependent on our degrees), but after those few years we converged in the same place. Even for those who go into specialist academic research, it's surprising how often their area of research is quite different from that covered by their first degree.

I'd actually go the other way, I'd prefer to see convergence of STEM degrees to concentrate on scientific method and approach. The subject content of STEM degrees is typically going to be obsolete within a few years of graduation anyway, it's the approach to working with developing information that's the key element to learn and understand. And that, I'd hope, would be common across the STEM subjects (although it sadly often isn't).

I think you and I may have had this discussion in another thread, but I can't find it now, and apologies if I'm mistaken. But anyway I'll repeat what I said then: There are plenty of very successful examples of engineers, working at world class recognition level, who have degrees which are not engineering degrees (or who have no degree at all). Degrees are somewhat interesting when recruiting people for their first job, and having a relevant degree certainly makes it easier getting that first job, but after surprisingly few years track record is far more important at showing how "good" an engineer they are. In practice, recruiters (which I was as an engineering manager for very many years, and still do a bit) and IEng/CEng registration panels don't have a problem judging engineers by their track record. The only people who get fussed about an applicant's degree once they have a few years experience are HR departments who like everything black and white and don't actually know anything about engineering so don't know what basis they are selecting on! (Written as someone who has spent years trying to explain to HR that I'd rather employ a good engineer with an English degree than one with a 1st class engineering degree whose only interest is in project management...unless I'm employing a project manager of course.)

Thanks,

Andy

Andy Millar said:

STEM degrees to concentrate on scientific method and approach

And just realised I could have used that approach to give a much better answer: Step 1 of any exercise has to be:

• What is the actual problem you are trying to solve?

It's not at all clear from your post.

Only when step 1 is answered should you move to steps 2 ("what is your solution to the problem", in this case not mixing up subjects) and 3 ("what is the evidence that your solution will solve / has solved the problem").

Thanks,

Andy