What the future of engineering will look like

Industries are changing everywhere we look. Retail jobs are being swapped for self-serve checkouts and ecommerce, and manufacturing jobs are rapidly declining.

Careers that once required only an undergraduate degree, such as teaching, are moving towards making postgraduate qualifications like Masters and PhDs the new standard. Improving your career prospects now requires years of workplace experience. So where do engineers stand?

The current state of engineering

A few decades ago the public sector was the employer of choice for many engineering graduates – more than 100,000 engineers were employed on government projects. Now, there are less than 20,000 engineers employed by the various governments in Australia.

This wasn’t a concern for many – strong demand in the mining sector more than made up for the shortfall in state and federal infrastructure projects. However, with the boom coming to an end, and accounting for the cyclical nature of the industry, Engineers Australia predicts the nature of work engineers and engineering managers find themselves in will change dramatically in the coming years.

The future looks bright for engineers

According to Engineers Australia, the engineers of the future will need to possess both a broad set of skills and a dedicated knowledge base. Many engineers are becoming more entrepreneurial and independent, joining or founding a startup company, and using their technical knowledge to devise new products and services in a variety of fields.

Crowd-funding sites such as GoFundMe, Kickstarter and Pozible have reduced one of the major obstacles for innovators – gaining sponsorship and initial investments is now a routine matter. The real challenge for many inventive engineers comes from the business side of things – which is where postgraduate qualifications in engineering management can really come in handy.

Investing a little over a year into part-time postgraduate study is one of the most popular upcoming trends amongst engineers. An Online Master of Engineering Management gives you the opportunity to conduct research and make important industry connections, while building your business skills so you can take your career to the next level.

To find out more about how an SCU Online degree could make all the difference to your career speak to one of our Student Enrolment Advisors. We’re available Monday – Friday on 1300 863 819.