WPI to offer 1st major in robotics

[Andrew Blair]

This is what several engineering professors have told me when I prodded them about a robotics bachelors:

" Undergraduate study is for experimentation (learning, learning...) and a broad learning experience. Study something like robotics as a graduate."

I agree with this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as Mike said, a robotics degree is good for one thing. Robotics. And if you can't get a job in robotics, you're more or less SOL. An ME or EE or CE can get a job in thousands of different fields, everything from light bulbs to air conditioners to furniture design, and there's a always a job somewhere. Not necessarily so with robotics.

Secondly, there is a reason that there aren't any robotics bachelors. Until very recently, the only robotics opportunities were through a graduate degree anyways! As more and more applications grow, there is a larger market for not only products, but personnel to design them. However, we have not seen the huge demand yet for engineers fresh out of school to go into robotics!

I'm sure WPI's program is good, but as far as being marketable right out of school, it seems best to broaden your options. Doesn't mean you won't get a job with a robotics degree or won't get a robotics job with an ME degree, you just have more options.

It seems the best option is to pursue either ME, CE, or EE, and then concentrate or minor in robotics if you really want to. Carnegie Mellon offers a minor in robotics for the technical degree kids, and it looks pretty promising. Even they, the only university in the world to offer a PhD in robotics, do not offer an undergraduate major in it.