re: Petroleum engineering technology

Make sure he takes a lot of coding classes. Will need them every 10 years when he is laid off

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La Tech which has a good engineering dept

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Anecdotally, in my 20+ years in engineering I've never run across an engineer from LA Tech in my industry. If you're staying in LA and studying engineering, LSU is probably the best bet.

To the OP, FWIW, my current and previous company won't hire engineering tech degrees...only full engineering degrees.

FYI, Tech does the quarter system. I know a few people who couldn’t do engineering at Tech because it’s all crammed into 10 week periods.

He could make good money being an MWD

PET isn’t a fully accredited Engineering Curriculum.

Chose a better school or a fully accredited program at Nichols.

It's like architecture and construction management.

Hmmm..sorta…not sure this is what you are looking at but a PetE eng is a four year degree… … the Petroleum tech was two years… guys took less math and weed out classes like organic, thermo etc and more petroleum courses up to a sophomore ish.. also had more classes for hands on stuff like valves…

I would say it was similar to a ptech job that specifically is for chemical plants but is focused around field work like field operations…

So … look at it and see if ptec two year for plant.. good path.. petroleum technology for field operations ..not a bad life…which also leads into petroleum technologist for office jobs..

As a petroleum engineer working for a major we had a few petroleum techs that started in field operation ( district offices) and were moved into corp offices…. we had them do our clerical busy work.. easy job.. office job…

Regardless the pay is good, job is good, and quality of life good if able to get into corp office

But as a retired 30plus guy with degrees in petroleum engineering, geology, geophysics my recommendation is stay away from oil industry.. constant boom bust… layoffs … etc

They have interesting things around the electrical industry… tech…turbine…electric eng.. or medical…

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Petroleum engineering technology

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With any of the engineering technology degrees you would dypically work under an actual engineer doing more hands-on type of a job instead of being in an office doing design work.

With the degree that you mention, I would guess that he would end up working for either a drilling company or an oil field service company. In both of those jobs, the money is damn good but you work long hours under adverse conditions. I did some of these types of jobs for internships during college.

Don’t get too hung up on this, as almost everyone changes majors a couple times before graduation. You just need to be damn sure when he changes majors, some of his credits will transfer. Because tech is on the quarter system, you can lose a hell of a lot of credits if he ever tries to transfer to the LSU system….I don’t know how interchangeable nichols is.

tech is on the quarter system,

Fwiw I started at la tech and after my freshman years switched to LSU Baton Rouge.. as op said I lost some applicable hours .. I was half done in a few things ie you needed two quarters of the class to equal a three hour class in br of same type..

But at least when I had to retake the class the first half of the semester was easy ( sorta)… no college was easy for me:(

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Speaking from over 25 years experience, I would tell your son to look into another field or go to an accredited engineering school and take up ChemE or Mechanical.

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This. ABET is the accreditation you're looking for, and ditch the "technology" part. If he doesn't want to be a formal engineer there's good money to be made with a ptech degree or the like.

Eta:If I were to do it over again I would probably still stick with structural stuff but even ME's do plenty of O&G stuff as well and are not cornered into only doing O&G, same with electricals and structurals.