Graduate Starting Salaries (in Engineering) and the Underlying Message
Posted by Heading Out on March 21, 2010 - 10:59am
Heading Out (Dave Summers) has not been able to write this past week because of eye problems and eye surgery, but now seems to be on his way to recovery. In the absence of his usual tech talk, this is a short post Dave wrote recently on a related topic.--Gail
While there are many different criteria that cause students to choose different careers, it is a reality that whenever the salaries for those working in the extraction of fossil fuels goes up, so does our enrollment.
Here are the current top 10 average starting salaries:
Given that the mining and petroleum industries were hit badly after the mid 80s with a drop in demand for fuel, given the global availability of cheap oil, for two decades salaries and the need for graduates were both very limited.
Thus when the last upturn in demand came along, there were not a lot of qualified engineers in the system as it regrew, particularly those in the middle levels of management. And those of us who were around before the ‘80s are now moving into retirement so that there is a need beyond that which can be met by existing supply from the most critical disciplines at the Universities.
The numbers in the above table are averages; I have heard of more than one petroleum graduate starting at above $100k and mining engineers going out at around $85k, it all depends on the quality of the student, and which part of the industry they aim at getting into. But even in these tough times generally because of the lack of supply there is still a strong demand for graduates. Of course we are now starting to see some of the larger incoming classes starting to work their way through the system and start to graduate and meet demand – but I suspect that the top three will continue to be in that position for a while.
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With globalization are whitecollar jobs in the crosshairs on wages.The ceo of Intel said a couple of weeks back said there was no difference between a US engineer and one from India.Greenspan said about eighteen months ago where companies can save dollars is whitecollar wages and several guest on CNBC programs have said the same thing.A single page in the back of a textbook in the fifties still sticks in my mind the title "The Future" one day computers,robots etc will result of only 30% of the population would be needed to supply everyones needs.With over a decade in the US of having 9.5% productivity increases on which the stock market rallied on the news are we now in adjustment period .If viewed earlier I promise to enforce the three cup on coffee rule before getting anywhere near the key board.
Petroleum and Chemical Engineering graduates have been 1 and 2 for decades even when there was less demand. Part of the reason for this is these areas of study are very difficult. Have never noticed the starting income spread so large between the two though.
As a person with one red seal trade, one technical profession, (ex pilot), and a grad degree in leadership, save your money and don't buy into the post secondary hype. The entire training system is marketed beyond all common sense to the point where parents simply assume for success their child must go on to University. Sports also indoctrinates this commitment. Friday high school football, Sat. college ball, Sunday NFL. The same for basketball.
My neighbour is a wealthy, ex iron worker. His fishing partner makes more than 200 k per year working with steel. My 25 year old makes the same as an industrial electrician.
You want a profession/trade that is portable, certified so it can't be scabbed, apprenticed (so that you are paid while you learn and not end up with student loans, and has some value in a post peak world.
You want a job that not just anyone can do, but that is applicable in many fields. You won't get a high voltage transformer installed in India when it it needs to go here, and it is against the law for foreign workers to come in and physically take work away from citizens. However, if your work can be transferred with a mouse, you are toast. I used to teach CAD and the work is simply done overseas, now.
I wish I had never left my first trade, although I did love the flying.
Respectfully....Paulo
Good points. High starting salaries in the past went along with not being able to find jobs for graduates in these areas. The WSJ which showed the same statistics also pointed out that only 42% of engineering graduates found jobs in 2009. And when companies need to downsize they are quick to treat engineers like all other disposable personnel. As has been documented lately, many college graduates only succeed in building up debt. On the other hand the most dedicated with a modicum of intelligence will find a way to succeed. As in many areas,one must chose carefully.
and the other 58% registered for law school
_____________________________
interesting that 2009 + 3 = 2012
whatever that means
As with any degree, a lot of people who earn the degree had no business being in the engineering college.
As an example, I've interviewed hundreds of new grads. One guy was getting his degree, but his real interest was playing football. He had a low GPA, and he couldn't answer some fairly basic questions. He did even worse on "soft" questions about engineering-related hobbies and such. His demeanor, personality, and desires weren't aligned with my sort of engineering life at all, though he was decently sharp and could play the college game.
The best engineers I've hired have had decent grades (nowhere near perfect), grew up on farms, worked on cars and computers, and sometimes blew stuff up in their back 40. They knew how to fix stuff because they'd broken plenty of it, and they know what real deadlines are, and how to prioritize.
Engineering isn't just a degree, or a job, or even a career. It's a mindset and a way of doing things at a fundamental level.
I guarantee that I get more value out of the engineers I hire at 75% of the above than those who pay top-dollar for 4.0 grads. And we have fun doing it.
That is an important point. Having worked with both (I'm Canadian), I found that there really is no difference between a US engineer and an Indian engineer in terms of what they can do. The big difference is that India now graduates about 3 or 4 times as many engineers as the US. (China graduates considerably more).
The US engineers may not like this situation, but actually, the Indian engineers don't do all that badly money-wise in the global context. US engineers just have to realize that they don't have any kind of global monopoly on expertise.
FYI, I have an Indian software development shop and the all-up cost of a graduate developer fresh out of uni is USD 300 per month. Contrast this with my employer tax in Europe which alone can be higher than this.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you. This applies even to professional engineers (people who are licensed by states to stamp plans for construction projects). In order to get around the requirement for U.S. engineers to be fully involved in all phases of design of U.S. construction projects (the plain English definition of "responsible charge"), some larger firms are having conceptual design and final checking done in the U.S., yet having all the detailed design done by subsidiaries in India. It may not be *exactly* illegal, but in my opinion, it's pushing it...
Of course, engineers often have someone else do the grunt work and just put their stamp of approval on the final design. My brother (an engineer) would do this whenever he didn't have time to sweat the details - he'd just have the guys in the plant do the design and he would check their results afterwards. Typically, he said, they would design something that was twice as strong as necessary, and cost 50% more than necessary, but there wasn't much chance of it falling down.
His forte was designing something that was exactly as strong as it needed to be (but no stronger) and cost exactly as little as possible (but no less), and that was what they paid him the big bucks for.
If he had used engineers from India to do it, most likely they would have dialed the exact numbers for strength and cost, and his value-added would have consisted of rubber-stamping their design.
A Bachelors degree in Aerospace/Aeronautical/astronautical Engineering????
For real? This has to be a joke.
This degree is similar to mechanical engineering, often with more emphasis on fluid mechanics (hydraulic systems, flow of gases). These engineers are needed in the defense industry and commercial aircraft manufacturing, and some in wind turbine manufacturing. And some work for NASA developing technologies that put satellites into space so you can use your GPS when you get lost.
Better spend a little more time around an engineer before viewing one's occupation as a joke.
You are right on Aero and perhaps I shouldn't belittle Petroleum Engineering. Yet, if you look at the amount that Petroleum Engineers actually learn about oil depletion fundamentals or how to apply real science to engineering it is actually quite lacking.
Concepts such as the reservoir size distributions, oil shock model, dispersive discovery, and other stochastic analysis should have easily been part of a petroleum engineering curriculum, as they are so fundamental to understanding of the science of a non-renewable resource. These concepts really should be as core to a petroleum engineer's education as the derivation of Kirchoff's Law to an electrical engineer. It would place the needed insight into the limited nature of the resource.
I have looked at some of the petroleum engineering textbooks and they are brim full of heuristics without much in the way of first principles notions. An Aero engineer will likely know the fundamental derivations of the Fokker-Planck or Navier-Stokes equations much better than a Petroleum Engineer ever would. The PE's will know the "formies" or how to run some workstation "sim" but they will lack the insight and curiosity to really understand the physics behind the phenomena or gain any other deeper meaning.
I probably shouldn't be as harsh as I sound, but think about it; Petroleum Engineering is essentially a degree in how to plunder a non-renewable resource. When placed in that context, as a discipline without a learned conscience, it probably deserves a kick in the pants.
Petroleum engineers who don't know oil depletion fundamentals, Web, thats the second funniest thing I've seen you post around here. You also own the first, but I didn't mention it at the time because I thought it might be a typo.
Bring it on man. You were the guy that said Global Warming was good because it would open up the Arctic to more oil exploration.
If someone doesn't believe this, here is the link:
http://peakoil.com/depletion-modeling/comments-on-the-general-approach-t...
How rich.
Oh Web please! You are just irritated that a bunch of malcontent heuristic specialists who's (differential equation solving / party time) ratio doesn't rise to your personal standards somehow become top of the heap in the market place.
And yes, it is easier to drill if all the ice were to melt. Struck me as obvious statement back when I said it, and it still does. The next time you are drilling off a submersible and you spot icebergs, I dare you to come back here and let us all know how much easier it was dodging them rather than doing a straight up job on a landrig in Texas.
A neighbor kid I grew up with, a year ahead of me, got a geophysics degree and has been CEO of several oil exploration companies. I only found out about this over the last year and a half, well after I started researching this subject on my own dime. I think it's kind of neat to see someone I used to know from the boonies of the upper midwest make an exponentially nice and tidy living.
I never held a grudge on the salaries being made, just on the philosophy of the curriculum and why so little of petroleum engineering has concerns over resource constraints. Electrical engineering would be taught way differently if electrons were a finite resource (and holes couldn't take up the slack :)
Speaking as someone who once designed a computer system to input radar and weather station data and calculated the probability of a $1 billion semisub being crushed by the Arctic ice pack in time for it to disconnect from the drill string, pull up the anchors, and run for safety, I would say: go for the landrig in Texas.
It's just a whole lot simpler.
Bet your backside. It has always struck me as interesting that mentioning actual facts like this is viewed as grounds for denigration in some circles.
And, other than the fact that drilling in the Arctic is much more technically difficult than drilling in Texas, there's another complicated factor: The Arctic Ocean appears to be gas prone, unlike the Gulf of Mexico which is oil prone. This would be great if what we wanted to find was gas, but as a result of the recent shale gas boom, there is an awful lot of surplus gas in the US, and soon to be a lot of surplus gas elsewhere as shale gas technology spreads.
Not that we didn't find any oil, but the key issue is that you need to find a HUGE amount of oil to justify building the production facilities and pipelines, and that doesn't appear to be in the cards. An ordinary, everyday giant oil field of half a billion barrels or so just isn't economic in the high Arctic.
RMG: You actually have enough weather station data up there to give you the lead time you need? Or was that a big part of the probability problem? I was talking to the Shell guy running the seismic on the Beaufort back in 2008 and he just couldn't get decent several day forecasts, which was a problem since it took about three days to haul in all the seismic gear. Last I heard Shell was still planning on drilling this summer. Of course in addition to ice they have the subsistance whale hunt to deal with. All fun and games in the arctic.
The drilling platform had its own weather station, which was tied into the computer system, and its own radar to track the movement of the Arctic ice pack (also tied into the computer).
They only needed about 8 hours warning to drop the drill string, pick up the anchors, and run for it. The purpose of the purpose of the computer system was just to tell them when it was time to run for it. The platform was worth about $1 billion, so they didn't want it being turned into scrap metal unexpectedly.
It was all very exciting to work on. It would have been even more exciting if they had found something profitable.
Reserve: I'm afraid you don't want to live on a planet where the arctic never has ice year round. Big ice is going to form in the arctic every winter people are still around to drill. Huge masses of wind blown ice are a driller's nightmare and are already causing significant problems in some places. Easier is a relative term. Of course icebergs are a slightly different story, when the glaciers are gone so are the icebergs.
I don't know that it would be so bad. The dinosaurs seemed to like it. The ones living in Antarctica had great big eyes so they could see during the 6 months of winter darkness, although the ones in Alaska could just migrate south for the winter.
And there's always the prospect of getting some nice waterfront property on the Arctic Ocean and putting up a beach house c/w beach volleyball course. This would have worked well during dinosaur times because the Arctic Ocean back then was as warm as the water off California is today.
However, I think it might be premature at this point in time. I don't think it's warming up all that quickly compared to what it has done in the past. (I just finished reading a book called "Climate Change in Prehistory", and man! did they have some huge changes back then! Its a wonder our ancestors survived. In fact, most of them didn't.)
I've heard of some radical changes coming fast when the dust really starts blowing off Africa. My wife's corporation has hundreds of miles of beautiful black sand ocean front land, with active volacanoes in the background...might be the resort destination of the world some day. I wonder if the winds will have shifted farther north by then ?- )
Last thing I saw done about dinosaurs of arctic still had it freezing up in winter. No reason for the Alaska beasts to migrate south if it was California coast warm it would seem. Of course dinosaurs were around for a real long time, they must have handled lots of climate scenarios. Back then what there was of Alaska was quite a bit farther north and it seems I remember that Antarctica wasn't as far south either.
No, the joke is that a degree in Petroleum Engineering exists.
This discipline falls under the category of Built-in Obsolescence. As petroleum use dwindles down, this could be the first engineering degree that actually disappears from all curricula. No other engineering degree exists that has such a non-generalized emphasis. IMO, it should have been a tech school diploma.
Aero engineering actually has relevance because space and air will always exist -- the only question is what fuel we will use in the future to propel ourselves through the medium.
As a one time aerospace engineer who has been mostly unemployed for 3 decades, I think you are missing the point.
How many aircraft will be needed as the US bubble economy falls apart? And how long will the new ones last if many fewer people are flying? Better yet, how many US aerospace companies will there be, after the bloated military-industrial complex fades, as it did in the USSR? The aerospace industry was based on cheap energy, especially oil and when that's gone, it's unlikely that there will be a big need for so many workers and engineers. BTW, I became the wind energy expert at my university, while I was a graduate student, way back when...
E. Swanson
I know many Aero engineers that work in areas other than real aerospace or aviation disciplines. These people have got a good grasp on such areas of expertise as (1) control laws (2) computer-aided design (3) fluid mechanics (4) engineering software and other disciplines. For many of them, the reason they got into Aero is because they were really interested in working in really techie areas such as aircraft design and space, and they simply parlayed that interest into other areas when they found that aero jobs were not always easy to come by.
And the point about the cheap energy, I made that point in my last sentence, so I don't think I missed your point at all.
I was expecting to do mechanical design after my BS, but continued to a MS, after which I worked on control systems analysis and design. I've done a bit of CAD work and FORTRAN programming, as well as some AI research and work with alternative energy systems. Still didn't fine work, since I learned the hard way that I could not tolerate smog, thus left California in search of cleaner air. Probably a bad career move.
Anyway, you wrote:
Your statement was:
I was trying to point out that the customers of the aerospace industry are going to find it difficult to make a living without the cheap energy which we once enjoyed back in the 20th century. Without a large market for commercial aircraft, it's difficult to envision the continuation of the large aerospace industry we once had, other than that for military uses. We know how to get into orbit, go to the Moon and maybe Mars, but, absent a viable economy, we simply can't afford to go there...
E. Swanson
B_D:
You took exactly the right route in getting a solid education with excellent credentials, sorry things didn't work out.
Yes, I agree Aero will likely fade away, but the principle of the discipline will remain. It could get resurrected if some other incredible energy alternative turns up. But that won't happen with Petroleum Engineering, a dead-end ADAIAC. The future replacement for P.E. would be Dilithium Crystal Engineering, I suppose.
I'm working at one of the last bastions of Fortran (Fortran 77 even). And doing ME. But I had to leave my beloved mountain living and move to California to do it. The price for career continuation had to be paid.
I'm not convinced about the imminent decline of aero. As fuel grows ever more expensive the need to maximize efficiency should only grow. Yes, I know that there is a limit for heavier than air flight which limits Kilogram Miles per Joule, and current airplanes aren't hugely far from it. But how many of those kilograms are payload, versus aircraft? I bet a radical new design that minimizes airplane weight at the expense of speed could make a big difference.
Living near a large airport, i drool thinking about all the cows, row crops and orchards we could use that land for. Its too bad the local millionaires all have private hangers and private jets that probably will have fuel long after the rest of us run out.
But, face facts, large airports generate far more money than cows, row crops, and orchards. There are large numbers of places that can grow cows, row crops, and orchards but not that many where they have any reason to put large airports.
Ah, yes. I once drove through Aspen, Colorado, but my wife suffered a severe allergic reaction to the excessive affluence, and we had to leave rapidly. It was the valet parking for private jets that upset her the most, and of course the huge number of private jets.
It's not that our home is a great deal different from Aspen, it's just that we don't have the private jets. The local airport only handles helicopters. (Too much vertical relief in the landscape for jets.) And we are on a first-name basis with most of the helicopter pilots so it seems more community-oriented somehow.
And we'll have fuel long after the rest of you run out, but that's for different reasons.
That is not a real safe bet.
Well, for me it's a safe bet because I know where it is buried. For other people, though, it may be a less safe bet.
You can buy it from us if you can outbid the Chinese for it.
As long as things are more or less stable it will be sold to the highest bidder. You will be getting it to the Chinese how otherwise? Face it our two countries are locked together pretty tightly when push comes to shove, of course we are just talking a slightly different criteria for what constitutes the highest bidder in that situation.
As an interesting side note. I was watching the CEO of the Pebble partnership testifying to our resource committee last week. Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., the company with the Pebble claims doing the predevelopment work is always called a Canadian company. How come all the references to their board mentioned them at their headquarters in London--I'm guessing they weren't talking London, Ontario. Well you do have a picture of the queen on your money. Putting a Canadian flags on big Brit international resource extraction outfits would be a very politically wise move. Nobody hates Canada...yet ?- )
Now, I have the utmost respect for Web, he is a huge plus for TOD. But I just don't think the need for Petro engineering services will go away during the careers of todays students. As oil becomes dearer and dearer because of relative scarcity, we will go to greater and greater lengths to get just a little bit more of it.
Assuming they are just being trained as narrow minded specialist engineeres, turn the crank and do your job sorts, thats probably just what prospective employers, and wannabe PEs probably want. But engineers have never really been scientists; interested in pursuing truth for its own sake, they are usually just interested in designing something and making a decent living at it. Expecting a well rounded education as well, is probably too much to expect.
The transition from engineer to scientist is certainly not an easy one, at least it wasn't for me, and was difficult to even recognize. I transferred from practical field operations into research science back in the late-90's. I was originally hired for my technical expertise, marginal field operations and economics, unconventionals, off beat directional drilling solutions, inhouse advice, that sort of thing.
During the SPE national convention in 2008...I wandered the sacred halls of petroleum engineers, went to talks, visited with other alumni, and came away feeling.....unfulfilled. It was weird to realize that my profession of choice, a career I had chosen at the age of 16 being certain I would never be required to wear a suit, something which I was paid to do and had financially supported me since 3 days after my last final in college, was suddenly...not...what I was anymore.
It was disconcerting to say the least. But it certainly is possible in the right environment.
PS: On the downside, I do now on occasion have to wear a suit.
Engineers I believe inhabit the continuum between scientists and technicians. Ideally they should be capable of distilling the research ideas of scientists into practice. But that also means the best engineers know the language and understand the fundamentals of science just as well as the research physicists.
Oftentimes, at the highest graduate levels you can't even tell the difference between an electrical engineer and a physicist. You can see this in the various fields of study: engineering physics, applied mathematics, physical chemistry, chemical physics, materials science, solid-state physics, microelectronics, etc. Lots of cross-hybridization goes on in the most fundamental of the engineering disciplines. But then you have something like Petroleum Engineering and it looks like a trade school study course with the graduates trained as technicians (although well-paid for their work), with virtually no interaction with the other physics-based disciplines. So what research insights do the Petroleum Engineers really understand? Some geology perhaps? And that is an empirical field at best.
Perhaps that's why they never get any brilliant insight beyond their short-sighted view of maximizing returns. It takes a physicist like Hubbert (a geo-physicist I think) to put the pieces together and provide the insight. And then you have other scientists like Smalley and Goodstein to hammer the point home, with nary a Petroleum Engineer in sight to agree with their views.
Sorry, but that's the way I see it.
What's "well rounded"? In my school, the first two years were basic, common to pretty much all engineers, and it included a lot of "rounding" courses....econ, psychology, etc. And of course even after two years you had a lot of math and physics.
It's hard to get a full engineering education squeezed in to 4 years, and harder still to do it while taking some non-engineering courses. But to me, and engineering degree is far more "well rounded" than say a business degree, or even a math degree. Engineering deals a lot with how the world works and with making reasonable estimates and assumptions -- aptitudes that apply every day in real life.
I do agree that Petro Engineers will be needed for a long time, and the harder that oil is to find the more they'll be needed. Design engineers for alt energy production and higher-efficiency appliances will be needed as well.
The Canadian school system I went through ran the students through the typical first year university in grade 12 of high school, and then added 4 years of university on top of that. That worked out a lot better.
Not that I'm an engineer, although I've often been mistaken for such. But it's worked out well for my many relatives who are engineers.
A farmer is having trouble with one of cows. She won't produce any milk. So he takes her to the local university's ag school, they look at her and say, "She needs a better diet, feed her these grasses and she'll be better soon."
Since he's at the university, he also takes her to the pharmacy school, and they say, "Give her these vitamins and meds, and she'll be back to her old self in no time."
He then decides to take Bessie to the engineering school. "Leave her with us and come back in a week." So he leaves her there and comes back in a week. The engineers say, "Imagine a spherical, frictionless cow with negligible mass ... "
Unfortunately, the spherical cow is a longstanding physics joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
If you dissect it, it really does not apply to engineering as well as to physics, because engineers will use an approximation if it ends up as a practical solution, but a physicist may have to approximate if he wants to prove some theory.
Hey, you guys left out the Computer Science Department!
WE have generated a new and improved Bessie for you in Second Life.
(Also we have solved the Peak Oil thingy problem by projecting the core of the Second Life planet as having a creamy nogut center that exponentially increases its abiotic output based on a compound interest formula)
Perhaps petroleum engineers command a premium as compensation for joining an industry which in past downturns has treated its employees as expendables.
If they don't know it going in, they usually find out during their first trip through a downturn.
So who is advising these students (generally young people) that this is a viable "career" path? (rhetorical)
Those of us who have turned it into a viable career path. They do ask us alum's back to tell the students about our careers, what we learned of value while in school, what was missed entirely, etc etc.
This is the kind of stuff that Reservegrowthrulz probably tells the young-un's when he goes back to visit his old school:
Ain't the internet archives fun?
And a great quote from RockyMtnGuy on this very subject;
"They (The IEA) produced a wonderful study indicating that 25% of the world's oil reserves were in the arctic. As it happens, I worked for a company that ran a drilling fleet of 26 vessels in the Canadian Arctic Ocean for a decade or so. We also drilled a lot of wells in the MacKenzie Delta, and ran seismic surveys off the coast of Greenland. Some people I knew also got involved in Russian oil exploration, which was mostly an exercise in fighting Russian bureaucracy. While we found a lot of interesting things, we didn't find any commercial amounts of oil. It's drastically different from the Gulf of Mexico, which is what I assume the USGS is comparing it to. There's oil, but not enough to justify the costs. There's lots of natural gas, some tar sands, and some huge diamond deposits (now, that's what any geologist with a fully functional crystal ball would have gone after had they only known). But not much oil."
Let me add that I don't think the breakup of the Arctic ice pack will not do much for oil production, but it might be useful in that it will allow tankers to shortcut between continents via the Arctic Ocean.
The Arctic is not going to do much to prevent Peak Oil, but it may contribute a lot of natural gas toward the latter half of the 21st century. In the first half of the 21st century there will probably be enough natural gas available elsewhere, but some of it may be shipped via the Arctic Ocean.
As for oil - you may want to de-emphasis it.
Who advises the kids?
First of all, most school counselors have never had a real job in the real world. I'm not talking about summer jobs....I mean the ones where you put up and slog it out to pay the bills and know that if the company fails you are screwed. What the hell do they know about design, structures, trades, deadlines that cost money, etc? What do they really know about the 400 or so students they are assigned to, or their families? What do they know about business? They only know what they are exposed to, and that is the marketing scheme of the University System. They are also a product of that same system.
Why is it the schools job to raise kids and point them in the right direction, anyway?
Who becomes teachers and counselors? First of all, and for the most part, it was the kids who liked school and did well at it. As an ex teacher I would say that teachers who cannot fit into this very narrow minded profession, (that is asked to do more and more with less and less), leave asap. The stats....15% quit after 1 year, approx 45% quit after 5 years. Many get married and start having kids and cannot afford to leave even if they wanted to. I used to have three jobs....I taught electronics and metal during the day, flew bush planes after school and on weekends, and then built stuff during the summer or flew part time. Before that I worked in industry. I have met some absolutely excellent teachers who have done nothing but good for their students, and I have met some turkeys. Just like engineers...I have seen a parking lot fall into into a grocery store because an engineer screwed up some math. I have built structures for engineers who did not know one thing about building and had to be taught what would actually work.
Parents have a responsibility to teach their kids that life is real, that there is no free ride, and that students have to find their own way and choose a career that will work for them. Just as we rail on and on about BAU, remember, most parents are BAU and don't really know what is out there. We teach our children to ride a bike and read to them. It is incumbent upon parents to remain current and be involved in their child's education. If you abdicate responsibility to people who are entrenched in an unrealistic system, you get poor results.
Sub Prime folks who bought houses beyond what they can afford have kids, too. SUV drivers have kids. BAU blinded have children. Why wouldn't there be casualties of poor career choices?
We all need to take personal responsibility of what we do in life, and where we are. Most of the contributors to TOD seem to be doing just that, and offer freely of their time and ideas to make their knowledge available to others. A 71 year old building up a farm for grand kids is a fine example of what I am talking about. That is real education....that is involvement...that is taking responsibility.
Respectfully....Paulo
...and it includes the risk premium for becoming redundant again soon.
Looking at the big picture here: Take the total number of graduates in each of the fields above and divide into the number that actually get a job in that field in the first year after graduation. Apply the resulting factor to the salaries posted above. I bet the spread increases dramatically. Do these numbers include kids who graduate and can't get a job, or take any job they can find?
Or have they seen graphs like this one:
Series Id: CEU4142470001
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Super Sector: Wholesale trade
Industry: Petroleum
NAICS Code: 4247
Data Type: ALL EMPLOYEES, THOUSANDS
Bureau of Labor Statistics Data
If that doesn't work here's the same series 2000-2010.
The database is down for right now.
I bet you get a similar graph for a lot of kinds of engineering and technical degrees--for example, I bet electricity doesn't do much better.
One area of growth has been in finance. It is hard to see that continuing, though.
As an unemployed civil engineer I always tell family friends and young people if you are going into engineering DO NOT go into Civil, Surveying, or Architecture. The same difficulty of class structure for half the pay.
Consider dual degrees. I had a background in Mechanical Eng., went back to school and doubled up on Civil and Computer Science. This vesatility got me noticed and led to better paying "hybrid jobs". I ended up as an IT manager for a Civil Eng. firm because I undertood well what my people required, I spoke their language.
A highly motivated friend began with an MBA, became an Anesthesiologist, and eventually got his law degree and passed the Bar. He's always in demand and can usually name his price. He worked his way through schools, gaining experience and had no student loans. He retired early, yet still does one shift at the hospital and handles legal/business matters for a select few.
Not a bad approach. To learn critical thinking, I would make the suggestion that people stay away from engineering disciplines that require lots of rote memorization.
I worked as a tutor for an engineering and science school and have experience with the entire gamut of technical disciplines. I found a vast difference in curricula in how much problem solving versus plugging in formulas was involved. In some sense, smartness was often measured by how well students could memorize formulas, and that was what made some of the departments seem harder than others. They weren't really harder, just that the professors had a trial-by-fire mentality in trying to weed out the creative thinkers in favor of the potential worker bees who wouldn't ask any questions.
All too true WHT !
But see comment down thread of newly minted engineer who thinks he knows more math than the math majors.
My guess is that your friend's success has more to do with being intellectually gifted. Take someone with a 160+ IQ that does well on less than 6 hours sleep and being successful is almost a given.
Implying that being highly motivated is the main needed input to getting ahead is not really fair to the rest of us who are of more modest mental functioning abilities.
I feel that a good approach is to find the closest match of passion for and job that you can find. If you have a passion for something that an engineering degree will help with then do it, otherwise not.
Ghung-
Anesthesiologist? Ha... How about Jack Daniels! You could perform brain surgery on me after a night out downtown and i wouldn't feel a thing. I still remember the time putting my hand on a charcoal grill, knowing my hand was burnt, but not feeling anything!!! Oh well... Now.. Orthopedic surgeons... worth their weight in gold.
Given the fact that many big banks pay an average salary of $300'000 even if they produce a record loss, it's good to know, that a few young people choose to learn a technical profession regardless of what they might earn.
this post speaks directly to our doom. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
The numbers above can be quite misleading for representing the value of an engineering profession. The truth is that real engineers don't have an income ceiling because they tend to capitalize on their ideas and make something out of them instead of performing slave-labour. For example, John and Mike are both studying electronics in school. Ten years later, John is the majority shareholder of a major chip CAD company based on his own thesis of a biomimicry routing algorithm while Mike is still doing petty entry-level work, mainly using John's software without any clue of how it works. There really are two categories of engineers - those that do the drudgery entry-level work and those that define where we are going next. You can usually tell the difference between these two categories. Just because a petroleum engineer makes more at entry-level, this doesn't mean a motivated student shouldn't pick electrical engineering. There is probably more research and patent opportunity in photovoltaic engineering. We already know wind power is going to be huge, but we have only seen a few small attempts at high-altitude wind power. Who will be the next millionaire/billionaire engineering student that figures out a viable ultracapacitor?
Choosing any engineering profession because it's the fastest way to decent money is an awful approach to life. One should choose a discipline that s/he is firmly interested in, do one's best to serve, and let the success and money follow. If you're really smart enough to do engineering, you should be smart enough to either stay away from it and choose something higher-paying, or else smart enough to start/make something.
I guess my credibility is limited because I'm not successful yet. Well, I've spent the last year working for a major chipmaker. I'm doing it for two reasons : 1) I'm finishing up school and getting at least some slave-labour experience and prove to myself I could have worked this the traditional way, and 2) to prove my belief that most engineers are not real engineers. My contract will be up soon, I have enough money for years of grad school, and I'm going to go design a data mining system-on-chip that can be used in drug discovery.
Any other eng's on this board actually making something?
I cannot name names or say what company I am working for right now, but the field of sales engineering seems to be doing pretty well - at least in the HVAC sector. The job is not outsourceable because success depends on having good relationships with all the mechanical contractors and people at the other HVAC companies in your area. Without these relationships, stuff does not get done in the HVAC world. Designing a chiller is outsourceable because an Indian can do that just as well as a Canadian but actually putting together a job in the $100,000-1,000,000 range, especially a retrofit job might involve products from one or two large HVAC companies, the services of three small companies, parts from 3 other small companies and controls from a large controls company. Coordinating all this is real work, albeit not real "engineering" work; to do it you need to understand thermodynamics as it pertains to HVAC and understand what all the components of a HVAC system do. However, the work is challenging and lucrative.
Most of the engineers where I work all have multiple income streams and are effectively unionized. Typically an engineer will spend 15-20 years with us and then start their own company. Right now I'm doing 'slave labor' there and hope to get one of the engineering jobs there and make $75k/year with no wife, kids or debt in order to get started on a different venture.
Relationships.
A couple of years ago, a friend of mine in insurance told me "Insurance is a relationship business." I thought about what I was doing and how I interacted with my engineering clients and came back at him with: "All businesses are relationship businesses."
"I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you that half the time this business comes down to 'I don’t like that guy'."
-- Sterling, "Mad Men"
Count me in. First large scale stochastic model ( based on plenty of heuristics of course ) went into the pipe back in 2008, should get final approval for release this year. Model #2 has already attracted the interest of the EIA, various consulting firms, a bank energy analyst or two. Presentations (domestic and international) and publications (accepted by Natural Resources Research last month) already in the pipe.
By "making something" I wasn't sure if you were counting intellectual property in here, but if it makes money, it certainly has value in my book.
Nice work. If the results were funded by a major and ever get outside of the boardroom, I will be duly impressed.
Years ago, in a book on the history of civil engineering, I ran across this quote. "If any aspect of engineering should become routine, its practitioners will descend to the level of a respectable intellectual peasantry." And here we all are.
I've looked and looked, but can't find the source again.
My take on this is that if you're an engineer and aren't on the cutting edge somehow, your job will end up being either programmed into software or outsourced.
On another note, we're mostly wage slaves, it's true, but I wouldn't say we're not real engineers. I had the occasion last week to talk to a planner about rain barrels and cisterns and do a quick back-of-the envelope calc to show that his idea of using 200gal septic tanks for rainwater collection could work for stormwater management if you could use two of them per house.
Numeracy is what separates engineers from the rest of the population. The planner couldn't estimate roof area, 90th percentile rainfall depths, runoff, and convert CF to gallons. Something any sophomore civil should be able to do. It's not as common a skill as you think.
As far as me, I'm not inventing or making anything. I'm marketing, writing proposals, getting work, doing the work, and trying to stay employed while doing something I'm good at that I hope will help improve streams, rivers, and the Chesapeake Bay.
Good post. I did have to snicker when i read this:
"One should choose a discipline that s/he is firmly interested in, do one's best to serve, and let the success and money follow"
Most guys i know would pick porno star about 98.9% of the time. Just tells you that humans are here to reproduce and ... well.. so far that is the only reason i figure i'm on this planet.
Engineers hardly capitalize on their ideas. Their employers may capitalize on their ideas, but will also carry the development risks. (Bankers may actually be the only ones who can capitalize on someones idea without taking any risks.)
What is the product-share out there, where you can actually name the inventor or the inventors?
Can you name any billionaire engineer student who developed current viable ultracapacitors or current viable wind turbines or current viable air crafts or current viable hybrid cars or current efficient light bulbs or current smart phones or current high-power semiconductors or current PV cells for-less-than-$1/watt-production-costs or current inexpensive, efficient flat screens or current successful drug screening systems?
...
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Exactly.
Yes. And I'm simply satisfied knowing that some products we developed actually may be world champion in their tiny field and that alone gives me more satisfaction than being able to capitalize on these ideas - which most people would not have been able to cover the development costs and time anyway. Developing new products is always a very costly process and not an option if you don't have lots of cash and time and are not prepared to lose it all.
Also, developing a new product and seeing it work and succeed is far more satisfactory than managing a business and drawing a big bonus - well assuming you CAN develop things which will successfully challenge competitors...
No, I can't name billionaires. But I can name dozens of millionaires. Most recently, a few of my profs became millionaires when they spun their analog IPs into a company. Another prof I know holds the IP behind many digital signal processors. I also know some computer science profs that patented some algorithms now worth millions. Oh yeah, there's also the google couple whose engineering work made them billions..but I guess they don't count because I don't know them personally... ... ...
So you are basically saying, that there are more people winning lotteries all around the world in a single week than you can name inventors of successful world-market products in more than a decades time-frame...
Needless to say, almost all IP/patents belonging to Google do not even name the founders of the company as the first inventors:
http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&scoring=2&q=inassignee%3Agoogle&btnG=S...
And btw, very few patent algorithms as it is very difficult to proof to someone who is infringing on your algorithm/patent unless the assigner is big and powerful enough to challenge any potential infringer in the court.
But of course lawyers will tell you otherwise, but they also make much more money than engineers...
Keep dreaming.
When this boat goes down, we all sink with it.
(As an aside my fears of a few years back have come to fruition. Some of my kids' friends decided to jump to law school 3 years ago after they discovered there were no jobs in their initial areas of major study (i.e. engineering). Now they're all finishing law school and its kind of like a lemming run, cause there are no jobs in law either. Where did you think the big money comes from in the first place to pay all those lawyers all those big bucks? It came from the engineering companies who have all off-shored themselves. As Gomer Pyle used to say: "Surprise surprise Sergeant.")
No I don't dream. I do see how much we pay IP-lawyers for their comparatively little work.
Well, I guess that's at least somewhat gratifying to hear, because
more lawyers won't reduce the sinking rate but more engineers will...
Do we have a card carrying member of the League for Programming Freedom here?
Sorry you are so bitter.
What did they do to you?
Why are you bitter?
This is just a simple fact. Fact is fact.
IP lawyers have way higher rates than engineers.
This is what it is. End of story.
Or what did they do to you that you cannot accept simple facts?
Dear Anyone,
I wish to ask a tremendous favor of you.
It appears that when you utter words, they become fact.
(This making you a 'silver tongue' according to the movie, InkHeart.)
Can you please utter these printed words for us and thus transform them into facts:
1) Peak Oil is not true and will never happen.
2) Global Warming is not true and will never happen.
3) World peace is true and will come to us all in our times.
4) Evilhood and disease no longer exist in this world, there is only peace, harmony and happiness for everyone.
Thanks ever so much. ;-)
Just because you can't bear the simple fact, that lawyers are paid far higher rates than engineers and scientists is no reason to insult anyone.
If you don't like it, don't blame me - I'm not responsible for their rates (nor am I responsible for their high share in the law/rule making and governing process as opposed to scientists and engineers). :o)
Business Plan for a Freed from Market IT Worker
Luckily I don't work in IT nor am I an IT worker.
Wisely said.
It would be - except, that you still make way more, if you choose to work in the financial sector as opposed to the technology sector.
If you compare the average salaries of the Swiss technology corporation Sulzer with the Swiss financial corporation Credit Suisse, the average Credit Suisse employee earns over 400% more. (And this was also the case when Credit Suisse like many other banks generated a record loss.)
Now you're going and comparing averages. So you missed my initial post/point, which was that most engineers are not real engineers. I'd put out a rough guess that about 19 out of 20 "engineers" are doing routine work on a daily basis. By routine, I mean the job is no longer applied science, but more like a trade. Think of a mechanical engineer who designs screwdrivers for his whole life, or some of the people on my floor who have been running the same CAD flow for 5 years in a row and couldn't answer any of my "what's the theory behind this" questions. I'll just use my own company as a comparison point, because it's a very well known chipmaker (more likely you own one than not):
entry-level - 70k (running the flow, some debugging that requires basic conceptual understanding of how the common stuff works - probably need digital design background from school to some extent)
senior - 90k (contributing to the flow)
engineer IV - 120k (design work, perfect grasp of all the textbook theory and white papers)
---------cut-off - most engineers don't get past this point----------
engineer V - 150k (perfect understanding of all the underlying theory and manufacturing processes that go on behind the scenes)
corporate architect - 250k + options (leading direction of future products, leveraging potential by writing software to automate the job)
senior corporate architect - 300k + options (doing all of the important work, setting up everything the underlings need to do their routine jobs). This is now beyond the income of general physicians.
And those are just the positions for people who are too comfortable with payroll. Most engineers don't make it past engineer IV because they aren't real engineers. So averages really ought not apply. My original point had been that the value of an engineering profession is entirely what you make of it - if you are motivated to actually make or do something, there is absolutely no ceiling on your income potential.
Actually, the average salary at Credit Suisse is already above 300k.
Still higher than your top corporate architect - whatever that may be. A toplevel engineer salary can not at all compete with a toplevel banker salary.
Btw, last time I checked, physicists with a Nobel-price don't even make 200k. In order to make a big salary in a technical profession you need to lead a division or a corporation - and in that function your technical expertise (engineering skills) is usually of less importance. Even engineers who work in sales generally draw higher salaries and have less expertise/skills than engineers who work in R&D (those who actually come up with the inventions).
Your fallacy is, that you believe someones salary is an indicator of an individuals ability/proficiency/skill/capability/intelligence and possibly usefulness to the economy and society - well, it's not. If you define happiness and success by your salary-level, then you are probably better off, if you leave the engineering/technical sector sooner or later - because there are other sectors which simply pay better.
The average salary at CS is not > 300k, it's barely over 100k even after bonuses. You cannot take the average by looking over all employees because the top-level execs are making thousands* multiples of the actual average banker. Go research how many ibankers started in engineering.
Anyways, now you're being totally ignorant of my point. It was simply that the exceptional engineer makes as much if not more than any other profession. And I was indeed referring to being the majority stakeholder in a venture when stating the upper ceiling on income potential is non-existent. The engineers that started the company I work for are now retired hundred-millionaires. The market cap of their venture got big by their first few projects, which was single-handedly done by themselves. Yes there is a point where you are more involved with management than the technical specifics, but the most successful companies have demonstrably been technically run by the same engineer-executives who started them. By no means is it easy to be successful in this fashion. You have to take a huge risk, live like a hobo for many years while forming your ideas, and do your best to market them without surrendering your equity stake. I'm going through the hobo stage.
Btw, I am not a physicist. Furthermore, I don't draw a fine line between applied physics and engineering as I consider them all to be the same field. And, the last Nobel prize winner from my university came back with a $100 million donation..so much for 200k a year.
Wrong , the average salary is above 300k and it can't be above 300k without having a large percentage of the employees making big salaries.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/investors/doc/ar09/csg_ar09_consolidated_f...
This is simple arithmetic's for beginners:
Let's say 1% of the CS employees make $1 million (still a good salary for a CEO in a small tech-company with 100 employees) on average and 99% make $100k on average = average salary is only $109k !
Actually besides that you need to back this up, donations are not considered to be used for discretionary spending...
For most scientific careers the odds of a student achieving an academic position is pitifully small and some have compared it to winning the lottery. Even finding employment in their chosen field outside of universities can be difficult to nearly impossible depending on the field. The crux of the problem is one of feedback as the universities continue to crank out degreed students without knowing if there are going to be jobs for those students and supersaturating the market. While it is tempting to blame the shortsightedness of the student, much of the information the student receives is false or composed of rumors spread by well meaning government types ("We need more scientists and engineers" is the typical refrain) and universities (grant overhead helps pay the bills and more scientists are needed, right?). So, if some students get the highly paid job, how many tried, failed, and moved on to something else?
A good synopsis was provided by an article in Scientific American recently (February 2010):
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-the-us-produce-too-m
It is perfectly logical that demand for petroleum engineers should rise even as oil production declines.
In the past the oil fields were large and easily-accessible (Ghawar, Cantarell), requiring only simple infrastructure and relatively few engineers. In future oil fields will be smaller and technically more complex (deep sea, tar sands). Each individual field will require more engineers, more workers, more effort in general. To give a simple example, the population of Fort McMurray, Alberta, has more than doubled in the past decade. Most of the new arrivals are employed in the petroleum industry.
This is an unusual pattern compared to other industries. In most industries, continual productivity improvements mean fewer people are required (think car-manufacturers). In the oil industry, increased productivity is more than offset by falling oil-field yields.
The major downside of a career in petroleum is the location issue. You can be a teacher, lawyer, doctor, or architect anywhere; but oil jobs are concentrated in unpleasant areas. In North America oil jobs are limited to Texas or Alberta; in Europe it's Aberdeen or Stavanger. This factor alone is off-putting for a lot of people.
Nothing wrong with Aberdeen and Stavanger. Whilst the Albertan tar sands aren't the world's greatest tourist attraction, I believe Calgary is an OK place to work. Even Texas, one of my pals works there, though heaven knows why: it's my idea of hell.
But I'd agree it's an ironic fact that our industry now requires more and more engineering effort to produce less and less. Here in the UK, we're producing half what we were in 1999, but the price has quadrupled, hence we're still doing good business. Pay is much better than it was in 1999, people are being hired instead of fired, and prospects are good - in the short-term.
Of course, halving your production whilst quadrupling your prices every decade is not a viable long-term business model.
Of course it is. As the amount of easily-producible oil declines, you need more and more expertise to produce less and less oil. Although you might not like it, this is better than producing no oil at all.
Petroleum engineering typically involves living in remote locations, often away from family, frequently in dangerous locations, sometimes subject to harsh living conditions (intense heat, cold, mosquitoes), sometimes in deserts, jungles or offshore.
Chemical engineers who work in plants often have career paths that require rotating shift work, supervision of sometimes problem employees, sometimes exposure to hazardous chemicals and working conditions.
Engineers who do project work for clients of a consulting firm, involving designing new plants or modifications to existing plants, are entirely at the mercy of the economic cycle of whatever specialty they are in. They may have a job for the duration of a project, meaning maybe a year, sometimes more, or perhaps just a few months. In years past these jobs were more stable; however, with the saturation of most process industries there are practically no new plants being built, nor have there been many for over 25 years. Most consulting work today involves expansions and upgrades to older facilities.
The big unknown is whether a synthetic fuels industry, such as coal to liquids or coal gasification, gets developed. If so, there will be work for lots of chemical, mechanical, electrical and instrumentation and civil/structural engineers.
Just a few observations I've made in over 30 years in the oil patch. The salary levels are a little misleading as far as an indicator of income potential. Even in sever downturns salaries hold up as a rule. The problem has been that you can't get one of those jobs. Not a big surprise: cut staff and work the others harder. As been pointed out oil patch hands are as expendable as any other.
But the future? Always a question. If you look at the age distibution in, say, 1981, you would see a very bimodal distribution. Big peaks around 28 yo and 50 yo. The hole in the middle represented the industry bust in the 60's. Another obvious one in the 80's. Today the oil patch is very gray. The leading peak has long faded away. My peak (58 yo) is that far away. In the last 10 years I've met less than 10 geologists or pet engineers under 40 yo. I would agree that here might be a falling demand for geologists (much more so then pet engineers) over the next 20+ years. OTOH, probably a lot more jobs then applicants. A degree in geology (6 yrs)/pet engineering (4 or 5 yrs) doesn't qualify anyone to do anything in the oil patch other then to start learning on the job. If they are very sharp they might become a useful mammal after 5 years OTJ training. Others perhaps as long as 10 yrs. Just a guess but would say that in 10 yrs half the positions needing experienced hands will be unfilled. The available hands could write their own check. But they better put a big chunk in savings. Demand destruction will destroy their jobs over night. The boom/bust cycles in the past would run 10 to 15 years. This allowed the corps body to regenerate itself during good times. But I doubt this will be the model for the future. How many students switched (or at least considered switching to an oil patch during the summer of '08? How many of those you think have changed their mind? And if things boom again in 5 years, who'll pull the trigger again when they can pull up the recent past in see the effect of such short cycles?
Something else I would mention Roc. Quality. I know of summer hiring programs which have lost more than a few...apparently the field work didn't agree with them. Maybe they don't make'im like they used to?
As far as your estimates of how long it takes to make a decent engineer, they all seem pretty reasonable. Personally, I didn't hit my stride until my late 30's, call it 5 years drilling, 5 years operations and production, 5 years research, presto, 15 years later.....smartass!
It often takes ten years of work experience to master some aspect of engineering. There is usually a lot to learn and junior engineers start of doing some grunt work. Part of the problem is that many companies have no formal training programs and rely on junior engineers to acquire knowledge on their own. My field was specialized and I learned far more from industry professional societies that held training courses and published books and technical manuals. Finally after I had written a few technical papers I landed a job in corporate engineering where I learned a great deal from knowledgeable bosses and coworkers.
I went out on a Columbia Natural Gas job in January of 1991. I didn't leave that drilling barge in Louisiana until the end of May. Did that kind of work for 4 years, I got buddies still doing it. Took a 60% pay cut to get into production and operations elsewhere.
With respect to developing skills in the oil patch let me offer a well earned observation that might shock a few: the majority of petroleum geologists couldn't consistently find oil/NG at a profit if their lives depended. This not just a knock on their abilities but also an indication of how difficult it can be in general. Today exploration is divided into two big arenas: geology and geophysics. Geologist use info from wells to figure where to drill next. First, the obvious: if that next drill site were easy to ID it would have been drilled already. Thus you're left with the prospects that aren't very obvious. That means dry holes. Geophysical exploration keys of seismic data. Seismic has advanced so much in the last 30 years it's difficult to offer a scale. On the order of the change from a $4 million main frame computer in 1975 to a $600 laptop today that many times more powerful. Seismic has been a real game changer: it really is easier to find oil/NG today than when I started in 1975. The problem is that there aren't as many spots to drill as there once was. And seismic has been the key. It allows a look into the earth where no wells have been drilled. Thus geophysicists have a huge advantage over geologists. The best of both worlds: a geologist that can do seismic interpretation. And this is where the 10+ year experience level becomes critical IMHO. An exploreationist might be the best ever seen in the Rockie Mountains. But on the Texas coastal plains this could be a monumental failure. Local experience is that key. And that can't be learned in 6 years at college. OTJ training: there is no substitute.
Anybody going to wish Dave best of luck with his recovery? Didn't know he was under the weather, stay on the mend Mr Out.
My Sunday evening just isn't the same without my technofix courtesy of M.r Out.
Best wishes and a speedy recovery to him!
Thank you, gentle folk:
For those wanting the grim details I posted them here .
I have to confess to being hugely impressed with how well and how fast I was put on the road to recovery. As soon as I can get a better sense of where all the keys are on the laptop, I'll be back.
Just when you thought all "bubbles" were bad for you, you find out some are very useful, huh?
Speedy recovery.
(Don't look up here. Keep that heading out head tilted down. The mirror is your friend. :-)
It's funny how things turn out. I specialized in Renewable Energy in the final year of my Electrical Engineering degree and could not get a job in that field for love or money. I finally ended up with a job in the coal industry. Making more than even the petroleum engineers. I am in Australia BTW.
Civil Engineers should come to Australia if you want high paid work.
How on earth can "peak oil" possibly "jibe" with that "chart" up there???? We are entering a money-energy transition and the "degrees" listed above will be nearly useless. They aren't even "real" degrees. Our children and young adults in college need the basics, a good foundation, starting them off in an "engineering degree" as a feshman, sophomore, junio,r senior is a rip off to them and to the society as a whole. A degree in chemistry, physics, mathematics should be a prerequisite for engineering course work / "degree"/whatever. Sone of the first principles covered with gusto should be exponents/growth/limits and healthy healthy doses of thermo.
The "top career salary" thing strikes me as an advertisement. This post will likely dissapear just like the other, In which I wrote a similar screed.
Our children are receiving a lethal education.
It doesn't have to jibe with it. The list of degree's are what the free market has decided has a pretty high value, not much relationship to anyone's scenario's for peak oil. Certainly if the current peak oil drives prices back to the peak price in the summer of 2008, the petroleum engineers I know were collecting 6 figures to start work back then, and I would expect the same from $150 oil if we get there again. Certainly not a rip off, and certainly a decent living by most any standards. Good for them.
Eventually it does, it's only a matter of time. I'd venture it has something to do with limits/exponential growth mentioned above re "lethal education".
My undergrad education required a ton of math/chem/physics before one can take engineering courses. The first year is all science, the second year is half science half engineering nowadays. Most engineers end up with better math skills than the math majors at my institution.
When there is a massive electrical system buildout, what will you be saying to those kids who forewent a degree in ECE. When we need to build our materials from non-carbon chain starting points, what will you be saying to the kids who forewent education in chemical engineering? I'm tired of the anti-education, anti-creative, backward looking that happens on this board.
I've noticed the same thing, and not just on this board. I tend to watch the loonier sites for good lead in joke material on presentations (hey, if you have to do a speech on reserves and resources, size, shape, location, there is nothing like some peak oil humor to liven the joint up) but I have also noticed a vocal minority who just come alive when someone says "go get an education" or anything remotely resembling an attitude which involves betterment. Its almost as though anyone who seeks to advance in the current system is some sort of traitor to the cause of (make up any, pretend it has something to do with oil).
In some cases it appears to be related to personal issues, right behind the clarion call to burn the heretic who wants to go to college is half a basket weaving degree (and some unpaid student loans), IMHO.
While I too learned many of them maths in engineering curriculum, most math majors can still graph rings around me. Laplace transform was just diff equations for dummies. Didn't you realize that? None of us are as smart as we think we are. Not all of "them" are as dumb as we wish to self-serving-wise believe.
There is no way a student out of 12th grade is going to gain engineering skills after four years of undergraduate work. Well, some young people may but they are the exception and probably don't need college anyway - an apprenticeship or mentorship would be more appropriate. A "Bachelors degree" in "engineering" is a joke. Perhaps a "Masters" degree in "engineering" would make some sense, but the engineering students should be held to the same rigour as the science majors - ie a thesis, a defense/dissertation.
Enticing our youth into a "career path" (vocation?) with the promise of money $$$ riches does nothing for our predicament. In fact it promotes competition for capital in an increasingly resource-starved world and will lead to violence and war.
Our youth are receiving a lethal education, and going into debt for it.
Well, there is, but it involves learning considerably more in grade 12 than is typical of high schools in the United States. You need to learn all the basics before going to university.
Note that I did not go to school in the US, and grade 12 from a US high school would not qualify you for admission to my old alma mater (unless, of course, you took the International Baccalaureate which I would recommend for all schoolchildren everywhere).
Or, as a classic quote goes, "Fore yeers ago I cudn't even spell "Ejigneer", and now I are one!"
Was your quote a self-parody, or were you serious?
I'm sorry to appear potentially sarcastic, but I spent too many years rewriting documents that my company deemed not suitable for client distribution until I revised the grammer and made sure all the tenses, cases, and voices met minimum standards. Many of the authors were highly educated, but that wasn't apparent from their writing.
Math, science, and English - You need to be good at all of them before you can write a professional-looking document.
See Eats, Shoots & Leaves for more commentary on this subject. "A panda walks into a café...."
I've got an 9 yo daughter and wouldn't recommend an advanced degree in any oil patch trade just because I can't project what employment/income opportunities might be in 15 years. They might be great in 15 years and then terrible in 17 years and then great again in 20 years. I haven't seen anything regarding opportunites for graduates this spring so I can't even say where we're at right now. Those getting a job this summer will make good money. But perhaps half won't even get a job interview let alone get a job. As I said I have no idea where the market is right now for newbies.
But experienced hands today: $180,000 - $250,000. And the best geophysicist out there (like my two): Income potential over the next 5 years: several million in performance bonuses.
But I don't have to worry about my little angel ending up as oil field trash. She's decided to be a horse vet. Who knows: with the demise of the ICE she might be a high priced commodity one day.
Oh, just have her get some kind of basic engineering degree, back it up with an MBA, and she should be okay. After that, she just has to go where the opportunities lead her. No doubt she'll end up working in some kind of profession that doesn't even exist yet. Just make sure that, whatever kind of education she gets, she gets enough of it, because there are going to be an awful lot of extremely smart and well educated Chinese and Indian professionals on the world scene when she gets there.
Horse vet might be a good vocation, too, but it probably won't be nearly as lucrative. Human vet will probably make her more money, particularly as we Baby Boomers age. Of course, eventually we'll all die, and then what will she do?
In the near term you might want to try to get her into an International Baccalaureate program if at all possible. I don't know what's available in your area, but in my experience the standard Texas school system is not the right ballpark to be playing in if you want a good education. Too much football and cheerleading, not nearly enough education. The advantage of the IB is that it will get her into any English-speaking university in the world. And then she can do whatever she wants.
Sheesh.
Of course it was a parody.
Don't you remember when our former esteemed President was doing the hard hard maths on them there internets?
I whole heartedly agree with you. Ability to communicate in English is as important as understanding science and math. One way that engineers can hone their written communication skills is by commenting on these pages and then learning from the Strunk and White fanatics who lurk here about and take pot shots at poor writing styles.
:-)
Well, I'm sorry but it can be hard to tell. I have worked with not a few engineering professionals who would produce something like what you wrote, and then would be offended when I told them we couldn't send it out to the client without revisions. It appears to be possible to get a degree in engineering without learning how to compose a coherent sentence.
What is really unfortunate is that I have also had to work with people with degrees in English, with delusions about being professional writers, who would produce the same sort of thing. Apparently nobody taught them about grammar and syntax in the course of getting their English degrees. I'm sure they could do a wonderful job of criticizing the works of Shakespeare, but that was not what we were paying them for.
a wonderful job of criticizing the works of Shakespeare
Bubble, bubble, crude and trouble.
The cauldron of proved reserves doth boil.
Fear be fouled and fowl be virally feared.
My CERA tonin calls.
Anon.