Civil Engineering Degrees

[MonkeyTennis34]

DS2, as well as looking at apprenticeships, is also considering the Uni route.

Does anyone have any info/experience of this degree?

Where are the best courses?

Is there a high employment uptake at the end?

Tia

@MonkeyTennis34 DH had a mid sized civil and structural engineering consultancy until recently (retired) and was an employer for 40 years. So here’s what I know.

If he can do a MEng degree, that is best. If he wants civil engineering, choose that degree or do civil snd structural engineering. General engineering is less good.

Look at the Complete University Guide for rankings. This is probably the best guide for this subject. Off the top of my head, and discounting Oxbridge and Imperial and Durham, I would seriously consider Sheffield, Leeds, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Loughborough, Warwick, Surrey and anywhere in the top 30 plus! Some unis have a strong engineering focus and I would never discount some universities that were former polytechnics - Northumbria and Nottingham Trent for example if BEng is the goal but check whether they offer MEng too.

The apprenticeships you enquire about will almost certainly be BEng. It’s a much quicker route to getting the top level qualification of Chartered Engineer if he starts work with a MEng. BEng is the pathway to Incorporated Engineer. In some areas of work, this will limit earnings.

Regarding work: there’s loads of it. Very much a shortage area. Not everyone will zoom up the career ladder and some will
inevitably be more team players but there is a very good supply of work from big employers to smaller consultancies.

I would suggest he looks at both the ICE and IStructE web sites to get an interview of the career.

Civil Engineering is not the best paid career but it can be really interesting varied work, with prospects for travel depending what you specialise in. And the possibility of setting up your own company of some sort when you have experience. The university courses were quite hard (in my day) a lot of difficult maths to get to grips with in some topics, at least for me and where I was (and I did have good maths A levels).

@twomanyfrogsinabox DH did rather well but he had a successful consultancy. More difficult to make money now but entrepreneurial engineers can still do well. It’s still a decent starting salary but if you want to be part of a team and sit back, it plateaus. Thats why getting chartered and pushing on matters.