I am understanding it better now. A chemical engineer can be on either side of the oil industry – upstream and downstream. It’s like a see-saw…one is down and the other is up.
Almost every operations manager I know is either a chemE or ME who started off working as an area supervisor over plant operations. Ditto to plant managers. My dh has always worked in the process side of operations or in technical sales. He has been part of international plant joint venture start-ups. Our ds, otoh, works in operations.
Fwiw, I asked my dh and he said, yes, it has been that way for every company he has worked for over his career.
And he said that they do “mix chemicals” but in terms of 1000s of lbs, not at all like a lab.
Majoring in Chem-E doesn’t prevent one from becoming a lawyer - S shadowed at a patent law firm and almost all the lawyers there had degrees in different engineering disciplines.
This is a MUCH more insecure career choice. Too many law school graduates chasing too few jobs. And many legal services being replaced by easily searched info on the internet, or being offshored to an army of English-speaking, cheap staff in India.
Another option to consider is law school after an engineering degree-- now that’s worth a lot! I know 2 engineers who did this and started their own firm. With their combination technical+legal expertise, they are much in demand.
Note that lawyers can come from any undergraduate major background. However, law is generally said to be very law-school-prestige conscious, with weaker employment prospects for those from non-top-14 law schools (see http://www.lstscorereports.com/schools/ ), and law school admissions is mainly based on GPA and LSAT score (see http://lawschoolnumbers.com ).
If chemical engineering really is his strength, such that he earns a high GPA in it, and he aces the LSAT, then he may be able to go to a top 14 law school if he decides to do that. Note that having an engineering background behind a law degree opens up some additional possibilities like patent law.
Of course, engineering degree programs do require some humanities and social studies courses, where he can take courses that can satisfy his non-engineering interests in debate, politics, sociological issues (racism, gender, (self-)segregation, etc.).
Note that many of the HB schools are a legacy of legally mandated racial segregation in education. However, the self-segregation aspect comes in to play today because relatively few non-black people seem to be interested in attending a HB school. The FAMU - FSU joint engineering division is an example. Despite the obvious arbitrage opportunity (FAMU is less expensive and also has bigger scholarships like the automatic full rides) for the same engineering education, most of the enrollment in the joint engineering division comes from FSU.
No it is absurd for a parent to try to select the career of his/her offspring–which is what you are talking about when you are writing about engineering fields. I can see a parent being unwilling to pay for college if a offspring were choosing a humanities major that is unlikely to lead to any job. I’d not do it but could understand it on some level. But really…a parent who is trying to control whether their offspring majors in something that would lead to one type of engineering rather than another-that seems outrageous. What parent micro-manages what field their offspring enters or what career path they take?
@lostaccount we paid for one kid who got an engineering degree…and the other who got a music performance degree.
The musician is supporting himself doing music and music related things.
The engineer will never be an engineer…and is in grad school now pursuing something totally different.
My ex’s father caused a permanent rift between them by refusing to fund ex’s major in music (and he was good enough to have already been on a record by then). He was required to major in CS, because he was “good at it” and it was a stable career path. Ex did as he was told, but they were never close again, and ex eventually took on a second job in music. So require your kids to major in YOUR choice at your peril.
As for HBCU’s, my D will be attending one in the fall, and our family researched them very extensively. If your S is at all interested, NCAT is a very strong STEM school. It produces a large percentage of African American engineers. Every student or parent I’ve met associated with it can’t stop raving about it. And Greensboro is a lovely city.
To be a member of the patent bar you must have an engineering background. Lawyers with engineering degrees are in pretty fair demand.
Of all the majors out there, chemical engineering is not only a good major, it’s a good starting point. It’s a rigorous major. The student learns good problem solving skills. Good career options.
I am worried about what my daughter will do after she graduates from college. However watching her older cousins, I have decided what you study in college may have absolutely nothing to do with your job or career path. Nothing. And even if you do start down the career path of your major, you may change after 5, 10 years.
Also, if you want to choose his major now, just when do you let go? Are you going to second guess other life decisions? Even if you say indignantly “Of course not!”, your child may not agree. Remember, if you do choose his major, your child will have that memory of you taking this decision from him.
One thing you might want to do is read some actual job descriptions since you don’t seem to understand what chemEs actually do. Many are far removed with anything to do with the petroleum industry. (My dh has never been involved in that sort of process.)
Here is a link that has a variety of job descriptions from process engineers to operation managers to plant managers (and yes, the plant maanager job I skimmed required a chemE degree, not some "manufacturing management degree…though in a different process that might be the case. But for chemical processes, plant managers are going to have a background in operations.)
http://www.engineerjobs.com/jobs/chemical-engineering/
(Here are three links off that site that I selected based on job titles. I have no idea what they actually are, so if they are petroleum related…oops. Plenty of others to go and read!)
Typical process engineer job description:
https://careers-anoplate.icims.com/jobs/1098/process-engineer/job
Typical operations manager description:
https://wrgrace-hr.silkroad.com/epostings/index.cfm?fuseaction=app.jobinfo&jobid=2699&company_id=16266&version=1&source=Indeed%20Sponsored%20
Plant manager:
http://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=d8bb80c31c4c037e&q
I think our role as parents is to help them understand what the field they say they are interested in actually entails. For example, our oldest daughter thought she wanted to do forensic chemistry. She pictured the job like a TV show vs lab work. My role was not to tell her not to major in it, but help her get a realistic understanding. She went to a forensic science camp, meet with a local dept’s lab, etc. She, not her dad or I, decided that was not what she wanted to do.
Putting aside the ChemE question for a minute…
I think it’s a parent’s role to be their child’s number one advisor, advocate and cheerleader. Give them the best advise you can, but listen to what they have to say (if not, they will not listen to what you have to say), and be supportive of their choice.
In the case of choosing a major, it’s a very personal choice, that likely will have long term impacts on one’s life. They should and need to have the final say in choosing the major/career, but an 18 year old can use all of the advise (and support) they can get.
If they want to take a risk, explain that risk as best as you can, then be supportive and help them succeed. Those that do great things in life, are the risk takers. 
If “Bill”, wants to drop out of Harvard to start some little software company, tell him the risk, push back, ask him to explain the business plan, but at the end be supportive of his efforts. It could work out in the end…
Well…all points taken.
Because my son chose to take ChemE as a major, then I should not intervene. The main reason being is not the parent should not intervene as a principle but rather, it’s because he chose a good major.
Some parents say if the child chose music or humanities as a major, they might intervene.
Some parents say they will not intervene at all even if the child chose to take religious study or music or humanities.
For my specific case, I won’t influence my son to change his major unless in the middle of his studies, I see his grades suffering.
My husband’s undergrad is chemical engineering, and he went on to get a law degree. His last job was at a big oil company, doing environmental regs and compliance. He said law school was easy compared to chemical engineering, but chem e is what helped get him into law school.
I think you can only give some advice and talk about why a particular major is being looked at and ask the usual questions including the big one: Can you support yourself when you graduate, and how?
I was trying to convince my second son to do Health, Safety, Environmental and Regulatory compliance because I know they make good money. I know somebody with just a bachelor’s in Environmental and she makes 110k.
We did not intervene with our musician…or our engineering major.
As noted above…the musician is paying his bills…as a musician. The engineer is pursuing a different career option.
So…for those who would encourage a degree in engineering…fine. But that does not guarantee that the student will want to actually work in the field of engineering.
I think it’s tricky because while it doesn’t seem very common nowadays for children to pay back their parents for college education (formally, at least), parents want a good ROI on their child’s degree-- meaning, they want their child to be self-sufficient after college and don’t want to continue funding their child. If a child were to ask to have a parent fully fund a degree in a tricky or very low-paying field, I would hesitate. Nothing to do with “prestige”; I’d be just as likely to hem and haw over a music degree (low paying, few jobs) over a law degree (virtually zero jobs).
I think having multiple children can also complicate things; if my firstborn wanted to enter a fast-growing high paying STEM and they were good in that field of study, I can’t imagine having doubts. But then, if you have a second who wants to major in English or art history or whatever… and then you hesitate, but it’s “why does she get to major in what she wants but not me???” or whatever.
With ChemE I can’t imagine I’d hesitate. On principle, I’d like to fund whatever my child wanted to study-- but I wouldn’t take out massive loans for them regardless of field. If they wanted to study in a traditionally less lucrative or more competitive career, I’d make a bigger effort to ensure a.) they know what they’re getting into (as one mentioned above, a daughter who thought forensic chemistry was more like CSI than lab work) and b.) they have a tangible plan for internships, fellowships, etc. to gain better chances at employment, have back-up plans in case they can’t find work, have evaluated necessities of grad school, and understand (and accept) what it means to make 40k a year vs maybe growing up on a household of 100k+.
I can’t imagine choosing my kids’ majors any more than I could imagine choosing their spouses.
These are adult decisions with a huge impact on the rest of a person’s life. They need to make those types of decisions themselves.
Remember that if someone “drops out” of college to try some entrepreneurial venture, if the venture fails, s/he could just return to college (if s/he still has enough money for college) and finish his/her degree.