Mechanical engineering graduate (and 2nd rate programmer) here. And I completely agree, this major is a sinkhole. Maybe 50 years ago when we were still building rockets, planes, and cars to stop the Soviets or what have you, ME was a great major (and maybe 40 years from now when fusion, Mars, and warp drive are all real it will be again). But today in an age of electronics and software, ME is an awful choice for anyone not passionate about cars, engines, or HVAC.
The ME departments in colleges have caught onto its fall from a popularity and prestige and are doing their best to retard the descent with classes like "Scientific Computing", "Microfabrication", "FEM", "Lagrangian Control", "biomechanics", "business in China", etc., that try to emulate the currently useful skills taught in other disciplines. The result is, of course, us students wind up actually majoring in "Engineering Undeclared" and it land us a hodgepodge sampler plate of introductory knowledge that never truly satisfies any market need. We are inferior to applied mathematicians when it comes to calculations, electrical engineers when it comes to modern machinery, computer scientists when it comes to AI and controls, industrial engineers when it comes to falsifying lab reports, doctors when it comes to biology, etc. And if we focused on traditionally ME fields like heat transfer and combustion? We'd have to Hunger Games ourselves for that one position at the local power plant in ten years when the current engineer retires.
So, unless she is passionate about cars and air conditioning, why should we be trying to encourage our daughters into a major that doesn't earn money like finance, have prestige like computers, enjoy purity like the sciences, help people like medicine / social science, pretty like art / design, satisfy her natural affinity for children and cute stuff like education, or even remain stable like law. In some ways, ME is the Titanic after it was hit the iceberg, it's a "boy's club" not because men are trying to keep women out (every department across the land is actually doing just the opposite), but because the captain and his crew are stubbornly going down with the ship while the women and children are on lifeboats so they can live another day.
That's an interesting point of view. I've had multiple people tell me they wish they could find a 'traditional mechanical engineer' that knew heat transfer, knew fluids, could build a gear train, and knew some kinematics. I think MEs that graduated 20-30 years ago are in high demand.
Extremely watered down versions of those courses are in my curriculum. Fluid mechanics is nearly all Bernoulli's Equation and Linear Momentum. Heat Transfer is 1D conduction, basic convection, and basic radiation. Machine Design, while heavily focused on gears, was extremely watered down. Kinematics, on the other hand, has been completely dropped from the curriculum! A lot of these courses have been made easier to allow students to spend time on 'lab projects' that consist of filling in the blanks of Arduino sketches. It's a sad state of affairs.
You are spot on by stating that undergraduate ME curriculums are 'Engineering Undeclared' in my experience. I think part of this is because the 'traditional' curriculum that my grandfather and father took is 'too challenging' by today's standards. I'm not half the engineer they were when they graduated from the same department.
I think this can be attributed to several things. When my father graduated, everyone took the FE with plans of becoming a PE. I know maybe 5 other people in my graduating class who plan on taking the FE. He took 3 years of math, I took one and a half. We can't really get into 2D conduction in heat transfer because no one has the math background to handle it! The 'Intermediate Heat Transfer' I'm taking in grad school is the equivalent of the 'Introduction to Heat Transfer' my grandfather took.
I've had multiple people tell me they wish they could find a 'traditional mechanical engineer' that knew heat transfer, knew fluids, could build a gear train, and knew some kinematics. I think MEs that graduated 20-30 years ago are in high demand.
In my view, a similar lament cuts across disciplines. I wish I could find an electrical engineer who understood low noise design. Most engineers forget most of their math and theory within a few years of graduating, and most design work is done by trial and error.
I would go further and say... unless she is passionate about CAD.
My background is in science, but I work in a department with engineers of all stripes. It seems like the mechanical engineers are stuck living inside the world of their CAD systems. It's a dreary world, dominated by at most two or three software vendors making giant, expensive, training-intensive tools.
I know other engineering disciplines use tools too, but I don't think they are dominated by their tools to the extent that ME is.
"We'd have to Hunger Games ourselves for that one position at the local power plant in ten years when the current engineer retires."
While at the same time some politician and businessman is making a speech that we have a desperate shortage of engineering talent and need to open the floodgates.
The ME departments in colleges have caught onto its fall from a popularity and prestige and are doing their best to retard the descent with classes like "Scientific Computing", "Microfabrication", "FEM", "Lagrangian Control", "biomechanics", "business in China", etc., that try to emulate the currently useful skills taught in other disciplines. The result is, of course, us students wind up actually majoring in "Engineering Undeclared" and it land us a hodgepodge sampler plate of introductory knowledge that never truly satisfies any market need. We are inferior to applied mathematicians when it comes to calculations, electrical engineers when it comes to modern machinery, computer scientists when it comes to AI and controls, industrial engineers when it comes to falsifying lab reports, doctors when it comes to biology, etc. And if we focused on traditionally ME fields like heat transfer and combustion? We'd have to Hunger Games ourselves for that one position at the local power plant in ten years when the current engineer retires.
So, unless she is passionate about cars and air conditioning, why should we be trying to encourage our daughters into a major that doesn't earn money like finance, have prestige like computers, enjoy purity like the sciences, help people like medicine / social science, pretty like art / design, satisfy her natural affinity for children and cute stuff like education, or even remain stable like law. In some ways, ME is the Titanic after it was hit the iceberg, it's a "boy's club" not because men are trying to keep women out (every department across the land is actually doing just the opposite), but because the captain and his crew are stubbornly going down with the ship while the women and children are on lifeboats so they can live another day.