Very good question. In my experience, for the majority of employers it won't matter which you do, the important thing is to choose the course which you are going to do best at: many HR departments will draw a line under degree grades (irrespective of the degree) and reject all grades under that, so it can be better to get a 1st BSc than a 2.2 BEng. So first thing can be to look at the course content and decide which one you are going to enjoy the most, because that's probably the one you will do best at.

This includes the length of time the course will take, sometimes if you have already been working you will do better at a shorter course because it just takes up less of your life.

BEng Tech courses are (as I understand it, I may be wrong) specifically tailored for people coming from HND, so you may find you do better on this course.

Regarding Professional Registration, don't worry about it, you can get CEng with an HND, do NOT choose a course because anyone tells you it "will lead to professional registration". As a Professional Registration Adviser I get very frustrated when I hear that! What is important is that you choose a course which will lead you personally to a good career that suits you, your professional registration is fundamentally based on the level of responsibility your employer has given you, not your qualification - the important part of your qualification is getting you to that point of responsibility. (Applying with an HND for example you may need to spend an extra couple of days filling in additional information forms for CEng, doing a four year degree at £xxx thousand seems a bit overkill if it's only to avoid those extra couple of days!)

Do look on jobs sites for what employers in your preferred field are looking for. To be honest that's the best guide as to what degree to go for. And look carefully, are they saying "BEng essential" or "BEng (or equivalent) preferred". If it's the second that that's a sign that in your industry experience etc is more important to them than specific degrees. Every engineering sector, and different companies in the same sector, have very different things they are looking for.

You haven't said whether you will be employed while you are studying, if not then DO try to find courses that include work experience. Really, really important to employers.

That may not have exactly answered your question, let's face it the reason so many qualifications are on offer is because any of them could lead to a career - just a different career (or different path). So it can never be that one is "better" than the other, it is just whichever suits you.

Hope that helps a bit,

Andy

P.S. Just for fun but also to show this this becomes much less important with time: I have a BEng. When I did my degree a BEng was seen as inferior to a BSc (at least at the University I went to) - BSc was seen as being for people who could do maths, BEng was seen as being for people who solved problems by hitting them with a bigger hammer. A few year later the IEE etc decided that BEng was the superior degree (much to my amusement of course). The point is, whoever recruits you will probably have done their degree under a completely different system and probably won't have any idea what the difference between these degrees is either. What they'll want to know is what did you actually learn - and that's another reason that degrees with significant work placements are so useful, you find out which parts of your degree, whatever it is, are really important to the industry you want to go into.

Hi Andy,

Thanks so much for the answer, really insightful.

Luckily I am already in industry having worked my way up from being an electrician so the employability aspect shouldn't be too much of an issue.

I will definitely look to begin the professional registration process prior to achieving an Honours Degree! 

No problem! You might want to look at the IET Mentorship scheme, which might help - it's much underused and is there to give one-to-one support on questions like this.

All the best!

Andy

Named degrees are an old chestnut. To some extent it depends upon the University. You could even do a BA in engineering in Cambridge.

As Andy says, the class of degree is very important. Don't expect a stellar career with a 2:2 nowadays.

Do check on accreditation with the appropriate professional bodies.

Chris Pearson said:

Don't expect a stellar career with a 2:2 nowadays.

I have a 3rd  (Misspent youth...)

I'd perhaps put it: expect to have to prove yourself harder with a 2.2 or below (including no degree), and to have to rely much more on personal contacts. You can have a stellar career in engineering with no qualifications at all, but you have to be aware that the "conventional" recruitment doors will often be closed to you, so you are reliant on building clear credibility in other ways and then marketing it - and not all engineers are comfortable marketing themselves.

Once you're in an organisation then in my experience generally no-one cares, it's just getting in in the first place. I did once get caught out when I wanted to promote a technician with no formal qualifications to a "graduate level" engineering position, and HR quite reasonably said "if this person applied externally for this position, so you didn't know them from experience, would you interview them on the basis of their CV?" to which honestly the answer was no. We got round that by using it as an opportunity to persuade the candidate that they really needed to finally at least get their HND (and we sponsored them through it) - of course they sailed through it. But not all employers would be so supportive, so certainly getting the lowest level qualification that is just about acceptable for a role can help your poor manager when they are trying to promote you!

Chris Pearson said:

Do check on accreditation with the appropriate professional bodies.

But again, don't panic about it...at least with the IET, I'd suggest only go with an accredited course over a non accredited course if all other issues are equal. Again, there is very little more work (a matter of hours if that) to demonstrate your competence from a non-accredited course. Of all the candidates (rather a lot) I've helped get CEng/IEng only one or two, if that, had the "right" degree from an accredited course.

And don't take "unaccredited" as a mark of poor quality, getting a course accredited is expensive and time consuming for universities, so if they can fill their courses without it then many will and do. (Remembering that the vast majority of engineering graduates never go for registration, so you can understand why universities question whether it's worth them investing in it.)

Chris Pearson said:

You could even do a BA in engineering in Cambridge.

In fact my Masters (achieved many years after my first degree) is an MA, which in some ways is a bit of a pain as I always have to add what my thesis was actually in to show that it's relevant.

It raises a good point that for a first job application (external or internal) after obtaining a degree it can be really useful to briefly list the key subjects covered, this is much more useful to the recruiting manager than the degree title etc. 

Cheers,

Andy

Chris Pearson said:

As Andy says, the class of degree is very important. Don't expect a stellar career with a 2:2 nowadays.

Lol, I was at college with a chap who got a 2:2 but couldn't get his honours. I think he tried 5 times. However, he was the first from our team to get a well paid job.

Irrespective of the type or grade of academic qualification,give me someone who has really pushed the boat out by doing a degree, HND or similar while working full-time.