 Is an industrial engineering degree worth it? That's what we're going to be talking about today, but before we get into that, make sure to gently tap the like button in order to defeat the evil YouTube algorithm. On this channel, we talk about personal finance, college degrees, careers, and opportunities that are going to lead you to success. And we also go over how you can avoid some of the common traps that so many people end up falling for. So if you're new here and you haven't done it already, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and ring the notification bell so that you never miss out. And with that out of the way, let's jump right into it. Let's talk about what industrial engineering is. So industrial engineering is all about the optimization of complex processes usually within an organization. Think about the complex process of creating an iPhone, for instance, there's the people who create the software, the hardware, all the different materials that go together, all the resources, there's energy, people, money, knowledge, information, all of these things come together in order to create an end product that somebody wants to use. And the creation of that product is basically a process. And if companies can make these processes better than they can create better products, they can create them faster and more efficiently. Now, there's around 5500 graduates with an industrial engineering degree every year. So next, we're going to talk about salary or earning potential. With industrial engineering, you start off making 68,000 a year and 111,000 in mid career pay. You can compare this to a really high paying degree and a low paying one and you'll see that it's definitely on the higher side. You might end up becoming an industrial engineer and they make around 88,000 a year. You also might become a cost estimator and they make around 65,000 a year. And there's actually a ton of different paths you can go down. You can become a health and safety engineer, an industrial engineering technician, industrial production manager, logistician, or a management analyst. Now, according to the US Census Bureau, engineers over a lifetime will make around $3.5 million. And of course, it depends what career path they go down. But overall, they make quite a bit more than your average degree. Now, industrial engineering isn't one of the higher paying engineering degrees, but I think you do have opportunities to move into different positions that you might not have if you went into a different degree because of the fact that it combines that engineering skill set with a business skill set. I think it opens up a lot of lanes that some of the others don't. So with that being said, engineering degrees tend to score really well when it comes to salary or earning potential. I'm going to give this one a nine out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about satisfaction. And I like to break this one down into job satisfaction as well as meaning. Now, when it comes to meaning, that's how much you think the career that you went into positively impacts the world in a significant way. And with industrial engineering, you'll see here that the meaning scores around 45% on pay scale. That's above a really low one like plastics engineering technology, but not nearly as high as something like radiation technology. If you look at a career you might go into like industrial engineer, for instance, pay scale has that at a 48% meaning score and then 70% job satisfaction. So as you can see here, when it comes to the meaning score, it's kind of on the lower side, maybe mid at best. However, when you look at job satisfaction, that does tend to be on the higher side when you compare that to one that's really good and one that's really bad. Now, when you look at the least and the most regretted majors out of all the different types of degrees that you can get engineering is the third least regretted type. Only about 15% of the people who got an engineering degree regret it. And the reason was because the best jobs sometimes require an advanced degree. However, one of the great things about engineering degrees, and I've mentioned this many times before is let's say you want to become an industrial engineer, you get into it and you realize it's not for you. There's a lot of degrees out there where you'd basically just be SOL, like there's nothing you can do about it. But with an engineering degree, you can pretty much move into any other type of career in any industry and work for just about any company. Engineering degrees are very flexible and I would say especially industrial engineering with the extra mathematics and business skills that you're going to learn is pretty good when it comes to being flexible and being able to switch careers. So you do have to factor that into the equation as well. But with that being said, satisfaction is totally subjective. One job might be a nightmare for someone and a daydream for someone else depends on a bunch of different factors as well, the industry you work in, the business you work for, your co-workers, where you live in the country, etc. But with that being said, I'm going to go ahead and give this one a score of 8 out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about demand and by that I mean what jobs are going to be out there for the skill set that an industrial engineering degree is going to teach you. Now, if you want to become an industrial engineer, for instance, there's 295 jobs available right now, and it's growing at 10%, which is much faster than average. That means over the next 10 years, there's going to be 30,000 new jobs that are created. That's actually really good, especially for an engineering career. Now, based off of a study from 2019, engineering is one of the least likely degrees for people to be unemployed. Of course, I don't know how true that is anymore. You know, a lot of things have happened since then, so it could potentially be that that's not true. We won't know until all this is over and there's studies that come out on that sort of thing. But I will say that this is one of the most versatile engineering degrees because it's not as specialized as a lot of the other ones. Engineering degrees are really good because of the fact that it teaches you how to solve problems and it's generally just really well respected overall. And so you might end up getting hired for a career that you didn't even think you were going to go into. And the reason for that is because hiring managers and business owners love to hire engineering grads. But with an industrial engineering degree, you're combining that business skill set with an engineering skill set. And so you're going to have a lot of doors open to you that even the other engineering degrees might not have. People might not be looking specifically for an industrial engineer, but because of the fact that you have that engineering degree and you've got a little bit of a business skill set as well, it'll be much easier for you to sell yourself. Now, one test that I like to do is to look up the keyword on monster.com or indeed.com. Either one is fine, but look up industrial engineering degree. If you do that, you're going to see that around 3100 jobs pop up. And again, you can compare that to one that's really good in demand and really bad in demand. And you'll see there that it's not as good as you would expect. It's definitely not going to be as good as some of the other engineering degrees. But like I said, just because they're not specifically looking for an industrial engineer doesn't mean that they won't hire you if you apply. One survey where they sent out a bunch of questionnaires to companies and asked them what degrees are they hiring, what degrees are they looking for, should the engineering was the number one degree. So because of the fact that it's an engineering degree, which is already really highly respected and it's pretty flexible, I'm going to go ahead and give this one a nine out of 10. Next, we're going to be talking about x factors. And this is basically anything that we didn't go over before. I like to focus on skills, automation, outsourcing, and that sort of thing when it comes to x factors. Now, when it comes to x factors, engineering degrees tend to score very, very well. So for instance, engineering over a lifetime, you're going to earn $3.5 million in all different types of majors and all different types of careers that is much higher than the average with all the other majors, which is 2.4 million over a lifetime. And it gets even better depending on what career path you go down. So for instance, if you work with computers or math, you're going to make around 3.7 million over a lifetime. And then if you go into management, it's 4.1 million. But really, it doesn't matter what direction you go in with an engineering degree, they tend to do extremely well, even people who get into art, those who graduate with an engineering degree and then become artists earn 3 million over a lifetime, which is much higher than just about any other type of degree that goes into an art career. So there's something about engineering degrees when it comes to x factors, especially over a lifetime that tends to make them extremely financially successful. Now, if you look at zippercruiter skill index, the skill of industrial engineering ranks around 61 out of 100, which is definitely on the higher side if you compare it to a really good one, or a really bad one. Now I would say the one knock here when it comes to the skills that an industrial engineer can learn is that you can get into industrial engineering as a job with a bunch of other engineering related degrees. So for instance, you could get a mechanical engineering degree and then become an industrial engineer. However, the skill is still very good, definitely above average. And I think it's especially good because it combines business skills with kind of practical engineering skills and engineering is basically just practical problem solving. Now when you look at the likelihood of automation, I think it's very low. So for instance, if we look at one career path, you might go down, which would be industrial engineer, there's only a 3% chance that they're going to be automated. And this is sort of to be expected. If you think about it, engineering requires a lot of just intelligence and creativity. On top of that, depending on what career path you go down, you might be working with your hands. That's not something that's going to be automated anytime soon. And you're sort of just the middleman between a technician and a scientist, you're somebody who sort of understands both sides, the practical side of things as well as more of a theoretical side. On top of that, I don't think industrial engineering jobs are going to be outsourced either. Most of the career paths you're going to go to, you'd have to be in person talking to people in order to get things done. Sure, there are some things that you can do over zoom. I mean, especially with everything that's happening in the world, we've seen this. But if you're working on a product, it's going to be hard for a bunch of people who are experts in their various fields to go on a zoom meeting and, you know, share a product on a camera. It just, it doesn't really make sense. Those people would have to be in the same room so they can see the product, they can touch it, they can feel it, and they can just go over every aspect of it. I'm sure part of it could be automated, part of it could be outsourced, but the core skills that you learn that are so important to a company's success, I don't think that will ever be able to be automated or outsourced. Now on top of that, speaking of the fact that engineers earn so much money over a lifetime, I think one of the big reasons, besides the fact that they do earn a good salary, don't get me wrong, it's really good. But I think one of the big reasons that they tend to earn so much over a lifetime is because many of them end up becoming entrepreneurs. In fact, engineering did come in as the number one degree that creates the most millionaires. And I don't think it's just because of the fact that they earn a lot of money in their normal jobs. I think engineering teaches you practical problem solving, which is the core of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs basically just solve problems that people have in the form of a product or a service. And becoming an engineer teaches you how to do that in a practical way. Engineering is basically where you have an idea and then you make that idea exist in reality. Now that is not an easy thing to do, and you'll see if you look at the most difficult degrees you're going to see over and over again the engineering degrees are going to come in at the very top. Some say that industrial engineering is one of the less difficult types, but I think all of them are going to be pretty hard. You're going to be taking a lot of the same core math and science classes. So that is something that you want to keep in mind. I know that when I was young, when I was like 18 years old, I don't think I would have been ready for an engineering curriculum. Or at the very least, if I did decide to go into that, I would have taken less classes. But with that being said, when it comes to X factors, I'm going to give this one an 8.5 out of 10. So some of the pros here, the salary is really good. Most of the engineering degrees you're going to make pretty good money. I think this one is going to have a good satisfaction rating, especially if you consider the fact that if you're not happy with it, there's all kinds of different career paths that you can go down. You're going to be able to find something that you can be happy with. Another great one here is you're not going to have to wait forever to make pretty good money. There's a lot of good entry level occupations. And I really like this one because of how flexible it is. I think that's maybe one of the most underrated things. Some of the cons here are that it's not one that a lot of people are looking for. We saw when we did that test, looking it up on monster.com that it wasn't very impressive. It's not going to be one of the higher paying engineering degrees. There's some engineering degrees where the average person is going to make over 100,000 a year. This one's in the 80s. But that's only if you become an industrial engineer specifically. There's quite a few jobs out there where you can make more than six figures a year and you don't have to go down the engineer route. Overall, I'm going to give this one a score of 8.625 out of 10. This is an excellent option for the right person. I always urge you to do your research. Make sure you reach out to people who are industrial engineers, if that's what you're trying to go for, ask them what they recommend. Look at different forums online, Facebook groups, Reddit, etc. Figure out other career paths you might go down with this degree and then do the same thing with those. If you want more help doing research, I created the college degree ranker. It's in the description down below on my Patreon. If you guys don't want to wait for all the videos to come out and you want just an easier way to compare all of them, I am making that college degree ranker. It's not done yet. It's on version 1.1 right now. I plan to update it in the near future once things settle down a little bit in the world. If you haven't done it already, gently tap the like button. Be nice to the like button. Come on guys, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc. Sharing the video helps quite a bit. If there's anybody else that needs to know this information, definitely share it. And before you leave, check out my other videos right here. 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