Fewer Grads + More Jobs: A Winning Formula for Job Hunters

Abstract

The 2019 graduating class of petroleum engineers will mark the last gasp of a boom before a steep drop in the size of future graduating classes coming out of US universities. After a class of nearly 2,000 petroleum engineering graduates next spring, the graduation rate over the next 3 years will fall to less than 1,000 per year, according to an annual survey of US petroleum engineering programs by Lloyd Heinze, a professor at Texas Tech University. The survey includes primarily US universities. The numbers are a direct reflection of the sharp downturn in oil prices that began in 2014 and caused large downsizing among oil and gas operators and service companies. For young engineers looking for jobs after college, it represents a welcome change from the rocky job market faced by graduates after the industry switched into job-cutting mode. For employers used to having their pick of the top students since the bust began in 2015, it could mean being one of several bidders for a shrinking pool of graduates. Professors on campuses are seeing signs of improvement, but they caution that the evidence is more anecdotal than numerical. “A good number of seniors have jobs and a lot do not. One thing is that it is a big senior class,” said Karsten Thompson, department chair for the petroleum engineering program at Louisiana State University (LSU). It is too early for hard numbers but “there are more companies on campus with more students having internships and job offers.” “Internships went quite well this year. It looks like the recovery is under way. Students are much more comfortable,” said Erdal Ozkan, a professor at Colorado School of Mines. The job market is much improved, said John Lee, a professor at Texas A&M who also sees improved internship opportunities. Graduating Boomers The class of 2019 is made up of the last big crop of freshman enrolled back in the fall of 2014 when the bust killed the assumption that $100/bbl oil was a given. The nearly 2,000 seniors in the 2018–2019 class is considerably smaller than the past two, which exceeded 3,200, but it is double the size of three classes that follow. Texas Tech has 77 seniors now, compared with a peak total of 227 in 2014, and only 43 juniors following them. The junior class is 80% lower than the 2015 peak. That drop is an indication of Texas Tech’s decision not to limit petroleum engineering enrollment during the boom—only a few schools including Texas A&M and the University of Texas capped enrollment—and the quick reactions of a “population of students and parents who were faster to realize the downturn” because so many live in West Texas where the industry is all around them. Between the boom in the early 1980s—where schools provided a generation’s worth of exploration and production professionals—and the recent boom that produced many more grads, was a long, deep slump.