US Petroleum Engineering Graduation Rates Keep Falling, but Oil Execs Are Not Complaining Yet

Abstract

The job market is looking up for petroleum engineers graduating this spring. With oil prices up, companies are hiring, which means most of the shrinking number of graduates have already lined up jobs, according to Lloyd Heinze, a professor at Texas Tech University, who does an annual survey of petroleum engineering (PE) programs. At Texas Tech, he said more than 90% of the students already have jobs upon graduation, with most of them going to work for operators. Demand is also strong for graduates at Colorado School of Mines, Penn State University, and Texas A&M University, where most of the seniors have jobs arranged in advance of graduation. Tom Blasingame, a petroleum engineering professor at Texas A&M, and 2021 SPE president, said the career fair held last fall “was very well attended, and I believe our placement percentage will be very high in 2023.” He said 80% of students who graduated from A&M in December had jobs lined up, and he expected they would all have jobs within 2–3 months of graduation. Jennifer Miskimins, a professor who is head of the petroleum engineering department at Mines, agreed that the hiring rate is at that level, with some students getting job offers after completing summer internships. Sanjay Srinivasan, department head at the Energy and Mineral Engineering Department at Penn State, said hiring demand “looks much better this year than last year. However, we are concerned that many of the oil and gas companies that come on recruitment visits seem more interested in talking to graduates from other departments like mechanical and chemical engineering.” Others are seeing the same trend. “The supermajors will take the engineers and train/mold them into whatever they need,” Miskimins said. Blasingame added that independent operators, however, focus on petroleum engineers because they “don’t have extensive training programs like supermajors, so they hire the people who can ‘work on day 1.’ ” Also, Srinivasan said companies are increasingly selective. “I feel that the companies have lean recruitment targets and so they basically shop for the best-fit graduates from multiple schools,” he said. It is a striking turnaround from a few years ago when record numbers of students flooded a weak job market, looking for any oil industry job they could find or looking outside the industry to companies that valued their math and science skills. Still, given the high price of oil, hiring demand that is equal to a shrinking supply feels odd to Heinze and the others. Based on their experience, when oil prices hit $100/bbl, the demand for PE grads and enrollment go up. Something Heinze finds “spooky” this time around is that oil companies are not complaining about the small size of the graduating classes. It feels odd to Heinze because in the past when prices were high and activity picked up, college administrators heard complaints from oil companies such as “How many (seniors) do you have?” and “We need more.” “We are seeing the same, very good placement. However, I have had companies tell me that they aren’t making their hiring goals,” Miskimins said. She is not hearing complaints about the graduation rate “but definitely concerns.” To address the problem, Mines has hired a direct recruiter as part of an effort to attract more earth sciences students, Miskimins said.