About EET Graduates:
The Electrical Engineering Technology (EET) program is an engaging, rigorous, experiential approach to preparing professionals to be successful in the field of electronics engineering as practitioners. Graduates are fully prepared to accept and succeed in a wide variety of professional positions in companies which include electronic devices in their products or in the manufacture of their products. Employers range from those in Indiana to others around the United States and the world.
Sections below show typical starting salaries and placement information for EET graduates, their career titles, and typical employers. Since many of the graduates are placed into starting positions with the title of ‘engineer’, the last section contains a brief comparison of the EET program and typical engineering degree program characteristics.
Starting Salaries and Placement rates for EET Graduates:
The graph below shows the starting average salaries for EET graduates over the last five years.
Placement rates have exceeded 90% every year for the past 15 years.
Starting Job Titles for the EET Graduating Class of 2010 and 2011
The top five job titles for the EET graduating classes of 2010 and 2011 were:
- 1. Test Engineer (8)
- 2. Electrical Engineer (7)
- 3. Applications Engineer (6)
- 4. Systems Engineer (5)
- 5. Engineer (4)
These are the actual starting job titles of the positions filled by EET graduates from the class of 2010 and 2011.
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Employers of EET Graduates from the Classes of 2010 and 2011
The employers listed below employed the graduates of the classes of 2010 and 2011. These companies are located in Indiana and across the United States.
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What makes EET unique from an engineering degree program?
It is apparent that many of the EET graduates are employed as ‘engineers’ of one sort or another. What is not so apparent are the differences (and similarities) in the EET and engineering degree programs and the nature of the successful EET graduates. Some reference to the history of the programs (at least as they have evolved at Purdue University) is required to fully appreciate the current programs.
During the 1950’s and 1960’s the ‘space race’ and similar efforts to be technologically first internationally, caused engineering programs to center on creating graduates who were targeted at making new discoveries for the benefit of mankind and the progress of technology. As a consequence, the engineering programs became more and more conceptually (theoretically) based, or a shift toward engineering science. That is, they relied primarily on a mathematical basis to teach and to learn. After all, if the graduate is expecting to discover that which does not exist, he or she cannot very well work with it as a part of their education. The conceptual basis as the learning methodology continues today.
Only a portion of the engineering positions need conceptually based engineers. As industry continues to progress, more and more engineers are needed with hands-on abilities to create electronic products and industrial control systems based on electronic systems. This type of engineer is often referred to as an “engineer practitioner.”
The College of Technology (CoT) was established in 1964 to fulfill this need by providing engineering practitioners. One of the founding precepts of the CoT is that students learn to put concepts into practice. And so the College of Technology and the EET program were born.
Students in the EET program learn engineering principles on an experiential basis. The courses are lecture/laboratory based with each course including a laboratory component. The application-based, hands-on approach in the laboratory component is what separates the Purdue EET program from a Purdue engineering program.
The learning scenario in EET is as follows:
1. Students attend class lectures that are applications oriented. That is the students learn the engineering principles from the perspective of studying the applications of the principles.
2. Students then attend a laboratory in which they apply the principles to electronic circuits through both simulation studies (as in the work place setting) and through hands-on experience with the electronic devices and systems.
3. As their education progresses, students synthesize the knowledge and principles into working electronic systems that are very similar to those they will create during their careers.
The overall result of this approach is that the graduates are uniquely positioned to be beneficial to a wide range of employers. And, best of all, they are ready to be productive when they ‘walk in the door’.
In summary, EET graduates learn in an applications-based, hands-on approach that allows them to build the knowledge and skills that are needed by employers and, hence, are in high demand upon graduation.