Ask HN: Where to go for the cheapest EE degree in the U.S.? In the World?

I would have to guess that the best value is Germany.

Darmstadt is a lovely little fun, hip town and they have a reputable engineering school at TU:

https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/studieren/abschluesse/bachelor/e...

There is a lot of scholarship money to fund your living expenses here: https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/international/home/funding/index...

But the actual costs are very low. A few hundred dollars a semester. I can't find the one for EE bachelors but here are some ballpark figures for comparative programs:

https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/studieren/beratung_hilfe/details...

https://www.trophee.tu-darmstadt.de/course/coursefees/index....

Are you just interested in the lowest up front cost in dollars? I went to the US Military Academy. Tuition, room and board are free, you get a small stipend each month and you have a guaranteed job at graduation. You pay for school with 5 years of service as an Army officer. I was a Mechanical Engineering major, but they have a decent EECS department also. The military academies have an interesting setup where they are officially an engineering school, and everyone, even the history or law majors have to take an "engineering track". The engineering majors also have more humanities courses than their peers at most schools.

In regards to the U.S. I would argue the absolute cheapest option would involve going to a fairly large community college first then transferring to the cheapest in state University.

This is a ranking vs cost issue somewhat. Ga tech is a good school in the top 5 but not as cheap as the Wyoming state schools for cost[0].

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/04/10-states-with-the-cheapest-...

I would say METU @ Ankara, Turkey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_East_Technical_Universi...

You can see prices(~200$/term -- thanks to value drop in Turkish Lira) here: http://oidb.metu.edu.tr/en/tuition-fee-amounts

The EE department is infamous for being competitive.

Pros: Ankara is very cheap, the campus is huge and very active, the technopolis is also very active with companies such as Siemens, Udemy, OpsGenie etc. English is the main course language. Turkey is beautiful and central for your summer plans. It accepts SAT with minimum 1200 out of 1600, so for a native speaker with good math skills, you should be able to get in easily, it is very competitive for Locals, arguably the best Engineering Uni in Turkey with a huge alumni network in EU/US/CA.

Cons: Ankara is a bit boring, but campus being huge makes up for that, some low-level staff(canteen clerks etc.) don't speak english, students would be happy to help-out. Some Prof decide to teach mixed with Turkish, but this is not very common, exams are always English.

Disclaimer: I have studied as foreign student in CS(CENG) department, I made a really good choice choosing METU and CENG, EE I am not sure. Feel free to reach out if you have questions.

Tuition fees in public universities are low in France: https://www.campusfrance.org/en/tuition-fees-France

For instance, a bachelor degree is 170 euros per year (+ 90 euros of student life and campus service fees). Housing can be expansive in some cities like Paris...

For instance, the bachelor degree of EE at Sorbonne université (former Pierre et Marie Curie university before it merged with the historical Sorbonne): http://sciences.sorbonne-universite.fr/en/education/diplomas...

Bachelor degrees are typically taught in French though. Master degrees are sometimes taught in English.

The French École Normale Supérieure will pay you around 1200 euros per month to study there. There are strings attached though (10 yrs public service commitment).

Time value of money is a serious issue.

There's a nice private engineering-focused school near me that costs $5424 for 8 credits per semester as a "part timer" or $13013 for 12 or more credits per semester. So 50% more credits graduates you 50% sooner but costs a mere 139% more money.

Of course you need to factor in the cost of living to come up with a total cost of taking 8 years vs 4 years.

The math can get extremely weird if you can do scholarships; you might run a moderately large net profit if you join the military in a support role (commo tech?) and take some classes during your enlistment and some CLEP tests, then collect the GI Bill afterward leaving the military while in school if you have some financial self discipline. Or a ROTC scholarship, etc. Reserves will get you less money but go quicker. National Guard service, depending on state, may result in $0 tuition at a state school.

I would recommend against ROTC scholarship in that the military will assign your branch based on stack ranking GPA, and engineering school GPAs tend to be pretty low compared to anything else, not that there's anything inherently wrong with chem corps or air defense. Also officer life is management not technical so if you have an EE degree you're unlikely to get branched commo or cyber you're statistically more likely to manage 50 truck drivers because in the military management is interchangeable cogs. Still, if you're willing to do work unrelated to EE for a couple years the military would provide a negative cost AKA net profit if you want a "cheap degree".

Education is free in Germany. If all courses in the degree are offered in English, you won't even have to learn German. You'll have to bear costs associated to moving here, of course.

There are quite a few good technical universities in Germany. In no particular order (although ranked roughly by prestige):

- TUM Technical University Munich: Pros: Lots of interesting tech companies in the Munich Area (such as Intel, Siemens, BMW etc.), TUM has a good reputation, Munich is a very nice city to live in Cons: Munich is very expensive

- KIT Karlsruhe: Pros: Relatively cheap cost of living, lots of interesting computer science / electrical engineering professors

- TU Dresden: Pros: Cheap cost of living, nice city, Global Foundries lab is located there, allegedly good EE department

- TU Berlin: Pros: It's Berlin.

- TU Darmstadt: Pros: Nice Fraunhofer institutes, but bigger focus on compsci and mechanical engineering

42 is free, their main campus is in Paris, but they opened a branch in the US recently: https://www.42.us.org/

The cheapest yet probably recognized all over the world ( to a certain extent) and with good track record of quality instruction would be the Indian Institute of Technology, India. And they have quiet a few of them spread across the country. EE dept was especially strong in my hometown (Madras) 10 years back and I am sure that's the case now. URL. Cost FREE. Yes.https://www.iitm.ac.in You heard that right. But you have to go through a one of the most rigorous entrance examinations in the world(IIT-JEE) to get placed. But once you get in like they say, your life is made. Email in the profile so feel free to reach out.

In Germany university is for free (except a half yearly sum around 270€) and we have some fairly good universities I believe.

I’m a professor in an EECS department in the US. A lot of students pay little to nothing thanks to scholarships. There are also a plethora of student jobs that can help as well.

The opportunity cost and your time are the actual costs.

(This is a US centric reply, I can't help as much if you are not in the US)

So a couple of question to pose first:

- Can you live at home? If so, do you plan on living at home?

- Are you looking for scholarships?

- Are you working while at school?

- Why are you going for absolute cheapest? Why not best value?

I ask these because they are important questions that will shape what you look for.

I hesitate to say "cheapest" because like many other things, you will get what you pay for. If you go to a crappy college that does not have any prospects of getting you a EE job, then you just wasted a lot of money. I think best value is looking into a 2-year community college that will transfer to a state school in state. Make sure the in state school is a decent engineering school, and it has partnerships with engineering companies. Those schools are generally "feeders" into companies, and will offer internships and jobs after college.

Housing is not a negligible cost either. If living at home is an option (understandably, it may not be), that will also save a lot of money as well. If that is not an option, you will likely have to work while in school to keep costs down. I personally worked as a Resident Assistant and I got free room, board, and a food allowance. But you can also find paid internships during the year that are full time in the summer that will defer costs. My brother did that, and was offered a full time job at a major company afterwards.

On the other hand, there are scholarships as well. I know that many government jobs offer full ride scholarships in exchange for working for then for x years afterwards (usually 4 years). ROTC will not only give you a scholarship, but will offer subsidies as well.

Argentina.

Tuition is absolutely free (regardless of immigration status, you don't even need to prove you are a resident), there are scholarships to cover transport, study materials, and so on and so forth.

The only thing you'd have to pay is for your own living costs. Work is unrestricted, so you could work to earn whatever money you need and, in fact, it is customary for students to work through college.

The down side is that the career is harsh: 5 hours of class (usually 5pm to 10pm) every day + homework + school projects + exams is the norm, for at least 6 years (which is how long it takes to earn the degree), most people actually finish in 7 or 8. And classes are only in Spanish.

The reason this is posted on HN is because Google doesn't seem to understand this query. Google comes up with entries such as "The 25 most affordable Engineering schools" or "The 50 best Engineering degree programs". If the cheapest "value" on these lists is around $12,000/yr, then that might be considered affordable by some people -- but I'm looking for the absolute cheapest. Please post if you know of an EE program in the U.S. or elsewhere that costs less than $12K/yr. I'm guessing people are afraid to post, because their answer might turn out to be "incorrect" by virtue of other posters posting yet cheaper alternatives. But please post! No answer is wrong for this! I'm just curious what the options are...

This is for a US based university. Have not attended that many university's to be able to do an actual comparison, but here is the info for my alma mater. Additionally I studied CS, but I know they have a good EE program as well.

The school is California State University - Los Angeles (CSULA). It is an ABET accredited school.

If you are just looking at tuition it runs $6,744/ 2 semester year for California residents. Estimates for a non-resident living on campus run $35,638/ 2 semester year.

Here is a link to the Universities cost and financial aid page: http://www.calstatela.edu/financialaid/2018-2019-cost-attend...

EE Means electrical engineering? In czech republic I have seen a year of study for non EU citizens between 3000 and 5000 Eur a year, 3 year study is the standard length.

Cost of living for a student was around 4000-6000 eur a year, when I was student (~5 years ago), should still be comparable.

US answer:

If I was doing it, the first thing I would do is look into CLEP (College Level Examination Program) tests. About $30 a Credit hour I believe. You can knock out 2 years of school with it. To be fair, some are not easy.

Like someone else mentioned look at community colleges. Different states have different nomenclature. But generally public College is the first step, then University to finish.

If you are thinking IT, I would recommend Western Governors. It is online, you pay per 6 months, and you can take as much as you can handle. In theory you could graduate in 6 months, but I doubt that is practical.

Argentina. Some really good tech schools, like UTN. Free. Living costs for a student should be about 5 grand a year. Spanish skills needed.

Brazil: it's free and extremely high quality if you go to a place like USP, Unicamp or ITA. You didn't specify the language :) these places are hard to get into though; it's common for people to spend 3+ years studying so they can get approved in one of those.

Another route for the U.S. is to try and get a scholarship. If you're a high school student and you test well, a high SAT or ACT score should get you a full ride to a school some where.

If you have good grades & scores, most (all?) state schools have full-rides. Ivies and stuff have full financial aid too if you qualify (family income etc).

In NYC the CUNY schools are affordable and have good courses

Some have mentioned Germany. I haven't noticed Canada. I know both university systems, though not for electrical engineering specifically.

Germany is a solid choice. Far better conditions than in some neighbouring countries (cough cough France). Depending on the state (Bundesland), the fees can be very low to none. Again state-dependant, but in many cases foreign students must lock a yearly amount into a bank account and can only withdraw 1/12 or so each month. Quite rightly so: unless you're a monk, you'll need a bit more than they force you to lock up. Bachelor level is almost exclusively in German (exceptions may exist) and I suggest learning German: there are specific avenues granting university access and it's an investment of 6 months to 1 year at least. Living expenses are fairly low from my perspective.

Canada is a good choice because even if most foreign students pay _much_ more than Canadians or provincial residents, it's still several times cheaper than the equivalent in the US. What I've seen in Québec is of very high quality. Language (French or English) depends on the university. Linguistic questions aside, and here I speak specifically of Québec (other provinces may vary), you may be obliged to complete a series of pre-university college classes to bring your maths to level. The university generally offers these. Living expenses are probably a bit higher than Germany but still comparable.

Other things to consider, especially since we're talking about engineering: recognition and professional orders. Recognition: diplomas from countries known as diploma mills are like a stone around the neck whereas diplomas from others are generally well regarded. Professional orders: if engineering jobs in your target work country require membership in a professional order and your diploma is foreign, well, good luck with that -- in the best case, it can take months to join, in the worst case, they make you take corrective classes.

Finally, medium term. When you need a job. Canada vs Germany is a harder question. I changed careers and moved between the two so my perspective is skewed. I know that an EE diploma in Germany will definitely get you a good first job that will teach you a lot. The thing is, unless you're German, you're unlikely to want to stay there (some odd cultural issues, high taxes, relatively low salaries for talented people -- those are the general complaints of, let's say, North American and European foreigners). Canada has a relatively good labour market with better social protection than the southern neighbour. If you work in Canada, flexible people tend to fit in quickly (unless problems with the linguistic divide), but the taxes are also very high in some places, starting salaries are sad, and the brain drain to the US is unfortunately real. The winter in most parts is highly subjective.