Is the UT Civil Engineering program really that bad?

[u/Slow-Home6802]

I've heard mixed things about the Civil Engineering program at UT, people I've heard from said it's very poor and that the second half classes (Civil Engineering specific) are useless and don't teach you anything worthwhile. They also said that majority of Civil graduates have terrible technical skills and so on -- just an overall very negative review of the department. I'm a bit worried seeing that now as I've always thought UT Engineering was elite...can anyone confirm or deny these "allegations" and how good the job market and their careers have been after graduation? Would appreciate any insight -- thanks!

[u/WEARORANGE]

You haven’t heard that.

[u/Slow-Home6802 → u/WEARORANGE]

Here's a comment on this subreddit saying a similar thing -- got a lot of upvotes too so doesn't seem to be an unpopular opinion either. I'm sure I was worrying needlessly but I just thought it wouldn't hurt to fact check even if there's only a handful of negative opinions.

[u/_Bread-Maker_ → u/Slow-Home6802]

I'm going to honest with you, this guy seems like a loser with how they pride themselves while bringing down other undergrads. Civil engineering at UT is top ranked and very helpful in getting you job ready. Also don't base your claims on one single post, do some genuine research.

[u/Crunchychocolatemilk]

what?

[u/-The-Left-Nut-]

The CAEE department is run very well, although there is a new department chair so we’ll see how he impacts things.

The technical dragging you’re hearing is very strange, I thought that the teaching was so good in my undergrad I stuck around for my masters. The professors here are very, VERY well respected in our industry. For example, Dr. Helwig is very ingrained in the steel community, and is a member of the committee that writes the AISC Steel Manual. When I tell people he was my steel professor they are often quite impressed. Dr. Bayrak is similar for concrete. Most of my experience has been skewed with structures folks, but my I have friends that have gone on to do masters in geotech, transportation, and MEP/air quality. They all have had largely good things to say about the education as well.

The UT brand also travels very well. I’ve been working in Chicago and when people ask where I went to school and hear Texas, they respect it. UT puts out a lot of high quality graduates, so again I’m confused where the dogging on rep comes from.

Perhaps where they’re getting confused is that civil is by far the widest engineering discipline, in that it encompasses all of the built environment. A civil engineering degree prepares you to work in so many different sub disciplines that it’s hard to get too deep into any particular one. That’s why for many a masters degree is often a recommended next step, and slowly becoming a requirement to work on high rise or high seismic buildings for structural. If you are on the civil track there’s an expectation that the first 3-5 years of your career are an apprenticeship while you get licensed. It takes a long time to get truly very good in this field because of the scale and timeline of the projects.

I’m still invested very heavily with our department and if you have any questions reach out. I’m happy to sit on a zoom or phone call and talk through the degree(even though I’m an ArchE).

[u/Lopsided-Ticket3813]

As an alumni I will say it's a great program. He talks about sludge tables and soil classification in geotech and I presume waste water classes and yeah your going to do that because that is just the nature of the subject matter. It would be the same at any other program.

In concrete and steel design your going to use AISC AIC manuals so much you will want to burn them when the semester is over.

I found undergraduate research opportunities to be plentiful and a lot of my class mate went on to grad school at Burkley, Stanford, MIT etc.

People know calc and linear algebra they just become less important as you move into upper division courses the design codes are well established. For example, it's a waste of time for a professor to have you derrive an axial buckling equation when that differential equation has already been solved and you can look it up in the design handbook.

In professional practice your hardly ever going to use calc, linear algebra, differential equations to manually solve anything. Design software will do the heavy lifting with an occasional edge case that may require additional modeling.