Why I switched from Mechanical Engineering to Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society

Sometimes I am wondering why I switched from Mechanical Engineering (ME) to Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society (PSTS). The exact reason why I switched, for me at least, would be impossible to discover. All I can do now is reflect and see what aspects would have been the reason why.

One reason that I can think off has to do with my upbringing. During my youth my mother always told me to study well. She herself never had been given the opportunity to go to university and therefore she was really supportive when I decided to go out and study. Part of this upbringing was also realizing that it is a privilege to study in the Netherlands and definitely something that not everyone has had the opportunity to do.

To a certain extent I could argue that being able to study engineering is one of the biggest privilege you can have; once I am done, I am highly educated and have a degree that is in high demand. One of the things that makes studying engineering worth it are the strong analytical and mathematical skills that you acquire by submerging yourself into the engineering practice, these skills alone are worth the struggle.  

If these skills are so worth it, then why did I switch to PSTS? To a certain extent because I could. When I finished my Bachelor degree in ME I started with the Masters degree ME. My main motivation, at that point, was to learn an academic or conceptual way of thinking and to more critically engage with the question, why do we engineers do what we do. What I realized, however, after almost a year of thriving during the master, is that way of thinking was not fundamentally different than during the Bachelor. Where I anticipated that I would be focussing more on the why of engineering, in practice it means more on how to do engineering. For me, coursework started to feel like learning yet another technical framework or another mathematical approach to engineering.  Which did not align with my expectations to learn a different way of thinking.

During the spring of 2025, near the end of the first year, I was fortunate enough to have a two week break from university. This gave me the time to reflect on the things I pursued at that moment. What I realized then, as stated above, is that my current degree did not teach me the skills I wanted to learn from university. After this realization I started to look into different programs,  I remembered my participation in the Honours Program (HP) Technology and Society. 

I recalled that during that program the question was about the why of technology in society and the elegant interplay between both phenomena. I wanted to improve the skills I learned there and create a substantiated and critical perspective on technology and the why of the engineering practise. After some more evaluation I decided to apply for the PSTS program and switch degrees without finishing the ME Master. In September 2025, when I passed the admission assignment, I could start with this new degree.

While my experience, so far at least, with the program is a different story, all I can say is that the switch has been both challenging as well as fruitful for me. While at the same time, I realize that not everyone might have this opportunity.