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He REALLY needs the BSME (or a BS in some engineering field) to really excel. BUT, like JoeMama said, it is tremendously helpful if he truly knows how to use his hands AND tools on real world projects, even if it's how to successfully rebuild an engine or work on farm equipment, or cars, or motorcycles, or other general mechanical or electrical projects.

And it's especially important nowadays to have a clean record so that you don't have any trouble getting a security clearance.

When I was interviewing and hiring folks for NASA and Army Missile Command contractors, I looked for folks with BS degrees in an Engineering discipline, or Math, or Physics first, then I narrowed the cut to those who had some actual hands-on experience and knew how to get dirty (and I mean greasy dirty not morally dirty), then I looked at attitude.

And I really wasn't too interested in folks that had 4.0 averages, unless they could show me they had a lot of useful hands-on skills, and I'm not talking about hands-on with video games either. I paid more attention to kids with 3-point-something averages or even high 2-point-something, especially if they knew their way around a shop and had worked their way through school, had a good attitude, and were willing to LISTEN.

I could make one helluva good engineer out of a kid like that. And I didn't care too much about the engineering discipline as much as I cared about the hands-on abilities. One of the best guys we ever hired had a degree in Agricultural Engineering, but he had lots of hands-on practical experience, and today he's one of the top RDT&E (Research, Development, Test & Evaluation) Engineers on UAV projects (Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (aka Drones)) and Aircraft Survivability for the Army Missile Command.

Another option I strongly recommend is the co-op program. This is where a student, around the middle of his sophomore year (depending on the University) starts a program of working for one semester in his engineering discipline and then going to school for a semester, then working , then school, and so on until graduation. This not only gains the kid invaluable experience in his engineering discipline, but also earns him enough money to pay for most of his school, AND makes him MUCH more hire-able. I did this and my son did this.

I also strongly encouraged the young engineers we hired to get their P.E. stamp (Professional Engineering certification) as soon as they could. In the real world, outside of the government, that P.E. stamp carries a LOT of weight and can make a huge difference in your earnings in some fields.

The P.E. stamp is much more valuable than a MS or PhD in Engineering, so get the P.E. first and then if you want to get the MS or PhD later, that's okay. My son (who, like his old man, majored in Civil Engineering) just got his P.E. this spring, at age 26, and it's already increased his salary by nearly 50%. Now he's thinking about getting his MS in Engineering Management or an Engineering specialty.

I, a Civil Engineer, got hired by a major gov't contractor doing work for NASA, the Army Missile Command, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission because of my hands-on experience. Then once hired, I was offered the opportunity to go back to school, on their nickle. I earned engineering certifications (in the government realm, about the same as a Masters degree), in Nuclear Environmental Qualification Engineering, Test Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, and specialties in Life Support Systems, Command & Data Management Systems, and even Seismic Engineering. I've got more than enough hours to have a PhD, but in the Gov't world, these certifications were more valuable than a PhD. And you had to have these certs to work on the projects that I was on even if you already had a PhD.