Chemistry/Materials Science vs. Chemical Engineering

gravenewworld
Thu, 28 Apr 2011 23:31:23 +0000

Is it? I attend a pretty average state school, and I have ChemE classmates with very well-paid internship/job offers at a whole bunch of companies, including Intel, ExxonMobil, GE, Schlumberger, P&G, Dow, Advanced Air Products, and other more regional places.

In fact, I don’t know of any other major where second-years can get such well paid internships/co-ops, and graduating seniors can get such high starting salaries. Care to enlighten me? Most of my business/liberal arts/other engineering (non-ChemE) friends are either taking summer classes or working the same jobs they worked in high school over the summer, due to not being able to find anything better to do.



Chemical engineering job prospects are inevitably tied to the health of the chemical industry overall, which has been in steep decline in the US. What does a major player like BASF have to say?

[BASF Report 2009 - Trends in the chemical industry](http://www.report.basf.com/2009/en/managementsanalysis/businessdevelopment/globaleconomy/chemicalindustry.html)

Even the vaunted (on these forums) BLS has a decline projected for chemical engineers:
[url=http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm]Engineers[/url]



The continued globalization of engineering work will likely dampen domestic employment growth to some degree. There are many well-trained, often English-speaking, engineers available around the world who are willing to work at much lower salaries than U.S. engineers. The rise of the Internet has made it relatively easy for part of the engineering work previously done by engineers in this country to be done by engineers in other countries, a factor that will tend to hold down employment growth. Even so, there will always be a need for onsite engineers to interact with other employees and clients.



And this is the part that gets continually swept under the rug by places like the BLS. More and more places continue to outsource or hire cheap foreign labor to come here and do science and engineering jobs. Petro chemicals will be healthy, but you don’t think that almost every single chemical engineering student out there currently has their sights set on the petro industry in order to find a decent job? Competition will be very tight.

Just because you have a $150,000 K degree from a US university doesn’t mean you are any more valuable than the one of the billion James Lee’s in China holding an engineering degree.