The Status of the Engineer
Authors: van Wingen Nick 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the 40th Annual California Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in San Francisco, Calif., Nov. 6–7, 1969. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

The engineering profession is at the crossroads. Its future will be determined by a management decision which soon must be made.

If management elects to continue to classify the engineer in effect as skilled labor, the most able and most enterprising young men will continue to shun engineering as a profession. Ultimately this will cause our technological progress to falter with a resultant reduction progress to falter with a resultant reduction of the standard of living of the American people. people. If management is willing to extend full professional recognition to the engineering professional recognition to the engineering profession on a level with that now accorded profession on a level with that now accorded to the legal and medical professions, industry will be able to attract to the engineering profession capable and intelligent individuals. profession capable and intelligent individuals.

DISCUSSION

Professional employees are the fastest growing group of workers in the labor force as a reflection of the accelerated application to, improved technology. It is a well established fact that the supply of professionally trained individuals is not meeting the increasing demands for their services. This is especially true as it pertains to the engineering profession. The engineering shortage is aggravated profession. The engineering shortage is aggravated further by the fact that many engineers leave their profession for other fields of endeavor after only a few years of service. This loss of experienced personnel has a particularly adverse effect in that the best and most competent engineer is the one most likely to leave, while the incompetent, indolent, and "sour grapes" individual is the one most likely to remain.

Considerable progress has been made by the petroleum industry in the last few years to petroleum industry in the last few years to improve the status of their engineers to the point that their working conditions now do not differ significantly from engineers in other industries. Accordingly the discussion to follow pertains to the engineering profession in general and is specifically directed to the petroleum industry only as noted.

The educational background of the engineer is vastly superior to that of other workers both as regards to the number of college years completed and as to the scholastic requirements of the engineering curriculum as compared to other disciplines. Thus a study made in 1967 indicated that 80% of a group of one thousand petroleum engineers who were canvassed had a B.S. petroleum engineers who were canvassed had a B.S. Degree, 10% had a Masters Degree, while only 10% had degrees in other areas such as a B.A.