<p>Tom, you’re absolutely right. I’m surprised as well that no one nor I brought it up. Petroleum Engineering will have its death in due time. Chemical Engineering in industry will also have a slow death and largely will only survive in the research world.</p>
<p>Where is chemical engineering going exactly?</p>
<p>I believe that Petroleum engineering graduates will remain in the industry for a long time in the future. There will be demand for petroleum at least 20-30 years after an economically viable “clean fuel” emerges. </p>
<p>As for Chemical Engineering, I believe that the field will move towards materials (especially biomaterials, carbon nanotubes, materials for quantum computing). In a traditional sense, I do think chemical engineer will decline, although I can’t imagine people pursuing a field as an undergrad (or even as a graduate student) that only exists in the research world (especially if it is supported by the government and not industry). But then, I am not an expert in chemical engineering and don’t really know much about the industry.</p>
<p>What about mine engineering? All those “non-renewable source” engineerings will RIP soon or later.
LOL</p>
<p>As for ChemE, I think they will move toward the devleopment of graphene.</p>
<p>@jwxie Your assumption that mining engineering is limited to subsurface only is incorrect. Mining can continue into space or into the interior. There simply isnt a limit in that respect.</p>
<p>Right… digging helium-3 ??</p>
<p>Chemical Engineering will move towards very specialized research areas such as nanotechnology, polymeric biomaterials, cell & tissue engineering, etc. as needs for industrial processing and new processing techniques decline especially in our home country.</p>
<p>Petroleum Engineering will be great field to pursue for students for the time being as we’ll need these engineers for the next 40-50 years, but after that they could be dropped off with the snap of a finger. Would it be a smart field for students entering college 10 years from now? It’s your call, but they’ll probably only have the job for about 25-35 years which will only take them to about 50 before they have to switch fields.</p>
<p>Helium 3 is not the only thing we can mine in space. How do you build things? You don’t build them out of oil, hydrogen, or helium, you build them out of metals and such.</p>
<p>Not the mention the various areas of biotechnology that could bloom into their own fields. It could very well be that there will be two or three distinct bioengineering majors within ten or twenty years. One for non-invasive techniques, one for systems that directly interface with the human body (like video displays on the inside of your eyelids or an artificial nervous system), one for diagnostic systems (a real medical tricorder!), who knows?</p>
<p>The problem with bioengineering is that advances can take expertise in multiple fields. An expert EE might have no clue how his expertise can be of benefit to, say, cancer patients, and cancer specialists might have no clue what EEs can offer them.</p>