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Civil Engineering degree... the hardest uni degree in the world?

When I met my professors last year, they all agreed that civil engineering is the hardest degree to pass. Apparently ony 34% of students pass the first year and then the following year only 79% of tehm remain.

I'll put that into perspective here...
1st day we had 26 in the class but by the end of 3 weeks there were only 18, and after exams only 9 remained on the course for this semester. We had 3 ladies on that course but now I have no idea.

Is this thesame sort of failure/dropout rate at your uni too?

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Original post by Rhodie72
When I met my professors last year, they all agreed that civil engineering is the hardest degree to pass. Apparently ony 34% of students pass the first year and then the following year only 79% of tehm remain.

I'll put that into perspective here...
1st day we had 26 in the class but by the end of 3 weeks there were only 18, and after exams only 9 remained on the course for this semester. We had 3 ladies on that course but now I have no idea.

Is this thesame sort of failure/dropout rate at your uni too?


What university is this? I'd be very surprised if a university had anywhere close to the first year fail rate or dropout rate that you describe. I just did a quick check of a very small sample of "good" universities that offer civil engineering, and all had over 90% continuing the course 1 year after starting.
Reply 2
What university's that? Not entirely sure I agree with that, something like Integrated Mechanical and Electrical Engineering sounds like it would be much harder.
nah that would be medicine
Reply 4
Original post by Smack
What university is this? I'd be very surprised if a university had anywhere close to the first year fail rate or dropout rate that you describe. I just did a quick check of a very small sample of "good" universities that offer civil engineering, and all had over 90% continuing the course 1 year after starting.


University of Wolverhampton on the BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering with CEng certification at graduation. There is an option to proceed to MEng at the end but that's only from this year...
Reply 5
Original post by emmataco
nah that would be medicine


You have got to be kidding, medicine is much easier. Of the 6 modules in 1st year, 5.5 are maths... with both types of calculus as integral parts of the degree level 4 requisites. There are about 300 different formulas in in just one module required to be learned in 12 weeks alone. That Gaussian stuff is just crazy with 4 or more unknowns and can take 2 hours to solve just one question.
Original post by Rhodie72
You have got to be kidding, medicine is much easier. Of the 6 modules in 1st year, 5.5 are maths... with both types of calculus as integral parts of the degree level 4 requisites. There are about 300 different formulas in in just one module required to be learned in 12 weeks alone. That Gaussian stuff is just crazy with 4 or more unknowns and can take 2 hours to solve just one question.


1st year =/= 5 years worth of exam and practicals
Reply 7
Original post by mongodb
What university's that? Not entirely sure I agree with that, something like Integrated Mechanical and Electrical Engineering sounds like it would be much harder.


Unbelievably, civil engineering has to take account of the same formulas as part of the course and the maths is the same. The difference comes in when you are presented with a quetion paper with just 4 questions to answered in 2 hours with equal weighting. The first was "Find the shearing stress on the outside and inside of a long hollow circular shaft with OD 3Xmm and ID 2Xmm with torque of 27 Kn.m and also find the angle of twist if the tube is 4.5m long."

To think this is a concrete pipe vertically standing and the torque is due to earth pressures from earthquakes we then also have to consider oscillations in pressure and torque reversals that the structure does ot catastrophically fail... or people die.

Make no mistake, I love this field. It really gets my interest and inspires me to find solutions to such a variety of problems that no two days are alike.
Original post by Rhodie72
University of Wolverhampton on the BEng (Hons) Civil Engineering with CEng certification at graduation. There is an option to proceed to MEng at the end but that's only from this year...


Well, there's something a bit odd there, because Unistats says 65% of students "Continue at the university or college" after first year.

https://unistats.ac.uk/subjects/study/10007166FT-CV001H01/ReturnTo/Search

And also, you don't gain CEng at graduation. You need several years of demonstrable professional experience to become chartered.
Reply 9
Original post by Smack
Well, there's something a bit odd there... you don't gain CEng at graduation. You need several years of demonstrable professional experience to become chartered.


Once the M.Eng is completed, you do graduate as a Chartered Engineer. It is certified by JBM of IStructE, ICE and the highways lot too. The course is the only one of its kind at the moment from what the lecturers have told me, The B.Eng gives you IEng automatically.
Reply 10
Original post by Rhodie72
Once the M.Eng is completed, you do graduate as a Chartered Engineer.


You definitely don't. CEng requires sufficient professional work experience too. An MEng only covers the academic requirement.

Wolverhampton says so itself:
"This course has been designed to fully meet the educational base required to become a Chartered Civil Engineer. "
http://courses.wlv.ac.uk/course.asp?code=CV017Q01UVU

This is no different to an MEng at any university. I suspect you have misunderstood what the lecturers said to you.

Posted from TSR Mobile
(edited 5 years ago)
Your university sounds a bit **** if that many are dropping out of it, only two people who I was aware of on my course dropped out and one transferred to a new course. Civil Engineering is definitely not the hardest degree out there.

Original post by Rhodie72
Once the M.Eng is completed, you do graduate as a Chartered Engineer. It is certified by JBM of IStructE, ICE and the highways lot too. The course is the only one of its kind at the moment from what the lecturers have told me, The B.Eng gives you IEng automatically.


No you don't. MEng satisfies the educational base requirement for chartership and the same for Beng for incorporated. This is not a one of a kind course. You have to have several years experience meeting objectives given in a set of attributes and then have to be interviewed by a board from the ICE who will ask you about your report on your experiences towards these objectives.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 12
As part of the MEng educational requirements a placement is requisite to gain the degree that is specifically arranged by the uni. You cannot graduate without it as it is part of the requisite full accreditation by JBM to be recognised as Ceng MICE etc. so graduates will be officially recognised as chartered engineers beginning with class of 2018. We die not yet updated...
Reply 13
Original post by Rhodie72
As part of the MEng educational requirements a placement is requisite to gain the degree that is specifically arranged by the uni. You cannot graduate without it as it is part of the requisite full accreditation by JBM to be recognised as Ceng MICE etc. so graduates will be officially recognised as chartered engineers beginning with class of 2018. We die not yet updated...


You are fundamentally misunderstanding the accreditation. There is no way you will be graduating with a CEng, unless you have at least 4 years profesional engineering experience.

Your MEng may meet the education requirements yes but that's it. You definitely won't get a CEng on graduation.

Ask your tutors/lecturers if you get a CEng as soon as you graduate - but expect to be disappointed.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 14
Original post by Rhodie72
When I met my professors last year, they all agreed that civil engineering is the hardest degree to pass. Apparently ony 34% of students pass the first year and then the following year only 79% of tehm remain.

I'll put that into perspective here...
1st day we had 26 in the class but by the end of 3 weeks there were only 18, and after exams only 9 remained on the course for this semester. We had 3 ladies on that course but now I have no idea.

Is this thesame sort of failure/dropout rate at your uni too?

I am studying civil engineering at the National Technical University of Athens.According to our professor's stats, about 40% drop out.
It depends how you look at it. I did the first year of a maths degree, passed, but found it boring and switched to Mechanical Engineering. I know it's not civil, but it will have many similarities.

In my opinion, Maths is a slightly tougher degree conceptually, and less people will be capable of passing it, no matter how hard they work, than any engineering degree. The reason it doesn't tend to have lower pass rates is just becuase I think smarter people tend to do maths. More people on my course came into engineering thinking it would be way less mathematically rigorous than it is, or wanted the high paying jobs at the end of it, and have found it to be beyond them.

On the flip side, if you are very intelligent you can do fine on a maths degree with minimal work. Very intelligent people still occasionally fail engineering degrees as they fall too far behind with the workload. And of course, maths is not the only degree all of this applies to in comparison to an email discipline. It's just the only one I can really comment on, and can be used to highlight these pointed well.
(edited 5 years ago)
Reply 16
Original post by Doonesbury
You are fundamentally misunderstanding the accreditation. There is no way you will be graduating with a CEng, unless you have at least 4 years profesional engineering experience.

Your MEng may meet the education requirements yes but that's it. You definitely won't get a CEng on graduation.

Ask your tutors/lecturers if you get a CEng as soon as you graduate - but expect to be disappointed.

I asked. Yes, full CEng accreditation from JBM. The 4 years of study with sandwich year are acceptable according to JBM set accreditation standards.
Reply 17
Original post by Rhodie72
I asked. Yes, full CEng accreditation from JBM. The 4 years of study with sandwich year are acceptable according to JBM set accreditation standards.


Yup, that just means it is accredited *towards* becoming Charterted, same as any accredited MEng. You still need additional professional experience to actually become Chartered.

In other words, ask them if you can call yourself a Chartered Engineer *immediately* when you graduate. The answer will be no.

https://www.ice.org.uk/careers-and-training/graduate-civil-engineers/how-to-become-professionally-qualified#work-experience

Posted from TSR Mobile
I'm inclined to agree with the above poster that it's certainly not the most conceptually difficult degree - Maths would certainly rank above it for that in my estimation, and perhaps Physics or Philosophy as well, both tending towards greater generality and abstraction broadly speaking. In general, the "difficulty" of engineering tends to come from the higher than average workload and somewhat wider ranging array of topics covered than any conceptual difficulty (from what I've heard medicine is similar in some regards to this).compared

That particular course having poor continuation and attainment is an indictment of the university and department, not the subject matter...I'd argue of the engineering disciplines, civE is probably the less conceptually difficult in the range to e.g. materials or EE. Of course you can set some quite nasty mathematical problems for it, but that's a case of slogging through the algebra and calculus involved more than anything engineering related specifically. At Exeter, which isn't particularly renowned for engineering, we had nowhere near that attrition rate...there were maybe 10 out of over 100 leaving between years (usually switching into other courses - the business school was a popular destination) at most.
Reply 19
Original post by Doonesbury
Yup, that just means it is accredited *towards* becoming Charterted, same as any accredited MEng. You still need additional professional experience to actually become Chartered.

In other words, ask them if you can call yourself a Chartered Engineer *immediately* when you graduate. The answer will be no.

https://www.ice.org.uk/careers-and-training/graduate-civil-engineers/how-to-become-professionally-qualified#work-experience

Posted from TSR Mobile

The only thing that will have to be done is a Professional Review before obtaining MICE.

This is the first year of a pilot project to train suitably qualified engineers to hit the ground running will the skills shortage at Meng level. If this works it will be rolled out to several more universities. As far as I'm aware, there are only three unis with this new course specification after JBM visited last year to modify course requirements that as taught modules meet the in-house ICE training equally

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