Is a degree in chem eng worth it anymore??

Hello there, I’m a 3rd year Chem Eng student at Manchester so I’ll try me best to answer this.

With regards to relevancy, Chem Eng, in my opinion is perhaps one of the most widely applicable degrees out there. Because of this, it will always remain relevant.

With a Chem Eng degree you can go into oil and gas/ pharmaceuticals/ supply chain management/ investment banking/ financial and engineering consultancy and yes even some technology companies take on chemical engineers. This is all solely because of the large amount of transferable skills you obtain.

For me personally, I’ve decided to persue investment banking. But that’s the exciting thing about this degree, you can do so much with it.

Jobs in engineering are difficult to secure but this is the same with any engineering discipline. Most degrees offer placement years too making it easier to secure a grad role (plenty of my friends do). Obviously applying to summer internships will help too.

With regards to the future I don’t see a decline in the amount of chemical engineers required, quite the opposite. There are big big issues that need to tackled ranging from sustainability of processes to product and process innovation. With this shift towards green energy, it will be chemical engineers, among others too, that will help aid this global transition.

Hope this helps

As the title says, Is a degree in chem eng worth it anymore or is it better to do a course like mech eng/computer science if you're interest in such courses too? can you get tech jobs with a chem eng degree if you have knowledge in programming?also I've looked pretty much everywhere and it seems jobs in chem eng are really hard to find as a graduate so my question is, why's the job market so bad for chem eng? And to those who studied/study chemeng, would you have done another course if you had the chance to start over again?
Do you see anything changing in the future or is about to get worse?

I know that's a lot of questions but any feedback would be appreciated...thanks!

A chem eng degree is useful not just in chem eng, but also in other fields of engineering whether it be civil/mechanical electrical.

From an academic perspective: Most engineering degree share the same core fundamentals with slight differences in the modules, often you can change from 1st year of chem eng to 2nd year mechanical/civil /electrical etc with minimal problems

From a professional accreditation perspective, they are more flexible than people realise. To explain... there is a central regulator called the UK Engineering council, then there are the separate institutions (which are registered with the UK engineering council) For example the ICE Istructe CIHT IHE (JBM ) Institute of mining engineers etc etc.

The degrees are fairly interchangeable in the sense that for example, your degree was accredited by the Institute of mining engineers but you wanted to go for an Institute of civil engineers accreditation, it wouldn't be too difficult to get it via the technical report route and a professional review.


From an employment perspective employers are usually open to employ one with a different engineering degree title, its not particularly difficult to get a job as a starter engineer in for example civils or mechanical with a materials engineering degree, or mechanical with electrical and vice versa etc


So to summarise a chem eng degree will open doors for you in all types of engineering, don't feel you are limited only to chem. often there is a lot of crossover for example on civils work there may be lots of electrical and mechanical to do. so most engineering degrees are "engineering " first but with a slight extra focus on your chosen field but this won't really limit your employment opportunities in other fields of engineering.


(I rephrased the same things a few different ways in case one way makes more sense to you)


Hope this helps a little bit

good luck with whatever you choose to do

Hello there, I’m a 3rd year Chem Eng student at Manchester so I’ll try me best to answer this.

With regards to relevancy, Chem Eng, in my opinion is perhaps one of the most widely applicable degrees out there. Because of this, it will always remain relevant.

With a Chem Eng degree you can go into oil and gas/ pharmaceuticals/ supply chain management/ investment banking/ financial and engineering consultancy and yes even some technology companies take on chemical engineers. This is all solely because of the large amount of transferable skills you obtain.

For me personally, I’ve decided to persue investment banking. But that’s the exciting thing about this degree, you can do so much with it.

Jobs in engineering are difficult to secure but this is the same with any engineering discipline. Most degrees offer placement years too making it easier to secure a grad role (plenty of my friends do). Obviously applying to summer internships will help too.

With regards to the future I don’t see a decline in the amount of chemical engineers required, quite the opposite. There are big big issues that need to tackled ranging from sustainability of processes to product and process innovation. With this shift towards green energy, it will be chemical engineers, among others too, that will help aid this global transition.

Hope this helps