Engineering Ph.D.'s

Q: I have been trying to follow the various threads on the pros and cons of pursuing a Ph.D. on this newsgroup. It seems that most of the comments have been about Ph.D.'s in the physical and biological sciences. I would be interested in hearing from some Ph.D.'s in engineering about the job prospects out there. Do the prospects for academic and rewarding industrial positions look better for engineers than scientists, as I am led to believe? Or is it hopeless for everybody. I am hopefully in the last year of my Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, and in my opinion, the job market looks pretty good for my field. An academic position may be unlikely, but it seems like there is still a demand in industry (although they pay less than I think I deserve)

A: -The job situation is NOT hopeless for everybody. However, there are areas of engineering that have very poor job prospects. I'm more familiar with EE and optical engineering, but I'd be surprised if there weren't areas of Mechanical Eningeering that have very poor job prospects. To determine if you are on the right track, you need to always be looking at the published job openings in your exact field and in closely-related fields, you need to find

out what the grad students ahead of you end up doing, you need to examine your professor's funding sources. You may also need to be ready to jump ship if things look bad. -Some of my friends from materials engineering grad school @ Georgia Tech who stayed on for their Ph.D. are finishing up soon and haven't had too much trouble finding jobs. They haven't exactly had floods of offers but 1-2 offers per person. None have them have opted for a post doc. Maybe grad students as a whole are finally seeing the light with respect to getting a job in academia. I'm sure a lot of them have seen their advisors struggle as of late trying to get funding from dwindling sources.