3 answers
Lisa’s Answer
An electrician is a skilled laborer. An electrical engineer is a professional with a 4 year college degree. To become an electrician, you'll need to take some courses at a trade school or community college to learn basic skills needed by an electrician. You'll then find a company to take you on as an apprentice. Once you have enough knowledge and on-the-job training (about 4 years) , you apply to become an electrician through your state's licensing board and become a journeyman electrician. To become an electrical engineer, you'll go to college and take to earn your Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree. After graduation, you'll look for a job as an electrical engineer in industry, or continue on with your education and earn a Masters or PhD.
Ed’s Answer
An electrician's career will largely be working with installs, repairs, etc. within building or homes.
An engineer's career can very quite substantially depending on the sub-specialty within an EE degree. For example, they might be a design engineer on power circuitry for various electronic boards, cars, buildings, etc. Or, they could take Computer engineering courses with the EE degree and become a software programmer. Or, you could focus on digital logic and became an ASIC/FPGA engineer. Another EE might focus on the analog world and design circuits or systems around sensing and/or creating those types of analog signals.