The Future of Engineering

[cronxeh]

Hello again PF community.

Id like to hear your thoughts regarding the future of engineering fields and where you think we will be in 5, 10, 15 years from now. As an engineering major I dont really know which i'd like to do - Civil Engineering would seem useful if I wanted to build my own house someday, Mechanical if I wanted to build myself an airplane or a car, Chemical if I wanted to feed the hungry children and give them cheap medicine in third world countries, and so on.

What do you think the trends are pertaining to the career growth in either of those fields? How secure would today's engineering students be as far as their jobs are concerned and what are the new possible emerging fields? If there were new emerging opportunies it would make sense to start preparing for them while the mind is still young?

Any advise would be appreciated

[bjr_jyd15]

I hope the outlook is bright for all engineers, but from what I've heard from current engineers is it's not looking good. I'm going into either Electrical or Chemical Eng. next year so I'm also interested in what others have to say.

[Cod]

Electrical engineering probably has the best outlook for the future for one big reason. And that is, electricity will not be replaced as our energy for a very, very long time. So there will always be use for electrical engineers throughout the world.

The discipline with the worst outlook for the future has to be for agricultrual engineers. Over the past hundreds of years, most countries have either 1) shy'd away from agriculture; or 2) already have the jobs for agricultural engineers filled up (annual growth rate is very low).

Other than the 2 disciplines I just mentioned, engineering is still a great field to get into regardless of your chosen discipline. Bottom line, except for agricultural engineers, the future for all engineers is very bright.

Here's an awesome website for anyone to check out. Site gives all sorts of helpful information from employment rates, wages, skills needed, interest, etc.. (http://online.onetcenter.org/crosswalk_search)