Question on Environmental/Petroleum Engineering

[Feluh98]

How hard is it to become a Petroleum Engineer/Geotechnical Engineer with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering?I will receive a degree in Environmental Engineering from Cornell University (CALS), and Petroleum Engineering is not offered as a program. I did a lot of thinking about my future career, and I realized that I want to pursue an engineering field where I’m not in a cubicle most of the time. That’s why I was directed toward Petroleum/Geotechnical Engineering, so please feel free to offer me other career suggestions based on this (being outside often, while still being an engineer). I would prefer to not pursue a masters degree unless of course I was compensated by an employer. I also want to travel a lot and look forward to going to my job and solving problems, where I feel useful and appreciated. Thank you!

[NeoDymium]

These days, the recruiters can afford to be specific enough about what they want (to request PetE specifically, under the conditions they want, and be pretty likely to receive that). I want to re-post an old post from another poster in a discussion about PetE vs ChemE, which is close to your situation:

I’m a Petroleum Engineering student at TTU. Since you asked about the only two majors at the top of the starting salary chart, I’ll make the right assumption you are taking a practical approach to a degree. From that perspective:

The only absolutely right answer to what career will pay the most next year, when you graduate, in 10 years, in 20 is this: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW. PERIOD.

The labor market is EXACTLY THAT: A MARKET. Playing the labor market is the exact same thing as playing the stock market. Except that to buy stock is the cost you've paid on graduation day. Opportunity, financial, personal, etc.

Now, with that in mind, do the stocks that are peaking today look like lucrative investments? Depends. But remember, the degrees that are paying a lot right now attract huge supply. If the demand doesn't stay the same relative to the new supply the salary goes down (in general.)

That is what's happening right now with PetE. Salaries are being driven down by the huge numbers of people, just like you, that read somewhere it had the highest paying starting salary and rushed into the degree. According to NACE, last year the average was 96K. This year it is 74K, a 20% drop. The BLS revised it's growth prediction for the career downwards from last year. Next year? BUT, that all depends on how the supply and demand flux from year to year. Let's say that by the time you graduate PetE pays the average engineering salary. Looking at it from that perspective; same pay, but....dirty work, little choice of geographical location, locations generally suck, impossible to raise a family, always away from home, no job security (see 70's layoffs), huge responsibilities and stress, the chance (however small) that your degree will become completely meaningless at any time ( peak oil/ alternative energy, etc.) because if that happens your degree is so specialized that you can't work any other job. Still sound like a good career? For 150k, the risks are worth it, but at 75K it's a huge waste. Especially considering that in the oil industry truckers with criminal records and 2 weeks of training make 100k a year.

To answer your question you need to be able to predict how the supply of students and the demand for students is going to look when you graduate. That is much, much harder than you might think. There are huge sums of money at play here for both the industry and the universities. ANY information that you or I can obtain is almost guaranteed to be biased if not downright misinformation.

So back to my original claim: impossible to know. You are playing the market, so do research, be discerning about the information you obtain, and roll the dice. Anytime you choose a career that's "hot" you are risking going into a bubble. It's all a gamble, in the end, and if someone knows for sure what's going to happen next year they sure as hell aren't going to tell anyone else.

I will also add from myself that the fun of traveling often drops off very quickly at some point between 25 and 30 years old. At some point most people, even those who enjoy travel and would choose to do it often during vacation, will prefer to have a good degree of stability in their personal lives, which pretty much mandates living in one place for an extended period of time.

As far as respect and working conditions of your choice go, that is something that has to be earned over years of work. No job choice grants that, and most don’t close that path to you either.