So how many years full time study do you stay in University to get an M.E. in the countries where people typically get M.E. degrees?
In Australia, a standard BE. contains an extra (4th) year over a normal (BA. BSc. Etc...) bachelor's degree, so by default it includes an honours year where you do a thesis, etc. And you can't get a 3 year BE.
Over here, it's a 5-year university degree, but our system is a bit more complex than this.
A master's degree used to be a 4-year degree here, and there was an additional year (5th) before you could start a PhD. They switched to a model to better match the rest of the world I guess, while still keeping the "5-year" barrier that recruiters have been used to, so now a master's degree is a 5-year degree basically. Additionally, engineering degrees here have a special status and are not master's degrees. They are 5-year degrees and are delivered in engineering schools.
Getting an engineering job without a master's degree here is close to impossible, unless you can prove you're qualified with a long experience. And even so, it's pretty tough. So most engineers not having a master's or engineering degree are experienced people that have gotten internal promotions.
Even a master's degree is not the best here as we have specific engineering degrees that are preferred by recruiters.