Aerospace graduates going into finance - annoyed!

[RatherBeOnVacation]

My DD wants to study aerospace / aeronautical engineering at university with a view to either building things to send into space or working for an F1 team. It’s all she wants to do and has huge amounts of work experience to support this (arranged herself in her spare time).

She went to the Imperial open day recently and was horrified to learn that 25% of their recent graduates went straight into finance. A lot of them never had any intention of carrying on in engineering when they started their degree. A bit of digging online and The Student Room is full of people talking about the same thing.

Is this really a thing?

I can understand being tempted by the money, particularly with debt levels. I also get deciding it’s not for you. But it’s a specialist degree and why are you studying it for four years if you have no intention of using it when you first start out? And 25%?????

I guess I’m just annoyed as offers are three / four A stars, or two A stars one A at most top ranking universities. It feels like genuine applicants are having places taken away from them.

Sorry, rant over.

There are banking and finance degrees but generally it’s a lower tariff course. Economics at the top uni’s tends to attract the academic set as does the STEM degrees as they’re hard and require excellent maths and logic skills.

DC, highly academic, was always told to study what he might enjoy as a degree which he has. He’s hoping to go into finance afterwards as his course includes high level maths/physics and he’s at a very good university. However, he might just try for law. Luckily for your daughter this will surely mean more job opportunities?

As some PPs have stated, there aren't enough jobs in aerospace engineering to go around and I am sure some students are acutely aware of this. They might be - understandably - realistic about career prospects and want to ensure a good income post graduation. Myself and many of my friends studied STEM subjects at top universities however I would say only 25% have gone on to work in degree-related fields. Part of this is down to the huge disparity in earnings between e.g. finance and academia/engineering/research roles. Being able to follow a career path purely due to interest, with no regard for salary or earning potential, is quite a privilege.

That would really put me off too.

Engineering graduates tend to have amazing maths brains that lend themselves very well to finance. I have a good friend who did engineering, but was dazzled by the starting salary at one of the big investment banks, and followed that path.

Now in his late 40s, he sometimes says he regrets it. But he is a multi-millionaire now, so…😂

Aerospace/automotive engineering degree courses were not related to anything in real life especially F1, we all found that, it was just a load of maths and random equations, I lost interest and wanted to work in anything but engineering, so if finance recruiters had shown an interest? I understand 🤷🏽‍♀️