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Computer Engineering Technologies, Other (CIP 15.1299)

A small computer-tech catchall where ABET-ETAC plus a cert stack decides whether the bachelor's pays back

CIP 15.1299 is the .99 catchall inside the computer engineering technology family — programs that don't fit the named CIP 15.1201 (Computer Engineering Tech General), 15.1202 (Computer Systems Tech), 15.1203 (Computer Hardware Tech), or 15.1204 (Computer Software Tech). The annual flow is small: 409 completions across 7 institutions in the latest reporting year, with one school (Full Sail University) producing 341 of them. The five-year median income is $74,460, and the bachelor's-vs-associate split is unusually wide — bachelor's grads land at $83,391 against $56,599 for associate grads, a $26,792 spread. That spread reflects the reality of this corner of the labor market: an AAS-only credential without ABET-ETAC accreditation pays like a help-desk or computer-repair role (SOC 49-2011, ~$48K and declining), while a four-year ETAC bachelor's stacked with CompTIA, Cisco, AWS, or Linux Foundation certs slots into engineering technologist work (SOC 17-3023, $71K BLS median) or pivots into DevOps, cloud, or network engineering at $90K to $160K. The CHIPS Act fab build-out and the data-center hyperscaler boom create real demand for graduates who specialize correctly. The honest read: the program label hides everything that matters. Verify ETAC accreditation, treat certs as part of the curriculum, and pick the pivot lane before you enroll.

Schools offering
7
Annual completions
409
Typical degree level
Associate's + Bachelor's
Median earnings (5yr)
$74k

About this major

CIP 15.1299 sits inside the federal Engineering Technologies/Technicians family (CIP 15) as the .99 catchall for computer engineering technology programs that don't fit the four named codes underneath the 15.12 four-digit family: 15.1201 (Computer Engineering Technology, General — the broad mainstream code with 892 completions per year and most ABET-ETAC bachelor's programs), 15.1202 (Computer Systems Technology — IT operations, infrastructure, sysadmin focus), 15.1203 (Computer Hardware Technology — board-level work, embedded systems, hardware troubleshooting), and 15.1204 (Computer Software Technology — application support, scripting, software-technician work). The federal CIP definition for 15.1299 is intentionally empty — no examples listed — which means the institution itself decides what fits. In practice, programs reporting under this code cover an unusually wide range of curricula: game-development and simulation engineering technology at Full Sail University, aerospace-electronics-leaning computer systems engineering technology at Wichita State and Oregon Institute of Technology, applied computer technology bachelor's tracks at Eastern Kentucky University, and regional specialized programs at Inter American University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon and Universidad Ana G. Mendez. The 409-completion annual flow is small by IPEDS standards, and one institution (Full Sail) produces 341 of those completions — 83% of the entire national flow — which means national averages on this CIP are heavily shaped by Full Sail's specific entertainment-technology labor market rather than a generic computer-engineering-technology curriculum. Cross-CIP siblings worth knowing: 14.0901 (Computer Engineering — the engineering CIP, ABET-EAC accredited, four-year route to PE eligibility and engineer-titled roles), 11.0701 (Computer Science — the software-engineering route), 11.0103 (Information Technology — broader IT pathway), 11.0901 (Computer Systems Networking and Telecommunications — networking-specialist route), and 15.0303 (Electrical/Electronic/Communications Engineering Technology — adjacent electrical-tech CIP). The accreditation distinction is the most important thing prospective students miss: engineering technology programs are accredited under ABET's Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission (ETAC), while engineering programs are accredited under the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC). Employers who pay technologist-level salaries — defense contractors, hyperscalers, semiconductor fabs, large utilities — read ETAC accreditation as the threshold credential. A 15.1299 program without ETAC accreditation will not get the same résumé look as a 15.1201 program with it, regardless of the federal CIP label.

The demand picture for graduates who specialize correctly is unusually strong. The CHIPS and Science Act has triggered the largest semiconductor fab build-out in U.S. history — Intel Ohio, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Taylor (Texas), Micron New York and Idaho, GlobalFoundries New York and Vermont — and every fab requires hundreds of equipment technicians, process technicians, IT-infrastructure technicians, and controls technicians per facility. The hyperscaler data-center build-out is the second tailwind: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Equinix, Digital Realty, CoreWeave, and Meta are pouring tens of billions of dollars into new data center campuses each year, and each campus needs network technicians, infrastructure technicians, and DevOps-leaning systems engineers. The BEAD broadband program ($42.5 billion under IIJA) plus 5G network densification is rebuilding the telecommunications technician labor pool. Add cybersecurity demand (SOC analyst roles continue to outstrip supply at every wage band) and the pivot-lane optionality for graduates with the right cert stack is genuinely broad. The flip side: the SOC 49-2011 occupation (Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers) — where AAS-only graduates without certifications and without ABET-ETAC accreditation tend to land — has a BLS-projected employment decline of 4% over the next decade and a $48K median wage. The wage-and-demand split between SOC 17-3023 (Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians, $71K median) and SOC 49-2011 explains the unusually wide $26,800 bachelor's-over-associate premium in this CIP's earnings data. The four-year ETAC bachelor's grads with cert stacks land in the growing high-wage occupation; the AAS-only graduates without certs land in the shrinking low-wage occupation. The CIP code is the same on both sides; what determines which side a graduate ends up on is accreditation, certification stack, and pivot-lane specialization — not the program label.

Section 3 · Careers

Where this major leads

Occupations most often associated with this major, from the federal BLS+O*NET crosswalk. Job-growth projections and median wages are national.

Occupation Median wage Job growth Typical education
Engineering technologists and technicians, except drafters, all other $77k +1.5% Associate's degree
Section 4 · Earnings

Earnings at a glance

Median graduate earnings from the federal College Scorecard, 5 and 10 years out.

Median 5-year earnings

$74k

Associate's vs Bachelor's — early-career earnings

Associate's

$57k

Bachelor's

$83k

Who this major is for

This major fits a specific and narrower student profile than the named CIP 15.1201 (Computer Engineering Technology, General), and the .99 catchall label means the fit varies dramatically program-by-program. Read the curriculum carefully and verify ABET-ETAC accreditation before treating any 15.1299 program as interchangeable with another.

Good fit if you: are mechanically and electronically curious in addition to enjoying software, comfortable with both a soldering iron and a Linux command line, and willing to specialize early into one of the durable pivot lanes (cloud and DevOps, network engineering, cybersecurity, embedded and IoT, or data-center infrastructure); want a hands-on technical career without the heavy theoretical-math sequence required for a CIP 14.0901 (Computer Engineering) degree; live in or are willing to relocate toward a regional employer cluster (Ohio for Intel, Arizona/Texas for TSMC and Samsung, Northern Virginia or Atlanta or Dallas for hyperscaler data centers, Florida for game and simulation tech if Full Sail is your school of choice); are willing to stack four to six vendor and industry certifications during and after the degree; and want a $70K to $90K wage ceiling within five to seven years, with realistic optionality to pivot into DevOps, SRE, cloud engineering, or AIOps roles at $100K to $160K once you have three to five years of hands-on experience. Bachelor's-track ETAC graduates have a realistic shot at engineering-titled roles after experience, even without sitting for the PE.

Not a good fit if you: want to design new computer chips, write firmware for production silicon, or lead computer-architecture R&D — those roles want CIP 14.0901 (Computer Engineering) or CIP 11.0701 (Computer Science) graduates with EAC-of-ABET bachelor's degrees and often master's-level credentials. The 15.1299 path can transition into those roles, but it usually requires a second degree and is rarely the cheapest route. Also a poor fit if you dislike physical-layer work and want pure-software roles — for that, CIP 11.0701 or a coding bootcamp is a faster path. If the specific 15.1299 program you're considering is not ETAC-of-ABET accredited and does not bake certifications into the curriculum, the credential will not perform the way the wage data above suggests; pick a CIP 15.1201 ETAC program elsewhere instead, or do an ABET-ETAC AAS at a community college and stack certs aggressively while saving the tuition difference.

A note on transfer pathways. Many community-college 15.1299 AAS programs articulate into ABET-ETAC bachelor's tracks at four-year partners — sometimes under 15.1201, sometimes under 15.1299, sometimes under 14.0901 with bridge coursework. The 2+2 transfer route is the cheapest path to the bachelor's wage premium and is worth investigating before committing to a four-year price tag. Verify the articulation agreement is current, that the receiving institution accepts the AAS credits at full value, and that the destination bachelor's program is itself ETAC accredited.

Section 6 · Where to study

Top colleges for Computer Engineering Technologies/Technicians, Other

Ranked by annual completions at the associate's or bachelor's level — a proxy for program scale.

College Location Assoc. Bach. Total
Full Sail University Winter Park, FL 296 45 341
Wichita State University Wichita, KS 0 22 22
Eastern Kentucky University Richmond, KY 0 20 20
Oregon Institute of Technology Klamath Falls, OR 0 14 14
Inter American University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon Bayamon, PR 0 9 9
Delaware Technical Community College-Terry Dover, DE 3 0 3
Universidad Ana G. Mendez-Gurabo Campus Gurabo, PR 0 0 0
Section 7 · Explore sideways

Related majors to explore

Engineering Technologies/Technicians, General

2,524 completions/yr

Science Technologies/Technicians, Other

2,437 completions/yr

Engineering/Engineering-Related Technologies/Technicians, Other

1,150 completions/yr

Architectural Engineering Technologies/Technicians

1,056 completions/yr

Computer Engineering Technology/Technician

892 completions/yr

Civil Engineering Technologies/Technicians

888 completions/yr

Engineering, Other

775 completions/yr

Industrial Production Technologies/Technicians, Other

733 completions/yr
Section 9 · Frequently asked

Common questions

How is CIP 15.1299 different from the named computer engineering technology codes (15.1201, 15.1202, 15.1203, 15.1204)?
The four named codes describe specific curricular shapes: CIP 15.1201 (Computer Engineering Technology, General) is the broad mainstream code that most ABET-ETAC bachelor's programs report under; 15.1202 (Computer Systems Technology) leans toward systems administration, IT operations, and infrastructure; 15.1203 (Computer Hardware Technology) is hardware troubleshooting, board-level repair, and embedded systems work; 15.1204 (Computer Software Technology) is application support, scripting, and software-adjacent technician work. CIP 15.1299 is the .99 catchall — programs the institution decided don't fit any of those four. The federal CIP definition is deliberately empty (no examples listed), which means each 15.1299 program is its own animal. In this dataset, the largest producer (Full Sail University, 341 completions) is built around game-development, simulation, and entertainment-technology programs, which is a different curriculum from a community-college 15.1299 microelectronics-leaning AAS or a four-year university's specialized embedded-IoT bachelor's. When you compare 15.1299 programs side by side, ask the program director what the curriculum actually covers and which certifications are baked in — the CIP label tells you almost nothing on its own.
Is the bachelor's worth it given the $26,800 premium over the associate?
The five-year wage data says yes — bachelor's grads earn $83,391 against $56,599 for associate grads, a $26,792 annual spread that compounds into $130,000+ in extra earnings over five years and substantially more over a career. But the wage data alone is misleading because the bachelor's premium in this CIP comes from two things: the four-year programs are more likely to be ABET-ETAC accredited, and the bachelor's grads are more likely to specialize into pivot lanes (DevOps, cloud, embedded) where the wage ceiling is much higher. An AAS without ABET-ETAC, without a Cisco/CompTIA/AWS cert stack, and without a specialization basically pays like SOC 49-2011 (Computer/ATM Repairers, $48K and declining 4% over the next decade). An AAS with ABET-ETAC and a strong cert stack often pays close to a bachelor's-only grad without certs. Practical guidance: if your target program offers an ABET-ETAC bachelor's track and stacks vendor certs into the curriculum, the bachelor's pays back within five to seven years and the optionality (technologist titles, DevOps pivots, federal contracting) is worth the extra two years. If the bachelor's is non-ETAC and the program ignores certifications, you're better off doing an ABET-ETAC AAS at a community college, stacking certs aggressively, and putting the saved tuition into a Roth IRA.
What jobs does this major realistically lead to in the first three years?
The federal occupational anchor is split between two SOC codes that pay very differently. SOC 17-3023 (Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technologists and Technicians) has a BLS median wage of $71,000 and is what ABET-ETAC bachelor's grads with strong cert stacks land in: roles like systems technologist, network engineer, infrastructure engineer, or embedded systems technologist at companies like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Equinix, Digital Realty, CoreWeave, Cisco, and the semiconductor fabs (Intel, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Taylor, Micron). SOC 49-2011 (Computer, Automated Teller, and Office Machine Repairers) has a BLS median of $48,000 and is declining 4% over the next decade — that's where AAS-only grads without certs and without ABET-ETAC tend to land: break/fix shops, retail repair, internal IT support. The wage spread between these two destinations is the entire story of this CIP. With three to five years of experience plus a stacked cert ladder (CompTIA Security+, Cisco CCNA-to-CCNP, AWS Solutions Architect Associate, Linux Foundation LFCS), you can pivot into DevOps engineer, SRE, platform engineer, or cloud engineer roles in the $90K to $160K range — and AIOps (AI for IT operations) is a wage-growth lane that pays a premium for graduates who can combine traditional sysadmin with ML-pipeline operations. Entry-level wages for ABET-ETAC bachelor's grads run $55K to $75K depending on geography; AAS-only without certs runs $40K to $55K.
Will AI automate these jobs away?
Some of them, yes — and that's important to plan for. Routine sysadmin work, patching, log triage, ticket routing, and first-pass network configuration are being automated by AIOps platforms (Datadog, Dynatrace, ServiceNow, Cisco AI-driven networking) and by code-generation tools — that compresses entry-level technician headcount on the simpler end of the labor market. Help-desk and break/fix roles tied to SOC 49-2011 are the most exposed. What is durable: cloud architecture and platform engineering (designing the systems the AI runs on), security operations and incident response (where false-positive cost is catastrophic), embedded systems and IoT firmware work (physical-world hardware that AI cannot touch), data-center commissioning and high-density power/cooling work at hyperscaler facilities, and AIOps engineering itself — building and operating the AI-augmented operations stack that's eating the routine work. The risk profile favors graduates who specialize early into one of those durable lanes, build hands-on cloud lab time (AWS Free Tier, home lab, capture-the-flag), and stack certifications continuously rather than treating the degree as a finished credential. AAS-only generalists doing sysadmin in 2030 will have a much harder market than today; AAS-plus-certs cloud or security specialists will be in higher demand.
Why is Full Sail University 83% of the completions, and what does that mean for the dataset?
Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida produces 341 of the 409 annual completions in this CIP — 83% of the entire national flow. That's an unusual concentration and it shapes what 'CIP 15.1299' actually means in the labor-market signal. Full Sail is a for-profit institution focused on entertainment, game development, simulation, and digital media, and its 15.1299 programs are organized around computer-engineering-adjacent curricula tailored to those industries (game engine systems, simulation hardware, motion-capture infrastructure). That is a real labor market — Epic Games, Unity, Riot Games, the major film and TV VFX houses, and the simulation-training contractors at L3Harris and CAE all hire from Full Sail's pipeline — but it is a different labor market from what most prospective students assume 'computer engineering technology' means. The other six top producers in this dataset are very different: Wichita State (22 completions, ABET-ETAC bachelor's track tied to aerospace electronics and the Wichita aviation cluster), Eastern Kentucky University (20, applied tech bachelor's), Oregon Institute of Technology (14, ABET-ETAC bachelor's in computer systems engineering technology), and Inter American University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon (9, regional tech bachelor's). If you're considering a 15.1299 program, the wage data ($74K five-year median) is a national average that Full Sail's specific game-and-simulation labor market drives — your individual program's outcomes depend almost entirely on which of those very different curricula you enroll in. Verify the program directly with alumni and salary data, not the federal CIP-level average.
Which certifications should I plan to stack alongside the degree, and when?
Certifications matter more than the degree title in this CIP for hiring outcomes — treat them as part of the curriculum, not as something you do later. The high-leverage stack depends on your pivot lane, but the foundational ladder is roughly the same: start with CompTIA A+ in semester one or two (gateway credential, employer signal), add Network+ and Security+ by mid-program (these alone open most help-desk and SOC-analyst doors), and layer Linux+ or Linux Foundation LFCS late in the program (most production infrastructure runs on Linux). From there the lanes diverge. Cloud lane: AWS Cloud Practitioner first, then AWS Solutions Architect Associate or SysOps Administrator Associate during senior year — this is the single most valuable cert path for wage growth in 2026. Network engineering lane: Cisco CCNA during the program, CCNP within two years of graduation. Security lane: CompTIA CySA+ and Security+ during the program, then a SOC-analyst cert (Splunk Core, Microsoft SC-200) post-graduation. Controls and embedded lane: ISA CCST (Certified Control Systems Technician) and an embedded-systems-specific cert from a vendor like NXP or STMicroelectronics. Cross-cutting: VMware VCP-DCV is still valuable for enterprise virtualization roles; Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900) and Administrator Associate (AZ-104) are worthwhile for Microsoft-heavy employers. Programs that bake certifications into the curriculum — pay for the exam vouchers, run cert-prep cohorts, and align coursework to cert objectives — are signaling that they understand the labor market. Programs that treat certs as optional after-class activities are not.