<p>So far I know that I want to major in some sort of Engineeriring, with a minor in Green or Renewable Energy. </p>
<p>But which engineering major is new to compliment these fields?</p>
<p>And which has the best job prospects for the future?</p>
<p>As of now I'm focused in on Civil and Ocean Engineering. But I'm open to other recommendations or ideas!</p>
<p>Your best bet is to major in _________ engineering. Seriously, they are all fairly future proof save for petroleum engineering (and that only because, like it or not, some day petroleum will run out).</p>
<p>Do what interests you. There is absolutely no way to accurately predict what will be in demand in 4 years. Go back to 2005 and see what was predicted to be in demand 4 years down the road. I bet the answer wasn’t “nothing”, which turned out to be the case.</p>
<p>Go with Mechanical.</p>
<p>XtremePower: Why Mechanical?
boneh3ad: That’s very true, I’ll keep that in mind!</p>
<p>I would go with the one that interest you the most and I would make sure that your university has a rigorous and good program in it</p>
<p>In college, your best bet is to major in one of the four broad engineering disciplines.</p>
<p>These are: Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.</p>
<p>Every other major is interdisciplinary, so it is important that you study a field with a large amount of scope.</p>
<p>With any of the four majors, you have your basic engineering education fulfilled. From there, you can branch out and specialize in a specific field of study (usually through graduate school) to find out your interests and what technologies can/will be discovered in the future.</p>
<p>Since you’re very much into “green” and environmental topics, the best major for you would be civil engineering. This is because environmental engineering and sustainable infrastructure would be a branch of civil engineering.</p>
<p>Power engineering is about to get real hot soon. Lots of power engineering classes are fading out from EE programs due to the higher popularity of electronics and programming.</p>
<p>Over the next decade, many of the power engineers are going to retire and utility companies are going to suffer a shortage.</p>
<p>^yeah but there is a reason it has faded. Pay tends to be low, working hours can be odd and its just not as a “sexy field”. But you are correct, very few ee’s know much about power systems and the old guys are going to be retiring soon.</p>
<p>I’ve been hearing about this “wave of retirements coming soon” to many stem fields since at least the 90s. It has never come to pass. Somebody on PhysicsForums actually showed that the rate of hiring of physics professors has been flat for decades, so they can continue to retire as normal without any spike in hiring. This is independent of whether there are fifty physics professors nationwide or fifty million. No matter the size of the container, if I pour water into it at the same rate water flows out of it, I’ll never reach a point where the water level goes drastically low in a short span of time. Only increases in aggregate demand for physics professors, not retirements, will change things.</p>
<p>It would be somewhat hard to mix civil or ocean engineering with a green energy minor. I’d say go with chemical. There you could deal with alternatives such as ethanol or whatever comes in the future. Maybe even nuclear.</p>
<p>You guys thinking that “green technology” falls primarily under one engineering field are silly. Nearly every major field of engineering has some part to play in green technology.</p>
<p>Is there a way to work in green technology as a compE or EE?</p>
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<p>Look at IBM’s Green Building Solutions ([IBM</a> - Smarter Buildings - IBM Energy & Environment](<a href=“IBM and the Environment”>IBM and the Environment)) I ran into one of their tech people in a social setting and was amazed as to what they do using a bunch of sensors, a computer or three, and some good ole’ programming.</p>
<p>Lots of EE/CSE/CE work in electric vehicle, assuming people want to buy any.</p>
<p>At the board/device level, lots of work on power management but not what I would consider ‘green’ like in the common sense.</p>
<p>I went mechanical because its so broad</p>
<p>doesn’t bioengineering/ biomedical engineering also provide good opportunities down the future? biotech is apparently a huge growing field, and is supposed to be the next dot com.</p>
<p>I think whatever you do, in my op its important to be atleast a decent coder. Try and learn software stuff by yourself. Can open many doors and make you really versatile.</p>
<p><em>this</em></p>
<p>At UT Austin’s open house, when asked what skills the student engineer wished they had coming into college, every single one said to “know how to code”. My son signed up for AP CompSci next year because he heard this piece advice so much in one day. ;)</p>