Reason #10: The Technician Learns What You Actually Need

As a mechanical engineering student, you slog through four to six years of coursework (see Reason #2). By your third year you are knee-deep in your third calculus-based physics class, your second chemistry class, and your fourth advanced analytical geometry course. Every semester is another round of abstract theory and endless problem sets, all under the promise that this suffering will someday make you an “engineer.”

Meanwhile, the people in mechanical engineering technology (MET) programs are living in a different world. In their two-year associate’s programs they are studying fluid power, PLC and industrial controls analysis, project management, and professional preparation. In other words, they are learning the actual tools and practices that industry expects.

And here’s the dagger: many of these programs are ABET-accredited too. That means their graduates hold the same “seal of quality” you spent years earning, only they got it faster, cheaper, and with more practical training. Employers know it. Which is why most employers, secretly and not-so-secretly, actually prefer technicians for the kinds of tasks and projects that dominate day-to-day engineering work.

Those tasks don’t look anything like your homework sets. They’re not thermodynamics derivations or finite element proofs. They are tolerance stack-ups, geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, reading weld symbols, picking the right bolts and torque specs, and logging everything into ERP software so the next poor soul can trace it later. These are the things you’ll be thrown into cold on your first job, while the technician who came out of a two-year program has already been doing them for years.

If you’re an experienced engineer reading this, you might be fuming right now, remembering how you had to teach yourself GD&T or ladder logic at work while the technician next to you calmly adjusted a PID controller and clocked out on time. You brought the equations, they brought the credibility.

Mechanical engineers are supposed to have the prestige. But technicians have the preparation. And when it comes to getting hired and delivering results, preparation wins every time.