future prospects of different majors

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>"I think when you actually start working and people begin to finally realize that most engineering jobs are not THAT exciting or interesting, people will become a bit more open. During college, people still have optimistic views of being someone who will design the spacecraft to send a man to Mars or something along those lines. While some will do interesting things, a vast majority will not."</p>

<p>is this true?</p>

<p>would you guys say that you have a much smaller chance of doing groundbreaking and innovational stuff working in something like mechanical/aerospace/civil engineering than working in some rapidly growing field like bioengineering? BLS projected growth for biomedical engineering through 2018 is 72% or something ridiculous, as opposed to 6% for mechanical -- lots of baby boomers getting old and demanding medicine. source: [url=<a href="http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#projections_data%5DEngineers%5B/url"&gt;http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#projections_data]Engineers[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

<p>there are companies like Blue Origin or SpaceX or Virgin Galactic doing cool new space exploration stuff, but far fewer in number than the companies doing biomed engineering, creating GMOs and stuff like that.</p>

<p>i really would love to work on sending people to Mars, but i sort of prioritize doing important and significant stuff in general over that. i would prefer doing something like bioengineering (which i also like but a little less so than aerospace) and working on cool and innovative new stuff over doing aerospace and working a relatively boring desk job.</p>

2

<p>Out of curiosity, in what way is your question Harvard specific? </p>

<p>As for your question–I think there are fewer opportunities for ‘solo geniuses’ to come up with groundbreaking discoveries; most of the low hanging fruit have been picked. OTHO, I think there’s still tremendous potential for great breakthroughs in almost every scientific and tech field. I just think most things will be the result of collaborative efforts because the amount of knowledge needed in each domain has become so voluminous that no single person could possibly understand more than a corner or sliver.</p>

3

<p>it’s not, really – i was just thinking.</p>

4

<p>Ok. </p>

<p>In any case, I’m not very intimately familiar with everything that’s going on, but a lot of times, statistics on what percentage of growth is where might just depend on how things are funded, what people’s priorities are etc as opposed to intrinsic potential within different arenas and disciplines. </p>

<p>With that said, someone more knowledgeable than me might have a better answer. Why don’t you post this in a different subforum? I’m sure you’ll get more responses in the Engineering section or even the Parents Forum…</p>