As a mechanical engineer working with industry and doing research, I get to see the cutting edge of technology and bring fresh ideas to the state and to the University of Maine, where I am a professor of mechanical engineering. However, my greatest pleasure as a faculty member at UMaine is my time with the exceptional students in our department. Just a couple short months ago, I was honored to be a part of graduation and the 150-year celebration of Maine’s land grant university. Now, these graduates they are settling into their jobs, and we are looking at a new group of entering students.
UMaine mechanical engineering students come from all over the United States; however, the top students in the department include a disproportionate number of young men and women who grew up in northern Maine. They are from farming or fishing families or have parents working in the paper mills. These jobs form the economic foundation of northern Maine.
I started my life in a mining town, part of the second generation of my family to attend college. My father left farm work to get a mechanical engineering degree from the state land-grant college. His education allowed him to raise his family firmly in the middle class. This is the vision of the land grant colleges: class mobility. The Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed the country’s first land-grant colleges to form, refers to our students as the “industrial classes” who are benefiting through “liberal and practical” higher education.
The 2015 University of Maine Mechanical Engineering graduates face challenges. However, they are equipped with one of the best tools available — a degree that allows them access to the engineering profession.
Discussion of college always includes cost. In 2013, graduating seniors from Maine’s public and private nonprofit colleges had an average of $29,934 in debt.
To put that figure in context, in 2012, the salary for a mechanical engineer with less than a year of experience was $55,000. More than 95 percent of our UMaine engineering graduates have a job within a month of graduation; in some cases, the top students have job offers before they even start their last semester at UMaine. In contrast, the unemployment rate for workers under the age of 20 with a high school diploma was greater than 30 percent. On average, young workers with a high school diploma had an annual income of $20,000 per year.
The average debt for a Maine college graduate, then, is less than the $35,000 yearly salary premium over the earnings of a high school graduate, without factoring the financial and emotional benefits of having a lower unemployment rate.
This average student debt is less than the cost of a new Ford F-150 truck. With three to four years’ experience, a mechanical engineer has a median salary of more than $64,000. Meanwhile, the truck has lost almost half of its value.
A mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience has a median salary of more than $127,000. By that point, the truck is badly in need of repair. In fact, an average mechanical engineer earns $2.8 million more over the course of his or her career than the average high school graduate. The cost of a well-equipped truck is a path into the shrinking middle class.
Not all degrees and programs have the same economic value. But an engineering degree may be the investment of the century.
During graduation this past spring, family members were justly proud of the efforts of our recent mechanical engineering graduates. These students have invested their money and time into the opportunity of a lifetime. These students are the vision of the land-grant college, originally called the Maine College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
Unlike the private colleges that predated them, land-grant colleges provide opportunity that does not depend on where you grew up, your inherited wealth or your political connections. Instead, opportunity at a land-grant college results from hard work and persistence. Graduating with the right degree will still provide a path to a rapidly shrinking middle class. In a period of reduced opportunity and with many challenges in our economy, one good investment of time and money stands out.
Congratulations to the class of 2015 and welcome to the class of 2019. The class of 2019 has its work cut, but it is worth it.
Michael Peterson is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maine in Orono.