 Is a mechatronics engineering major or a mechatronics engineering degree worth it? That's where we're going to be going over today and this was a highly requested topic. This seems to be a really hot relatively new degree and first thing we're going to do is we're going to define exactly what it is. So basically this one is going to be a combination of several different engineering specialties. So it's kind of going to be like a mechanical engineering degree mixed with electrical computer engineering and even a little bit of software. So you're basically going to be able to design really awesome robots like Michael Reeves. Well not exactly. It's sort of like that but most of the time it's going to be used for the purposes of automating processes. You're usually going to be creating operating testing and maintaining different machines that you create for the purpose of automation specifically in the manufacturing industry. Now this is definitely one of the more hands-on types of engineering. A lot of the time they're almost considered to be technicians and engineers at the same time and this one is growing. In fact it's actually bigger in other countries than it is in the United States. It's just starting to you know pick up popularity here in the US. But at this point there's only a few hundred people graduating with a degree every year. Now we're going to go ahead and talk about four different important categories with this one and the first one is going to be earning potential or salary. With this degree you would expect to make around $70,000 a year starting out and $122,000 in mid-career pay. And that's really good especially if you compare it to the highest paying degree and one of the lowest paying degrees you'll see that it's on the better side of things. Now mechatronics engineering like I said is pretty new and so you're not going to find any data on BLS when it comes to this specific career. However one that's really close to this would be an electrical or an electronics engineer and they make around $101,000 a year or $48 an hour. Now some careers that are similar to mechatronics at the associates level as well as the bachelor's level are going to be listed on the screen right now. These are some of the ones that you might want to look into if you're interested in this. Now one thing I always like to point out is engineering at least historically up to this point has been the best paying type of degree meaning over a lifetime you're going to make around $3.5 million with an engineering degree whereas all other types of degrees are around $2.4 million. And like you saw although there's not very much data this one is definitely pretty high paying and I think it has a lot of potential especially in the near future. Automation is coming whether we like it or not processes are going to be streamlined and this is one of those careers that specializes in that. And it's also just really cool overall I mean just being able to program robots and figuring out the interface between the electronics, the mechanics part as well as the software part that is just awesome. So overall I'm going to give this one a score of 9.5 out of 10. Next we're going to be talking about satisfaction and this is a very subjective section it could be completely different depending on the person and the situation. However according to pay scale mechatronics has a meaning score of 47 percent meaning 47 percent of people think that this degree and the careers that it leads to significantly positively impact the world. Now you can compare that to one that has a very high and a very low meaning score and you'll see that it's kind of on the lower side of things maybe average at best and you can sort of see this with a lot of degrees that involve automation and all that sort of thing because you're not necessarily helping all that many people you're kind of just automating a process. That doesn't mean that it's not very useful and the one that I found that was closest to that in terms of a career would be an electromechanical technician and they have about a 56 percent meaning score so a little bit better and when you look at the job satisfaction it's around 72 percent so that's definitely higher than average if you look at one that's really good like clergy or one that's not so good like parking lot attendant. Now another thing I like to mention is engineering degrees in general tend to not be regretted very often so they're actually the third least regretted type of degree. Only about 15 percent of people who major in engineering regret it and the main reason is because some of the best jobs require advanced level degrees. Now again I just want to say this is a very subjective section it could be different depending on where you live the people you work with your job your boss the career path that you decide to go down the industry that you're in there's so many different things that can affect job satisfaction and meaning so take this section with a grain of salt honestly for one person it could be one out of ten for another person it could be ten out of ten but overall I'm going to give this one a score of nine out of ten I think I'm a little bit biased here but this one just sounds awesome I mean being able to program robots sounds extremely useful and also just awesome and I have a little project planned on this channel that is sort of going to be integrating this so stay tuned for that and it was inspired by Michael Reeves and some of those other guys who create these awesome robots on YouTube. What an interesting and thought provoking idea! Anyways next section is going to be demand and this is really tough for me to score just because it's such a new degree and career so you see here that electromechanical technicians uh there's around 14,600 of them and they're growing at 3% which is about as fast as average if you look at electrical and electronics engineers it's kind of the same thing 328,000 jobs and it's growing at 3% which is average and then of course mechatronics engineering itself is not going to be on BLS because it's just such a new career that they haven't updated on there yet but when you type in mechatronics engineering degree on monster.com around 482 jobs pop up which is not good either you can compare that to a degree that is known to have high demand and one that's known to have low demand and it's actually below the lower one if you look at glassdoor.com it's kind of the same thing only about 22 mechatronics engineering degree jobs pop up so not great however when they survey big companies and ask them what type of college graduates are they looking to hire at the bachelor's level almost always number one is either engineering or business and so in this case for instance the survey that i'm looking at here engineering was number one businesses are constantly looking to hire people with engineering skills and a lot of the time even if they're not specifically looking for say a mechatronics engineer if they see that you graduated with that degree they're much more likely to hire you now there's many reasons for this it's because engineering degrees are pretty well respected and then also they know that people who graduate with engineering degrees tend to be really smart and hardworking and a lot of the time businesses have the hiring philosophy that they are just going to hire the smartest possible people so they're going to hire smart people and then they're going to train them to do the job later on however i have to be fair the data does not look good here even though the reason for that is probably because it's just such a new degree and career nobody really knows what's going to happen in the future i'm very bullish on this career in this degree i think it's going to get bigger and bigger in the future but i can't say that for sure another thing is that degrees that aren't recognized like mechatronics engineering sometimes it takes some time for people who are hiring managers and business owners to get used to that degree so for instance a hiring manager business owner might have hired 10 mechanical engineers before and so when they see mechatronics engineering it's sort of an unknown and so instead of just taking a chance and trying to figure you know out whether mechatronics engineers are good they're probably just going to hire another mechanical engineer it's almost like having real estate within business owners and hiring managers brain and so in many cases depending on what career you're going for it might be a safe bet for you to just get a mechanical or electrical engineering degree instead so overall when it comes to demand i'm going to give this one a seven out of ten but again ten years from now maybe it'll be a nine out of ten or maybe it'll be a five out of ten who knows next we're going to be talking about x factors which is anything that's important that i didn't go over in the other sections so i mentioned before that engineering degrees over a lifetime make more than any other type of degree at least up to this point around 3.5 million versus 2.4 but another thing that i like to point out is engineering degrees make really good money all across the board no matter what career path they end up going down even totally unrelated career paths like art and legal services engineering degrees are making over three million dollars over a lifetime which is much higher than the average of 2.3 and 1.8 now there's a lot of speculation about what the reason for this is you know maybe engineering degree graduates are just really smart and they would have made a lot of money no matter what they did even if they dropped out of high school or maybe it has a little bit to do with the practical problem solving skills that you learn as an engineer who really knows nobody really knows i think it has a little bit to do with both now when it comes to skills of course mechatronics engineering isn't going to be listed here on zip recruiter but something that was pretty similar would be electromechanics and that ranked 58 out of 100 and if you compare that to the highest rank skill of software engineering and the lowest rank skill of i believe a sewing industrial sewing you'll see that it's kind of in the middle or maybe even higher side of things but again this might not be a fair comparison because electromechanics is not the same thing as mechatronics and i'd say mechatronics is likely going to rank higher when they finally do get it on the skill index now when it comes to the likelihood that something will be automated mechanical engineers for instance have a 1.1 chance of being automated so i would assume that mechatronics is probably going to be the one doing the automating not being automated itself and when it comes to outsourcing i don't think this is a career that you're going to have to worry too much about being outsourced because you're going to have to be there using your hands in person speaking with people you know using your communication skills leadership skills are probably going to come in handy as well so i highly doubt that this one would be outsourced because of the combination of you know practical hard skills as well as soft skills that you'll have to learn in order to be a successful mechatronic engineer and one of the cool things about engineering is is the number one degree that creates the most millionaires and billionaires and it's very tough so be ready for that but if you can tough it out it's extremely rewarding and i also think that engineering degrees are relatively flexible and well respected so if you get an engineering degree thinking you're going to become a mechatronics engineer and then things don't work out chances are you'll be able to pivot over to something else relatively easily that will also be well paying and hopefully something that you enjoy so overall i'm going to give this one a score of 8.5 out of 10 when it comes to x factors so when you add all those up and divided by four you're going to see that it has an overall score of 8.5 out of 10 that's excellent this is definitely a great option if you're the right person i will say that this one was hard to research for just because it's so new i think it's actually more popular in some other countries than it is here so keep that in mind but if i had to bet on this one i'd say it's definitely going to take off within the next 10 to 15 years now if you want me to make a video on a specific college degree these videos take a long time to research and make so if you don't want to wait 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