The choice of education stream for a young adult headed to college is often a decision that occupies a lot of mind, space and time. The beauty here is that the stream you pursue sometimes has little bearing on where you end up. For instance, an engineering degree could be your passport to the CEO's office in a multibillion-dollar investment company.
For the typical student and parent duo, choosing a stream like STEM is often a stepping stone for the routine engineering related jobs. While most would view these jobs as ones that deal with hardware, software or construction, the fact is that engineering graduates are also saving the world from super villains. Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Bruce Banner (Hulk) are both engineering graduates.
In an ever-evolving world, the skills and knowledge acquired from a technical education are being put to use in many different fields. Aspirational careers for those with a background in science, technology, engineering and maths stretch as far and wide as fashion, video games, piloting, motorsports and product development.
An education in engineering can also take you into an investment and advisory role, as it did with Azmi Mikati, former Columbia engineering student, who today heads the M1 Group. Azmi is a civil engineering and engineering mechanics graduate from Columbia University. The M1 Group is a multibillion-dollar investment company with interests across a diverse number of sectors, including real estate, energy, telecom, airlines and fashion retail.The M1 Group traces its roots to Investcom, a telecom company set up by brothers Najib and Taha Mikati in Lebanon. Investcom was sold to South African telecom giant MTN for $5.5 billion in 2006. The M1 Group was founded in 2007, with Azmi Mikati as its CEO.
Another creative field that attracts professionals with an engineering background is VFX, or visual special effects. Without these computer-generated effects, Harry Potter would have had to fight his battles without Dobby, and Sandra Bullock and George Clooney would not have gone through zero gravity.
But VFX is just the tip of this iceberg. The entertainment industry and many other industries are becoming more and more technology led. The rebirth of virtual reality is a case in point. The ultra-complex technology demands of virtual reality require us to understand both the science of the world around us and the psychological aspects of how humans interact with that world.
In case you are wondering about the real world significance of your fluids and mechanics course, pause and think again. Your engineering degree could open up more doors than you had imagined. In our increasingly technology dependent times, an engineering degree is just a gateway to being the next superhero, the next visual reality programmer and maybe even a millionaire.