Declining Undergraduate Enrollment: Are Salaries to Blame?
Dear Editor,
In your December 2023 editorial in CEP, you echo the lament of academia that chemical engineering enrollment in colleges is declining. You cite the 2008 recession and a branding problem as possible causes.
I suggest you reread the 2023 AIChE Salary Survey in the June 2023 issue of CEP. In my opinion, the salaries of chemical engineers do not compare favorably against other professions, especially when you consider the difficulty of acquiring a ChE degree vs. other degrees.
Fortunately, none of my five children chose engineering in college, and they all have earned considerably more than the average chemical engineer in the survey. Most earned business degrees.
Perhaps the decreasing enrollment is a good thing that might benefit with larger salaries those few who do graduate with chemical engineering degrees.
Donald Flinn
BChE 1952 Johns Hopkins Univ.
MChE 1954 Princeton Univ.
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