I am a currently enrolled in a chemical engineering program and want to know if it is worthwhile. Any current chemical engineers out there that can provide insight? Did you find a job easily? What kind of work do you do? What does the chemical engineer do that makes the profession valuable, especially when compared to mechanical or other engineering disciplines? And finally, is the pay that the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects accurate? Or have chemical engineers essentially become process engineers with much lower pay? Please help as I have taken very general science and math classes and can therefore switch majors without any delay in graduation.
No answers in a few days, so I’ll do my best. I did get a chemical engineering degree, though my career path was ultimately far removed from chemical engineering in general. Let’s just say, I felt that a career of working with chemicals was not my cup of tea (an underappreciated factor that most chemistry and chemical engineering majors tend not to consider).
What do chemical engineers do that other engineers don’t? To put it simply, they work with chemicals and with chemical processes. And yes, a lot of them do work as process engineers. Chemical industries are very geographically concentrated around the places that have large chemical plants. If you go to one of the hubs, such as those in Texas or Ohio, you will be able to find a job as a chemical engineer. There are many other jobs spread around the country that use general engineering knowledge, process engineering, and controls, but you will generally have to compete with mechanical engineers for those.
How is the industry, and how does it compare to BLS? I’d say BLS is cautiously optimistic with its prediction of a very slow growth, with a lot of the high salary skewed because of petroleum engineering employment. It can be very cyclical, because oil and gas is a large part of chemical engineering employment. A lot of the traditional chemical industries - manufacturing, pulp and paper, industrial chemicals - are on a downward trend in general. Modern “trendy” chemical engineering is in the biomedical field, which hasn’t taken off as well as one would like. Some of the industries are doing alright, such as sewage/water and food. A lot of chemical engineers find employment for their more incidental skillset: computation, materials science, transport phenomena, process engineering, and control systems engineering. It would be wise to be aware of the general trajectory of the market if you remain in ChemE. Though that’s true in general.
Hope that helps.
I am currently a senior in chemical engineering, and can give a little bit of a different perspective at least.
First, what do you mean by worthwhile? If you are looking for a degree that will challenging and ultimately intellectually rewarding, then yes it is worthwhile. If you are looking to get a high salary job, then again it is rewarding. I believe the average starting salary is ~$65k for chemical engineers (at least at my school). I think that this is indicative of the pay for most starting chemical engineers. The most worthwhile part of being a chemical engineer in my view is gaining the problem-solving skills that many non-engineering degrees do not seem to offer. I feel prepared to take on a number of challenges in just about any field, and have taken jobs in other fields of engineering as well (mechanical and nuclear engineering).
For jobs, chemical engineers tend to be in demand. Most of my peers are able to secure high paying internships even in college. Companies want the expertise of chemical engineers for producing a wide range of products. This demand will never go away. It may decrease, as is the case right now with petroleum engineering at the moment, but that is the case with any industry. The petroleum is cyclical in terms of the job market. If you do get a job in petroleum, the starting salary is typically much higher compared to other jobs. Consulting also tends to pay a lot of money if you do exceptionally well in school. At least one graduate at my school from last year got a starting salary in the six digits (I don’t know how many people did though).
In terms of the BLS, I do not know if the stats are accurate. I see an average salary of $100,000, which does sound accurate from what I know. Keep in mind that this mean is likely driven up by chemical engineers working in petroleum. I agree with NeoDymium that the popular thing in chemical engineering is biological engineering. I am not sure how much a biological engineer tends to make, but I imagine it would be a lot lower, in general, compared to a process or petroleum engineer (just a hunch). Working in pharmaceuticals would still probably earn an engineer a large paycheck.
For what a chemical engineer does that is valuable - there is a WIDE range of things. Petroleum engineering, pharmaceuticals, environmental engineering, sustainability/renewable energy, product development, biomedical fields, consulting, law, business.
I would say chemical engineering is comparable to mechanical engineering, but with more chemistry and less electronics. Also, a lot of people say chemical engineering does not involve chemistry; this may be true in industry, but from my experience in internships and school this is not true. At my school you can double major in chemistry by taking three extra classes (inorganic chem, a lab class, and an elective). It is true though that the engineering classes themselves tend to not rely heavily on the chemistry; chemE professors tend to gear students toward process engineering.
Thank you both for the replies. I really had no insight other then my own research online. I am about to start my ChemE classes this fall and really want to make sure it is right for me (I am a junior so I have to declare a major).
NeoDymium what do you do for work? Any reason working in the chemical industry did not appeal to you?
I prefer to stray from describing specifics of my own work, simply because I’ve seen that generate trouble in the past. I will simply tell you that I received Bachelors degrees in Chemical Engineering and Math. My work has a lot more to do with the latter than the former.
Why didn’t I like the chemical industry? Honestly, just a lot of boring reasons that could simply be summarized by, “it wasn’t really for me.” I mentioned a lot of things I don’t like about the chemical industry - working with chemicals in high doses and concentrations, geographic concentration, dependence on infrastructure and government, declining traditional industries and slow emerging industries, and cyclical markets. I simply decided that a different set of circumstances would be better for me. As will most, chemE38 paints a more positive picture of the field, and he’s not wrong, just more optimistic. I personally take the view that it’s better to go into a field aware of its daemons, than to go in with blind optimism without asking yourself, “what could possibly go wrong?” Blind optimism only ends well for the lucky few.
Not that ChemE was a wash for me. It has pretty solid application to other areas, including its math/physics foundation, controls, and economics curriculum. It’s a rigorous major that is pretty good for transitioning into most fields that are at least tangentially related, including medicine, law, business, science, math, and other forms of engineering. It also does grant you a degree of respect from people - many people are impressed by the completion of a chemical engineering degree because it is rightly perceived as a mark of completing a rigorous and difficult program. But as far as actually working as one, I simply felt that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go.
Thanks again. I think I will at least give this fall semester a chance and see what some of my professors say, but I may end up switching to mechanical engineering in the end. What I don’t want is to go chemical engineering and end up doing a job that a mechanical engineer would be better suited for. I also will try some summer interns as well to see what a job as a chemical engineer looks like. Thank you both for your responses.