The Vanishing Petroleum Engineering Student
Authors: Botset Holbrook G. 
Published: December 2007

Introduction

The petroleum and natural gas industry is supplying over 70 per cent of the total energy consumption of the country, and present indications are that the domestic petroleum industry will continue to grow at a rate of approximately 2 to 3 per cent per year for some time into the future. The production branch of the industry, in which over half its capital is invested, undoubtedly will experience a comparable expansion. The industry is most certainly planning its operations well into the future, and this must involve making sure of a supply of materials for future operations. It should not be illogical to expect industry to plan also for its future supply of engineers, unless it feels that engineers will not be essential to its successful operation in the future.

Review of Enrollment Trends in Petroleum Engineering

Since World War II, the industry annually has employed an average of more than 550 graduates from the 20 to 23 petroleum engineering schools of this country. Since it should not be unreasonable to assume that this demand will continue at approximately the same rate in the future, what about the annual availability of 550 petroleum engineering graduates in the next few years? If the industry has not already asked this question, it is high time it did. The answer may prove rather surprising to anyone who has not taken the time to analyze the current situation in petroleum engineering education and to project this into the future. Table 1 is a summary of petroleum engineering enrollment in the country beginning in 1948, as taken from the annual reports of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The annual freshman enrollment and the total annual petroleum engineering enrollment are plotted on Fig. 1. Any projection of these curves should be very disturbing to any company which plans to hire petroleum engineers in the future. The indicated dip in enrollment in 1951 may be partially due to the fact that only 21 schools are included in that year's figures, compared to 22 and 23 for the other years. The decline in enrollment between 1948 and 1951 also probably can be explained further by the fact that many World War II veterans completed their engineering educations during this period. Notice that the numbers of degrees granted in 1948, 1949 and 1950 were considerably larger than in subsequent years. Also, the outbreak of the Korean War undoubtedly had some effect in reducing the enrollment in 1950 and 1951. If one compares the size of a given freshman class with the number of degrees conferred four years later, as may be seen in Table 1, it will be found that only about 50 per cent of the freshmen complete their programs. As a matter of fact, the average freshman enrollment for the five years from 1952 through 1956 was 1,243. The average number of BS degrees granted from 1956 through 1960 was 613, or 49 per cent of the students who were freshmen four years earlier. These ratios are not absolutely quantitative because the freshman enrollment figures include both first- and second-semester freshmen. However, the 49 per cent ratio is probably not far from the true average. If 50 per cent is taken as the mortality rate, for simplicity, there should be about 600 petroleum engineering degrees conferred in 1961. In 1962 there probably will be 340; in 1963, 230; and in 1964, 145. In other words, next year there will be only about half as many petroleum engineering graduates available for employment as this year--and in 1964, only one-fourth as many. It will be noted from the table that the size of last year's freshman class was only about 20 per cent of the largest freshman class (1956), while the 1956 freshman class had dropped to 582 in its senior year, the number of degrees granted in 1960 (558) is not greatly below the average number granted (683) over the interval tabulated. Therefore, the impact of the decreasing freshman enrollment since 1956 has not yet been felt by the industry. Perhaps industry is not concerned about this negative trend in enrollment and plans to supplement this deficiency by hiring men in other branches of engineering.

JPT

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