Where’s the future in engineering?

I know we have a few engineers on CCF. I was wondering 1) if you think it's still a great field to go into, 2) what areas are best, & 3) are there plenty of jobs when you graduate?

I understand that Chinese is now a required coarse with a degree!!

Bruce, It's still a good field to get into. Right now it seems that environmental engineering is a hot field.

I graduated in '04 (EE). I had a bunch of close friends the same age with either EE or Comp Sys degrees, and none had problems getting jobs before or soon after graduating.

I do think its a great field to get into- it gives you a lot of career options. Where I am, for example, I can stay technical and continue doing design, or I can move up the management path. I have EE friends that are now doing everything from digital design, software, test equipment, technical sales, and consulting. Depending on the position, many companies will hire an engineer who has no direct experience with the task at hand- they know that if you can get through engineering school, you're smart enough to pick it up quickly.

Eric, funny you say that- I knew a kid at school who loved trains. Im pretty sure he decided on engineering school thinking he would become a conductor.

Bruce, I went to RPI (Troy, NY). EE is electrical.

Nick is from Maine and I think he's mentioned UMO being a decent school- but Im not overly familiar with it. When I was looking at schools, I also considered BU and Lehigh. I looked at WPI and its a good school (I have 4 uncles who are alumni there), but didnt care for it when I visited and didnt apply.

M3, good point, but as an investor and father, I want to see my kids study something that will help them land a decent job. My son is interested in engineering because he likes math and science. I could have guessed it's a good field, but I don't have any friends that are engineers. If Tim told me that he graduated from RPI and he's waiting tables because no one needs someone with his education, I'd be concerned about the future of engineering.

Agree with Steve 100%.

As far as outsourcing goes, one of the biggest industries hiring engineers is defense, and theres no way thats ever going overseas.

welcome to America, it seems to be the American way...we were tops in engineering from world war II on out, we did all the work and the nips reverse engineered it without patent laws and re-introduced it to our country at the cut rate work for rice prices. all of us buy into there *************** and all it does is make life rough for us, they are living the American dream and equal in technology and now they too have a demand for oil now along with India and China, remember China is 1.3 billion strong compared to our 300 million. you guy's might laugh reading this but its happening whether we like it or not

I graduated from RIT in 1999 as a Mechanical Engineer, it was a 5 year program including 6 quarters of required (paid) co-ops. The co-op experiences were very helpful to me, gave me a lot of options for my first job and even though I went with a company that I had never worked for I still ended up with a job that was considered a 3-5 year experience position. It has been pretty good to me in that time, I have held 5 different jobs at 3 different companies and have doubled my pay rate since that first job. I agree with what has been said about many career tracks although sometimes they choose you, at this point I am firmly in management with 20+ direct reports between engineers, designers and lab techs.
   In my experience a good engineer never has a hard time finding a job and it’s a very good platform for a lot of other careers, outsourcing and globalization has not effected this long term, although currency manipulation, us steel tariffs, and the high cost of health insurance have not helped. My current place of business was bought by a Japanese company and all it has meant to date is huge investment basically doubling our north American salaried staff in a little under a years time, new products new production lines and new testing facilities and apparently some new engineering managers.

Biology is also very hot, biotech will continue to come on strong, electrical engineering as Tim said gives you lots of choices, my brother in law is having as hard a time finding Chemical Engineers as I have had with Mechanical/Electrical Engineers. In my experience a good engineer never has a hard time finding a job and it’s a very good platform for a lot of other careers.   When I graduated it was fully half of degreed engineers never actually took a job in typical engineering and instead when into sales, marketing, consulting, etc. or on to further education.

Eventually this country will get off its ass and get off oil (not before either pushed by shortages or regulation though) and when that push comes engineers will be the ones designing, installing, upgrading.    

Oh and the country's infrastructure is falling apart and it will take civil engineers to fix that…

The male female ratio issue is real though, not one female in our engineering group, no techs, no designers no engineers at least 50 total, can't remember when I even saw an application from a female. If any of your daughters want to be engineers they will never hurt for a job.

This is all great info. azeus17, I agree with what you say about learning Chinese, I just don't want to complicate his choice by throwing that in there at this point.

No doubt, give them 15 years and they will be the world's economic and military super power.