10 Easiest Engineering Degrees in 2025
February 12, 2025
So, you want to study engineering, but you’re a little anxious about the workload. You’d like to find an engineering major that’s going to pay off with a stable, well-paying job, but you also don’t know if you’re smart enough, hardworking enough, or even interested enough to dedicate five, six, seven hours to studying every night after a heavy series of classes and labs (on top of having fun, joining clubs, making friends, the list goes on). You’ve come in search of a list of the easiest engineering degrees/majors in hopes that one will spark your interest and satisfy your desire to major in engineering while also reassuring you that you can, in fact, succeed in this conventionally difficult pursuit.
Let’s start here: this is a totally normal thing.
American culture values making a lot of money, and we talk endlessly about how much money engineers make. And then we say that studying engineering is one of the hardest things you can do. Yikes. What’s an aspiring college student to do? Suffer the slings and arrows of organic chemistry and MATLAB? Or start Googling “easiest college majors”?
Fear not: At this stage, your next step should simply be to gain an awareness of the different kinds of engineering majors that exist. Then, you’ll want to ask yourself this question: what are my interests? Why do I want to major in engineering, anyway?
How to Determine the “Easiest” Engineering Degrees
While ease is always relative, the “easiest” engineering degree may simply be the one you like the best. Conventional wisdom says, “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” While this isn’t always true in the working world (I hate to break it to you), following your gut, your instincts, and your intrinsic desires is actually scientifically proven to make things easier.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison write that interest takes two forms: situational and individual interest. Interest, according to the literature, is “both a psychological state characterized by increased attention, effort, and affect, experienced in a particular moment (situational interest), as well as an enduring predisposition to reengage with a particular object or topic over time (individual interest).”
Put another way, the researchers say that transforming situational interest into individual interest is definitely possible through routine, positive engagement with a subject. They write that “students interested in geophysics might be especially likely to be in a state of interest during a lecture on tsunamis, whether the lecture is entertaining or not, because their interest is more developed and less dependent on situational factors.” Researchers have also shown that “passionate interests can even allow people to overcome academic difficulties or perceptual disabilities.”
How does this relate to the idea of the easiest engineering major? Well, as user justplayin104 said on a vintage 2004 forum about this very question: “I’d say the hardest is the one you like the least. The easiest being the one you enjoy the most.”
Quite literally, you can make anything easier for yourself just by continually showing up with interest, engagement, and a willingness to do whatever it is you’re doing.
Okay, But What’s Actually the Easiest Engineering Degree?
Like we said—ease is relative. Of course, some engineering majors will be less challenging than others on the whole. However, all engineering majors are challenging in their own way, and what’s hard for one person might be easier for someone else. If you’ve spent your whole life learning how to program in your high school robotics club, computer science engineering might be a fun undertaking. However, for others, it could be very tough. Because of that, some of these degrees below will cross over with our most difficult engineering degrees list.
Another consideration when thinking about the relative difficulty or ease of an engineering degree is the level of conceptual abstraction necessary. Engineering disciplines that deal with the concrete world around us might translate to an easier intellectual load, simply because students can touch, see, and manipulate the very things that they are engineering.
The level of math that is required can also increase the difficulty of any given major, depending on the interest and preparation of the student. Nuclear and chemical engineering, for example, topped our list of the hardest engineering majors because they combine a high level of conceptual abstraction with intense mathematical and scientific requirements across other STEM fields.
10 Easiest Engineering Degrees
1) Architectural Engineering
“Architectural engineers apply practical and theoretical knowledge to the engineering design of buildings and building systems. The goal is to engineer high-performance buildings that are sustainable, resilient, economically viable, that ensure the safety, health, comfort, and productivity of occupants,” according to Penn State.
Since you’ll be able to see the direct relationship between the math you’re studying and the way it’s being implemented, this engineering degree may be easier than others.
2) Civil Engineering
The relative difficulty of this major follows the same logic as architectural engineering above. Civil engineers work to optimize the world around us by studying green infrastructure, creating sustainable power supplies and water systems, designing buildings that are earthquake-resistant, and planning roads that can enable autonomous vehicles.
While program requirements will pull from a number of STEM disciplines (think: chemistry, geology, biology, and physics), applying them in the familiar realm of buildings, streets, and bridges can simplify the work your brain needs to do to understand the concepts.
Easiest Engineering Degrees/Easiest Engineering Majors (Continued)
3) Mining and Geological
Mining and geological engineers study the mining and extraction of minerals and other natural resources used to produce energy. You might think first of coal mining, but a student with a mining or geologic engineering degree can also find themselves working in a career that contributes to green energy production.
Similar to architectural and civil engineering, mining engineering concepts may be easier for students to visualize and absorb, even when they become more complex or abstract.
4) Biological Systems
Biological systems engineering might sound relatively broad, but this kind of engineering deals with creating systems that can ensure society’s food supply and energy needs. The perceived demand for this kind of engineer is high. As climates change and temperature changes become more severe, growing cycles will change, and so will the demands on global systems that process and distribute food.
You can expect the kind of math required for biological systems to be advanced, but not impossible. For example, many such degrees require calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. After that, however, students can shift to hands-on engineering courses. If you have an interest in biology alongside a desire to work at a large-scale food processing company, you might be the perfect student for this major.
Easiest Engineering Degrees/Easiest Engineering Majors (Continued)
5) Environmental Engineering
While we’re on the subject of creating sustainable food and energy systems, let’s talk about environmental engineering. Environmental engineers study subjects like water safety, air pollution, and hazardous waste clean-up alongside modern concepts like human health, green design, pollution prevention, carbon sequestration, and alternative energy production.
The requirements for this degree can be challenging, but environmental engineering is one of those passion-oriented pursuits in which the desire to protect the environment and remediate the effects of the climate crisis can motivate students to overcome related challenges. Even so, balance will be crucial if you decide to undertake an environmental engineering degree.
6) Computer Engineering
Computer science as an engineering degree rather than a liberal arts degree can be a heavy lift, but it’s all the more enjoyable if you’ve got programming experience in your background. Given the number of high schools that offer coding classes and robotics clubs, as well as the sheer number of students who take up programming as a hobby, computer science engineering gets a spot on our list, if you’ve got the requisite preparation and practice in your background. Yes, you’ll still have to tackle mathematics like algorithmic thinking and linear algebra. However, the passion and interest with which an already-coding computer scientist might tackle these subjects could make the entire enterprise an enjoyable one.
Easiest Engineering Degrees/Easiest Engineering Majors (Continued)
7) Engineering Technology
Engineering technology might be great for you if you’re more pragmatic than theoretical. An education in this discipline means you’ll be thinking more about application and less about higher-level theory than the other degrees on this list. So, if you want to work with tech and engineering, but aren’t super interested in algorithmic thinking, engineering technology could be a great match for you.
8) Industrial Engineering
Industrial engineers are responsible for designing efficient systems. These systems may include people, materials, information, equipment, and/or energy. Like the first few easiest engineering degrees on this list, industrial engineering concepts may feel more concrete and simpler to grasp. That said, you’ll be thinking at a very large scale, which could make certain aspects of this degree more challenging than others.
Easiest Engineering Degrees/Easiest Engineering Majors (Continued)
9) Materials Science
Materials sciences will have you thinking about the behaviors of different materials under various conditions. If you have the type of brain that loves to consider cause and effect and is interested in watching for patterns that help us understand how things react over time, you might consider materials science to be one of the easiest engineering degrees. It’s also a highly interdisciplinary major that involves a good deal of chemistry and physics. Accordingly, enjoying those subject areas may contribute to the overall ease of this degree.
10) General Engineering
General engineering allows students to take classes across the engineering curriculum to obtain a better idea of what they might like to study in graduate school or pursue in the workforce. While shifting between multiple engineering specialties may be highly challenging for certain students, others may thrive on the constant novelty and exposure to new disciplines, which could very well make this engineering degree feel easier than others.
10 Easiest Engineering Degrees – Final Thoughts
Looking for additional information on different types of engineering, or the top colleges for certain engineering specialties? Check out the following:
