How is it that nurses's salaries are so close to engineers' salaries?

medstudentrunner wrote:

So... I went through engineering at the top ranked school in the world for mechanical engineering ... then went to med school ...Med school is harder in a different way. I believe 100% of my engineering peers could do well in med school, but maybe 20% of my medicine colleagues would even graduate from my engineering curriculum.Since med school >> nursing school in terms of difficulty, it's safe to say that nursing is way, way easier. You will almost never find a straight A student from high school who goes into nursing, or someone with a 3.5-4.0 GPA from a top-ranked (i.e. top 20) US university.The percentage of nursing students who could pass my engineering curriculum I'd put at a conservative 0.1%. They are just not wired for it, and complain about how hard nursing school is all the time. If they think that is hard, they have no chance.Regardless, they get paid more because of supply/demand and heavy unionization. That's how it works.

Lolololol wrote:

Ha.

Hahahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Omfg hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

kgpremed12 wrote:

This dude is right. I'm a med student now, but I took a lot of nursing classes in undergrad. Nurses are f'u'c'k'i'n'g morons. The classes they take are so easy, I slept through them and got 99%. They get paid a lot because the need out paces supply. It's that simple. Nursing is not the type of job lots of men want to do. Also for some reason, society thinks nurses are sweet and angelic while doctors are evil. It probably has something to do with the fact that most nurses are women, and women have mastered playing the vicitm role when in actuality most of them are predators. I can't tell you some of the evil vindictive crap I've seen nurses do in the hospital.

K street wrote:

It's not market forces when nurses band together to pass all kinds of protectionist laws.

Nurses are extremely sympathetic politically, especially compared to engineers. Almost everyone knows one or has one I their family. They're mostly women and they're trained to act "nice." A caring but not that bright 25 year old blonde always makes a good foil to the "arrogant doctor" of whom so many are secretly jealous.

In short, the politicians will always vote with nurses and they get all kinds of favorable protections ensuring salaries well above what a free market would bear.

KB23 wrote:

Think about it from a business directors perspective. Many engineering jobs and job functions can be outsourced to a much cheaper area. Engineers are critical to a firms bottom line but many positions can be done for a lower cost. A nurses work on the other hand cannot be outsourced. Perfect market competition is a myth and the dynamics of a newly formed global economy has made things worse.

Why don't practicing physicists or chemists make good money? Their degrees represent a similar level of difficulty and require a similar level of intelligence as an engineering degree. It's because there is not a large domestic need for the work. The work of these two professionals can often be sent overseas.

But we don't do things just for the money. If money was the only thing to consider you could go into the right sales field and make more money than an RN with just a business degree.

I got a BS in chemical engineering and an associates degree in electrical and computer engineering. My BS was from a top UC. I now work in healthcare as a clinical support specialist instructing surgeons on the proper use of surgical navigation equipment for doing spine and cranial surgery. I am there in the OR helping to orchestrate the use of the technology. I am on call often. I make significantly less than an entry level RN in my area. But I like the work and I know what I do helps people and at the end of the year they want me to take on additional business development duties. If I agree, my income will be significantly above an RN. I graduated under a year ago.

I get your frustration. It can be difficult to find well paying and rewarding engineering work in this market. Especially entry level work. It's also annoying that high school students are told engineers are in high demand and command high pay when they really command average pay and are not in high demand.

I use to tutor a lot of nurses (and premeds) in chemistry, math and physics courses and I watched as many of them partied in college while engineers hit the books on their Friday and Saturday evenings. The nursing profession is akin to most trade work. Look at people who go into a pipe fitting union or masonry or HVAC. They make good money, the work is important but they didn't have to work as hard or risk as much (in terms of debt and duration), and the average student is not as intelligent as an engineering/physics student.

Intelligence is not enough to make you more valuable. Nor is being hard working. It makes you unique in the scheme of things, but until you figure out how you can apply those traits to gain the right blend of skills it's not that valuable of an asset in a professional setting right now.

RN wrote:

No engineers are not smarter. They don't have to pass boards to practice their trade. I've been a nurse for almost 10 years. I changed careers, and had a master's degree and teaching experience going into nursing school, yet I got modest grades and by no means flew through the boards. In fact, simply getting accepted into nursing school is something of an accomplishment these days, as word got out that you can go to school for a couple years and make $60K+ your first year. Potential earning is well into the 6 digits. My wife makes $120K in nursing middle management, with many administrator positions paying anywhere from $150K to over 200. Yes, there are nurses out there that are arguably dumb as a box of rocks. Typically book smart, but street dumb. They can pass a test, but that's all they can do. I don't imagine engineers are any more intelligent, but they're mostly men, so you don't have the dumb blonde nurse stereotype to factor in. There are idiots in every profession. Every profession. Hell, look who we have in the White House, and I voted for the guy, Nurses work hard doing things most people couldn't do or wouldn't do, and they do it around the clock, 365 days a year. They certainly contribute more to making this country and world a better place than any engineer. When is the last time an engineer saved a life??

TKTKTK wrote:

It's just not at all surprising for the LetsRun community that all this ire is directed toward careers that have attracted disproportionately large numbers of women, people of color, and immigrants (or the children of immigrants), teaching and nursing. It's almost as though folks here think that any work in which women and people of color are significantly represented shouldn't be well rewarded--because surely that work couldn't be that hard.

As others have pointed out, the OP isn't indignant about how much some white guy is paid to use an otherwise useless stick to hit a ball into a hole in an empty field, or how much some white male CEO is paid out even after driving a company into the ground; he's angry that women--and women of color especially--are compensated at rates that make his chosen profession seem less "better" than theirs than he thinks it is.

Sad.

deal4412 wrote:

As an RN myself I just want to say that the working conditions for bedside nurses are horrendous so we get paid accordingly. Engineers have it way better in that regard. It's extremely stressful mentally and wearing physically. As far as pay one of my coworkers actually quit engineering and became a nurse when he was laid off from the big 3. He said he never has to worry about not having a job and he can make more money with overtime....he often works 7 days a week and brings in $200k as a nurse with overtime. I just took a new position that starts at $110k for only 3 days a week. If I pickup one day overtime in looking at $155,000 a year. Once I finish NP school I go into mental health I can make close to $160,000+ with no overtime. Oh and by the way, I do not live in a high cost of living area I live in Michigan....

way off Roy wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

What most people think is a nurse is really a nurse's assistant. That is a job that does not pay well at all (25-30k). The next step up (LSN) is still not well paid (30-40k). The RNs make 50-75k a year, but have little opportunity to advance. They have 4 year degrees and are capable of doing a significant percentage of what a doctor can do. The top paying nursing jobs (anesthesiologist, ICU, oncology, etc.) often require more than a 4 year degree. The pay is 100k+, but is generally flat over a career.

Engineers are a dime a dozen and do not get paid top dollar out of school as a result. But there are many more opportunities out there for engineers. They can move over to the business side and climb the corporate ladder. They can start their own firm or move up to management level in an established firm. Thus, over a career, engineers will usually come out way, way ahead of nurses.

I don't know what you're smoking but my wife is an Oncologist in Michigan and makes $273,000 plus per year. You lost any and all credibility with that post.