OT: Civil Engineering as a Profession

Edwards Finance > General Engineering

Q. Do civil engineers make good money?? I know this may seem vain of me, but i seem to have read and heard a lot lately about how engineers, and specifically civil engineers, do not make a lot of money. Case in point: Lehigh U. sent me a pamphlet about their starting salaries for undergrads, and of the 7 engineering majors, Civil was by far the least ($40,500 or something near there) while the others were significantly higher (Mechanical the most at about $49,700). Interested, I went to the public library and found a book about the average salaries of all professions. There was an engineering section, and the first paragraph went on about how "engineering grads. often start off better than others in salary, but rarely progress in income, and often end up at a disadvantage." Basically what I'm getting at is: is all this hype true? Is engineering, and especially civil engineering, a lucrative profession? Not that I'm only concerned with money, but I intend on attending a good university, and as a direct result, having about a million dollars in debt. I want to know more about this because I think that right now (This week anyway) I want to be a civ. eng. Can anyone tell me more?? And also, for more enjoyment if you dont want to answer the above, what kind of stuff are you civ. eng. students and professionals doing? I'd love to hear about projects and other fun ideas!

A. -If you go to http://web.mit.edu/smalpert/www/roads, right up top there's a link for my paper/presentation on the Cross-Bronx Expressway. I've also done work on a concrete canoe (replace roads with concrete_canoe in the above URL). If you go to /smalpert/Public, there are a few other links to short papers I wrote in class that should give you an idea of the basic stuff that you'll probably encounter. -Civil engineers are near the bottom of the totem pole on starting salaries. Even after many years, CEng'ers are not paid huge sums of money as people in other professions (Computer Sci/Eng (what I am in currently) get a starting salary of around $50,000 a year - the co-op will be paying me $20/hour!).

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