mikedk90

Do Chemical Engineers have to worry about being outsourced overseas?

ddibiase

My son is interested in this field. From everything I have read, both from visiting colleges and reading articles, ChE is a GREAT field to be in, because Chemical Engineers are involved in a LOT of different fields, not just petroleum or chemical plants. Nanotechnology, biomed, alternative energy (biofuels, etc) are all new fields that are opening up. ChE grads also have one of the highest average starting salaries (about $60k with a BS).

Dan D

drpepper867

I'm interested in this field too! I've questioned several people, and many people have told me that Chemical Engineers do NOT have to worry about being outsourced...but this is coming from the people I have talked to (they're not experts on the particular subject)

sakky

Well, I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that ChE's don't ever have to worry about being outsourced. Chemical engineering work can be outsourced. For example, the US today imports significant quantities of gasoline (not just crude oil, but refined gasoline) from Canada. You can basically view that as the 'outsourcing' of oil refining in the sense that it means less work for US chemical engineers. Similarly, many chemical engineers work in the semiconductor fabrication industry. Yet the fact is, numerous US semiconductor firms are 'fabless' (in that they don't own their own chip fab manufacturing facilities) but rather contract that work out to foundries that are mostly located in Asia. Hence, again, that's basically a case of the outsourcing of chemical engineering jobs. Or consider ChemE R&D work. That sort of work basically just requires a lab, or at most, a pilot plant, and that labwork/pilotwork can theoretically be done anywhere in the world. For example, if a US chemical company wants to build a research center in India or China and hire a bunch of local engineering PhD's there and then lay off all of their research engineers in the US, I don't think anybody could stop them. And in fact, DuPont is now building an R&D center in India.

The Hindu Business Line : DuPont plans R&D centre in India

Having said all that, I do agree that ChemE is probably harder to outsource than are other engineering disciplines, notably CS or EE. Most of the work in chemical engineering involves local plant production which is quite difficult to outsource, and the costs of labor in most chemical manufacturing processes as a percentage of the overall expenditures are tiny, meaning that there are few cost savings to be had through mere outsourced labor arbitrage.

Besides, I think outsourcing receives far too much attention anyway, for outsourcing is not responsible for eliminating a large percentage of engineering jobs anyway. Far more 'destructive' is simple technological advancement. A high-tech chemical plant that is outfitted with the latest machinery and control/scheduling software simply requires far fewer engineers than does a typical plant, and newer advances will mean that future plants will require even fewer engineers. Hence, technology destroys engineering jobs. However, on the other hand, technology also clearly generates other engineering jobs, i.e. the jobs for those engineers to design and manufacture that new machinery.

Japher

As long as there is manufacturing in the US there will be a demand for ChemEs

ken285

That doesn't sound too comforting...