College student engineering degree - what type

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cbc58

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What will the most employable / best paying type of engineer be within the next 5-10 years? Asking this question for a relative who is in college and switching majors to engineering.
 
Peter Schiff makes the case in Crash Proof that nearly all engineering will do well as we get back to manufacturing and rebuilding infrastructure.
 
cbc58 said:
What will the most employable / best paying type of engineer be within the next 5-10 years? Asking this question for a relative who is in college and switching majors to engineering.
Click to expand...

As a engineer I can tell you that, as corny as it can sound, choose something you like. I know a lot of cases of people hating what they had to go through because they did not like it. And it is a mentally consuming situation. The good news is that once you have the engineer title its not really hard to change your career to other areas, as it might be with other degrees. But you might as well choose something you like from the beggining. I know from experience it can be really hard to wake up everyday to go and study something you dont like.
 
Well, my husband has his degree in Welding Engineering.... but has done a lot of Production Engineering and similar things since graduating.... in April, he was laid off from his job, he reworked his resume and put it out there... he got many recruiters calling him pretty much right away and within a month he had a new job.

I can't speak to everyone's experience.. but, seriously people are hiring out there, employers are out there looking for engineers apparently. He'll do well to graduate with about any engineering degree it seems from all the job searching I helped my husband do.
 
There are many disciplines that you can focus on and I am trying to figure out which has the best most-employable options. Totally agree on doing something you like but they haven't reached that point in studies.

I've spoken to a number of electrical engineers who changed to software engineering and never went into electrical. I think the infrastructure rebuild will be important... but there must be something that has more of a need moving forward than another.

Right now this relative is completely open to a focus and with the economy likely imploding... would like to have a degree where people seek him out after college.
 
I got my bachlors in mechanical engineering and I'm currently a nuclear engineering grad student. The demand for nuclear engineers is HUGE right now. It's also nice because even though you're called a nuclear engineer, it really encompasses every other discipline (like electrical, thermo, welding, civil, etc..). So you have a lot of freedom, and since the demand is high, you really have control over where you want to work.
 
cbc58 said:
how many years grad work do you need for that???
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For me? It took me exactly 4 years for my BS in mechanical engineering. A year and a half for my MS in nuclear engineering (at Ohio State, they have a program called the BS/MS program where you can start your MS while still an undergrad, so I took a lot of classes my senior year that counted towards my BS and MS. If I would have hurried, I could have had my MS in 1 year). I'm just starting my PhD in Jan, but that will probably take around 3 years.
 
Electrical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Nuclear engineering
and to a lesser degree
Computer engineering
 
Engineer background:

your strengths:

Civil engineer, good chance you will be outdoors, hope you like it.
Chemical engineer, ever take an organic chem class, take one, see how you like it.
Do you like stuff you can touch, mechanical engineer vs electrical? And electrical and programming go hand in hand.

Can you say patent attorney, $$$$, if you got skillz in both, why not!

Bioengineer, molecular, micro?
Or how about geophysicist, or geologist?

Seriously, find something that pays better. How about physics teacher, or english teacher. No just kidding, or am I?
 
It can be difficult to predict what will be in the most demand in the future. Not that long ago everybody said get into computers- so the field becams saturated and in many areas there was an oversupply. Hot areas today may be in decline in the future or vice versa. I would go towards what interests you the most.
 
I'm a civil engineer and three years ago when graduating I received 11 job offers. After I got the first few I really stopped trying and still got a bunch more. I think any engineering degree is good. Even now the majority of the people i know are getting jobs. I'm also involved in the interviewing of college grads. If you can speak english, have a degree and have half a brain you'll get work. I think doing what you like best is the best advice. Petroleum and chemical engineers seem to make the most out of college though. Lastly, there are a lot of engineers retiring, and not many to replace them. Many people who would have done engineering switched to business because thats where the big bucks were at.
 
I'm an EE specializing in RF & Microwave. Study something you are interested in. Plan on going to grad school too. Don't do any drugs since you may need a security clearance.
 
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