What is the employment prospect of environmental engineering technology specialty?

China's environmental protection started in the 1970s, and the first batch of environmental engineering majors were born in Tsinghua University and other universities in the 1980s. However, by 1999, there were more than 120 undergraduate institutions specializing in environmental engineering, in addition to some junior colleges and vocational and technical colleges.

For many years, "employment difficulty" has been puzzling college students majoring in environmental engineering, even undergraduates and graduate students of famous universities have such difficulties. Every year, a large number of graduates majoring in environmental engineering can't find ideal jobs, and most students have to squeeze into other industries. This situation of "promising prospects and worrying reality" has worried many students majoring in environmental science at school, and has also caused some adverse effects in society. Why is the environmental major "applauding but not making a name for itself"? This is a topic worthy of consideration and discussion by university management and insiders.

I. Analysis of the Employment Situation

Environmental engineering (environment

Engineering is a science and technology that studies and engages in preventing and controlling environmental pollution and improving environmental quality. Environmental engineering is related to ecology in biology, environmental hygiene and environmental medicine in medicine, environmental physics and environmental chemistry. Because environmental engineering is in its infancy, the discipline field is still developing, but its core is the treatment of environmental pollution sources.

There are three kinds of counterparts for graduates majoring in environmental engineering: environmental protection departments and scientific research units at all levels in China who eat "financial meals", industrial and mining enterprises that need to solve pollution problems, and environmental protection companies that really eat "environmental meals". Judging from the current market demand for students majoring in environmental engineering, only a few can really enter the government's environmental protection department, planning department and construction management department. Influenced by the personnel system under the long-term planned economy system, these units have many obstacles in staffing and index control. Therefore, combined with the characteristics and orientation of higher vocational education, graduates majoring in environmental engineering in higher vocational colleges should mainly face environmental engineering companies, environmental monitoring departments, industrial and mining enterprises, design units or departments, and engage in basic and technical work such as environmental engineering design, construction management, environmental project operation management and environmental monitoring.

Judging from the situation, students majoring in environmental engineering in higher vocational colleges have certain advantages in going to environmental protection companies. First, these units generally need practical professional and technical personnel who can come in handy quickly in the design, construction, operation and debugging of environmental protection projects; Second, undergraduates and postgraduates majoring in environmental engineering are often reluctant to go to environmental protection companies, especially small private environmental protection engineering companies. They set themselves too high and want to go to large enterprises, foreign-funded enterprises, scientific research units, government environmental protection departments and so on. This concept of employment is an important reason for their employment difficulties. Thirdly, there are many environmental protection companies at present (taking Chengdu, Sichuan as an example, there are hundreds of registered environmental protection companies), and judging from the current development trend of environmental protection, it is a "sunrise industry" for a hundred years after all, and the demand for environmental protection talents will be increasing in the future, especially the first-line environmental protection technical talents. It is predicted that by 20 10, the domestic environmental protection market will reach 500 billion yuan, requiring 100000 environmental protection practitioners and 500000 environmental protection technicians.

Second, the status quo and confusion

At present, many environmental protection enterprises are short of talents and eager for talents. However, there is still a gap between the majors they need and the graduates provided by the school, and the school can't fully meet their needs. Not long ago, an environmental protection engineering company undertook the design and construction task of environmental protection projects, but the number of technical personnel in the enterprise could not meet the needs of engineering quantity. Enterprises urgently needed independent technical personnel to undertake the design and construction work of some projects, including the selection of governance schemes, process design, equipment selection, general layout design, construction supervision, operation and debugging and other integrated projects. Because the fresh graduates have a good theoretical foundation, but lack practical experience, they can't meet the requirements of enterprises. As a result, the company had to find someone else. It is very common for environmental protection enterprises to require environmental engineering talents to be independent, skilled and able to undertake engineering tasks quickly. Even in this industry, there is a phenomenon of "poaching", and some enterprises "rob" talents by paying high prices. This shows that the society does not need environmental engineering professionals, but there is a certain gap between the employment requirements of enterprises and the graduates we have trained.

At present, the teaching materials and teaching contents of environmental engineering specialty are similar. In order to ensure the comprehensiveness and systematization of the major and to expand the employment of graduates, the professional courses offered generally cover the fields involved in this major. Environmental engineering specialty covers a wide range, including the design, construction and operation management of environmental monitoring, environmental quality evaluation, water pollution control, air pollution control, solid waste treatment and disposal, vibration and noise control, etc. To complete these numerous specialized courses within the limited teaching time, it is natural that the task is heavy and the class hours are tight, and it is inevitable that "the scope of study is wide and the depth is average", and then there is no time to take care of the cultivation and training of students' practical ability, and finally the practical skills of graduates can not meet the employment requirements of enterprises. This has become a major problem in environmental engineering teaching.

In order to enhance students' professional ability and practical skills, it is necessary to strengthen practical teaching, especially practice, especially to be able to independently engage in practical work such as environmental monitoring, engineering design, construction management and operation management, so as to enhance students' perceptual knowledge, improve students' practical skills and enrich their practical experience. However, due to professional characteristics, it is almost impossible for an environmental monitoring department, an environmental protection company and a sewage treatment station of a factory to accommodate dozens of students for internship at a time. Generally, an internship website can only accept four or five interns at a time. Therefore, each internship often requires multiple internship units, which usually leads to different practical training contents and degrees for students in the same class. In addition, in recent years, many enterprises are unwilling to accept student internships for economic and security reasons, and only accept a few people when it is inevitable. The existence of these problems has brought difficulties to students' practice, and the workload of some practice points is not saturated, the practice efficiency is low and the practice effect is discounted. In this way, it is difficult to ensure the cultivation of students' practical skills, which has become another major problem.

Third, explore the way out.

(A) Personnel training orientation

Facing the contradiction between job market and talent training, environmental engineering specialty must find a way to survive and develop. The market is like a baton, we can't change it. Only by following this baton and actively tilting the teaching plan and teaching methods to the market can our graduates be "marketable".

Professional orientation should be clear and targeted. Because in the limited school time of students, it is impossible for the school to cultivate students into all-round talents who are good at monitoring, design, construction, operation management, theoretical research and new product development in all directions of this major. Therefore, teaching plans must be focused, selective and targeted.

According to the current employment market and the demand for higher vocational talents, there are at least three directions for environmental engineering specialty in higher vocational colleges to focus on. One is engaged in environmental engineering design (mainly sewage treatment, flue gas desulfurization, municipal water supply and drainage design, garbage disposal site design), one is the operation and debugging of environmental protection projects (focusing on sewage treatment projects), and the third is indoor and outdoor environmental quality monitoring. First of all, due to the increasingly strict control and management of environmental pollution, there are still many pollution problems in various places, and there will be more environmental problems to be solved. This is why environmental engineering is a sunrise industry in 2 1 century, and why large and small environmental protection enterprises have mushroomed. Second, at present, the front-line environmental engineering and technical personnel can not meet the market demand, especially in the operation and commissioning of sewage treatment projects. Three, environmental monitoring can not only be engaged in routine and special monitoring tasks in monitoring centers, related production enterprises and scientific research institutes, but also be competent for the analysis and laboratory work of indoor air quality testing in other industries and emerging industries.

Obviously, the focus of environmental engineering major in higher vocational colleges is not to cultivate research-oriented and development-oriented senior talents, but to cultivate practical skilled talents. Therefore, schools should make great efforts in specialty construction and teaching.

(2) Professional construction

Professional construction should attach great importance to the construction of training facilities and teachers.

As an environmental engineering major in higher vocational colleges, we must have certain experimental practice conditions, including experimental practice facilities for basic skills training and professional skills training. By providing corresponding environmental monitoring and process experimental equipment, students are guaranteed to study in combination with experiments, internships and comprehensive training at school, and their professional ability is enhanced.

The construction of professional teachers is the key factor to ensure the teaching effect and training effect, and also the guarantee to maximize students' ability. Teachers majoring in environmental engineering in higher vocational colleges should strive to become experts in the industry. Without some practical experience and field knowledge, it is difficult for teachers to effectively train students in classroom teaching, comprehensive training, curriculum design and using homework problems to simulate work content. Therefore, for teachers majoring in environmental engineering in higher vocational colleges, in a sense, having rich practical experience is much more important than just having a high degree. Therefore, professional teachers should strengthen extensive contact with enterprises, actively participate in technical exchanges and technical services of environmental protection enterprises, and establish good relations with enterprises to lay a foundation for improving teachers' level and students' practice. When conditions permit, professional teachers strive to leave the factory in turn to participate in engineering design, commissioning, construction management and technical services in environmental protection enterprises and engineering sites, and strive to become technical talents, technical elites and even technical experts in the industry. This is the foundation of professional sustainable development, which requires time and energy, as well as overall arrangement and various support.

Specialty construction should pay attention to the demonstration of teaching plan, the improvement of teaching process and the strengthening of practical teaching.

In terms of teaching plan, first, the selection of specialized courses should reflect pertinence, and the curriculum setting and class time allocation should be oriented to market demand and practical ability training to meet the requirements of environmental engineering design, environmental monitoring, operation management and engineering project debugging. On the basis of full market investigation, the teaching plan should be carefully discussed and studied by the professional teaching and research section, and an outline with strong pertinence, pragmatic efficiency and clear professional ability objectives should be formulated. Then, the syllabus should be compiled in strict accordance with the requirements of the teaching plan, which fully reflects the pertinence and purpose of teaching.

In the teaching process, we should fully combine the actual operation status and operation process of environmental engineering to explain. In the classroom, pictures and animations should be widely used, and modern educational technology should be adopted for teaching. At the same time, we should cooperate with on-site visits and explanations in time to further deepen our understanding of related processes, equipment and technologies. Homework problems should be simulated as much as possible, and students should be trained to solve practical problems such as calculation and engineering technical essentials that are often used in the field of environmental engineering employment, and discussions should be organized to ensure the effectiveness of training.

In practice teaching, on the one hand, it is necessary to strengthen the comprehensive training of environmental monitoring experiment, environmental engineering process experiment, monitoring and design, and try to simulate the work site for "exercise", which is the basic training to improve practical ability; On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a suitable practice base through exchanges and cooperation with enterprises. In order to ensure that students get enough internship opportunities, the arrangement of internship time should be flexible, which can be done at the end of the semester, at the beginning of the semester or during the semester; It can be done during class hours or during the winter and summer vacations. Practice time should make full use of the busy period of enterprise tasks, so as to alleviate the shortage of manpower in enterprises and increase students' hands-on opportunities. Practice site and practice content should strive to make students get all kinds of exercises. Students in different practice sites rotate at different times, so that students can participate in practical operations in environmental monitoring, engineering design, operation management, etc., so as to maximize their professional ability and enrich their practical experience.

In a word, as a "sunrise industry" in the 2 1 century, environmental engineering has become a recognized "difficult employment" major. Although this is related to the social attention to environmental protection and the concept of talent demand of environmental protection enterprises, higher vocational colleges, as training technical talents, must face up to the reality, aim at the market, work hard in many ways, improve the intensity of vocational and technical education, find a breakthrough point, and strive to improve students' comprehensive strength and professional ability. Only in this way can the environmental engineering specialty develop steadily and healthily.

Business training objectives of environmental engineering specialty:

This major cultivates advanced engineering and technical personnel in environmental engineering who have knowledge of urban water, gas, sound and solid waste pollution prevention, water supply and drainage engineering, pollution control planning and water resources protection, and can engage in planning, design, construction, management, education and research and development in government departments, planning departments, economic management departments, environmental protection departments, design units, industrial and mining enterprises, scientific research units and schools.

Business training requirements: Students in this major mainly study the basic theories and knowledge of general chemistry, engineering mechanics, surveying, engineering drawing, microbiology, hydraulics, electrotechnics, environmental monitoring and environmental engineering, receive basic training in foreign languages, computer technology and drawing, pollutant monitoring and analysis, engineering design, management and planning, and have the basic ability of scientific research, engineering design and management planning in environmental science and technology, water supply and drainage engineering and other fields.

Graduates should have the following knowledge and abilities:

1. Master the basic theories and knowledge of general chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, engineering mechanics, surveying, engineering drawing, microbiology, hydraulics, electrotechnics, environmental monitoring and evaluation, and environmental engineering;

2. Master the basic principles and design methods of water pollution control project, air pollution control project, noise pollution control project and solid waste treatment and disposal project;

3. Have the preliminary ability of pollutant monitoring and analysis, environmental monitoring, environmental quality evaluation, environmental planning and management; 4. Understand the theoretical frontier and development trend of environmental science and technology;

5. Master the basic methods of literature retrieval and information inquiry, and have preliminary scientific research and practical work ability.

Main course:

Main disciplines: environmental science and engineering

Main courses: engineering mechanics, surveying, hydraulics and pumps, water treatment microbiology, general chemistry, analytical chemistry and physical chemistry.

Main practical teaching links: measurement practice, engineering drawing, computer application and computer practice, hydraulics experiment, microorganism experiment, environmental monitoring experiment, water treatment experiment, air pollution control experiment, etc. , generally arranged in about 40 weeks.

Study time: four years

Degree awarded: Bachelor of Engineering

Similar majors: environmental engineering, safety engineering, disaster prevention engineering, water quality science and technology, water supply and drainage engineering, groundwater science and engineering, wind energy and power engineering, environmental science and engineering urban planning.

radiation protection and environmental engineering

Prospect analysis of environmental engineering specialty: easy to find workpieces and low pay.

The major of environmental protection was rated as the hottest major in Strengthening 2 1 century. However, in the current booming graduate supply and demand conference, environmental professionals were given a cold shoulder. This is because in the specific environmental governance industry, the input is often greater than the output, and they win very little. In addition to the recent annual profit of environmental consulting business and environmental technology service industry 1 billion yuan, others

The industry is generally at a loss. Therefore, the employment situation of graduates majoring in environment related to this is also good. Many students feel that their major is bright before entering school, but they find it very sad after entering school: it is said that it is difficult to find a job.

According to the author's investigation, it can be described in eight words: easy to find a job and low salary. Obviously, the demand for professionals is greatly expanding; The employment environment is really not very good. Through the investigation of hundreds of environmental engineering practitioners, it is found that the salary of graduates in economically developed areas such as Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta is generally between 1.500 yuan/month and 3,000 yuan/month, while the salary of similar posts in underdeveloped areas is generally between 800- 1.800 yuan/month.

After graduating from this major, we should strive for employment in economically developed areas, because the professional concept and technical level of major companies can enable newcomers to quickly accumulate relevant work experience. It is difficult for ordinary small companies to spend the cost and energy to train new people, and they also lack this environment and ability.

Environmental protection work is a typical "the older, the more valuable". Environmental engineers recruited by the General Design Institute should indicate that they need more than 5 years of design experience. Moreover, because the annual growth of graduates in this major may greatly exceed the market demand. Therefore, graduates must accept a lower salary level before entering the industry.

If we understand the situation correctly and study hard, the prospect of this industry will be better and better. Environmental science covers a wide range. Coupled with the rise of "green technology", there are a wide range of industries that can be engaged. Once there is demand for environmental protection talents, the young "environmental protection sector" can create a large number of successful "green" gold medal leaders like IT industry and investment bank.

The learning ability of technical posts is more important.

At present, the main working directions of environmental engineering are still water treatment, garbage treatment and flue gas treatment, which are commonly referred to as three wastes treatment, sewage treatment and water supply treatment. It involves many industries and is widely used in employment at present. Flue gas treatment is the most popular and sought-after at present, and the salary is high.

The concept of environmental protection industry is relatively broad, including environmental management, such as environmental protection bureau and environmental monitoring department; There are environmental protection facilities, such as water treatment stations and environmental protection supervision and management departments of enterprises; There are environmental protection engineering companies that do engineering contracting; There are environmental protection equipment manufacturers, such as professional equipment manufacturers; There are also environmental technology consulting, such as design institutes and environmental technology companies.

In the choice of employment direction, according to the development trend of the industry, the first choice is to do environmental technical support and project management in foreign companies, followed by research and development, and finally to do environmental management in enterprises. The reason for this choice is that you can't run into a big climate in the enterprise. What can I do after running for 10 years? At best, you are an expert in debugging.

Case: Li Shujing, who graduated from a university majoring in environmental engineering in 2004, now works in a water treatment company. He thinks there is a big difference between the school curriculum and practical application. UCT technology used in the company's waterworks-he had never heard of it before graduation, and his classmates communicated with him on QQ, just like a gobbledygook. In fact, UCT technology is already a mature technology. However, during his college years, he did not introduce the process of nitrogen and phosphorus removal (VIP, UCT) in detail except the traditional activity method in the textbook (note: The textbook of Industrial Water Pollution Control by McGraw-Hill Publishing Company of the United States basically introduced the sewage treatment engineering process currently used in China). Not only that, the conditions of the school are quite different from the actual application. I attended a meeting in the company about buying testing instruments for water plants. Compared with the actual project now, the school is almost still in the slash-and-burn period. For example, in school, measuring COD is a reagent and heating, which takes two hours at a time, but our company now uses ultraviolet rays to directly monitor it in real time.

According to our investigation of environmental protection industry, it is considered that technical consultation and project management are the mainstream direction of the development of this industry. In fact, most foreign companies in China also have great technical advantages in these two aspects, and their profits are also very good. These enterprises generally require large-scale project management ability when recruiting senior talents, and attach great importance to the management quality of fresh graduates. Therefore, students who don't want to leave their major, but are interested in doing technology, can learn "project management" and other courses by themselves from now on. In addition, you can have more contact with industry magazines, which will bring more and more popular technologies and ideas.

If you can practice in a first-class enterprise, don't let it go. Technology and advanced equipment are not as good as reading a book ten times as much as operating it or seeing it in person. Moreover, teamwork and management ideas can only be truly understood in your actual work.

Sales specialty is weak and has a wide range of choices.

When enterprises recruit most sales positions of environmental protection products, they will require graduates majoring in environmental engineering. Talents with professional background can give professional explanations to customers and also undertake some after-sales service functions.

At present, the growth rate of providing similar jobs in the talent market is much faster than that of technical jobs. A large part of them are environmental protection product sales, after-sales service and other positions. But this kind of position will have such a characteristic at the beginning: tired work and low salary-basically all sales positions in all industries are similar.

The sales position is not particularly harsh on the professional background, which means that enterprises can choose talents with low academic qualifications or professional mismatch to sell products on the premise of saving costs. Because the sales position is important for sales skills rather than environmental professional level.

Being a marketer is a profitable profession. At present, senior marketing positions are the darling of high salaries in the workplace. These positions generally require five years or more professional experience in marketing, good customer resources, excellent planning ability and market awareness.

If college students have some sales skills at school, their competitiveness will undoubtedly be greatly enhanced. And the chances of changing careers after doing sales will be better. After all, the sales principle can be used in almost any industry.

Only select the useful ones for textual research.

Taking the major of environmental protection and monitoring as an example, it is the basic requirement for this major to obtain "intermediate analytical operator certificate" and "advanced analytical operator certificate". In addition, you can choose this certificate according to your ideal target occupation, such as "Intermediate Certificate of Indoor Environmental Testing", and you can choose "Certificate of Environmental Engineering Design" for those who work in indoor environment. There are also some basic application certificates, such as English, computer certificate and AUTOCAD certification, which employers will also consider.

Sometimes, certificates can win some affirmation for themselves, but this is not absolute. There are not too many certificates but fine ones, so it is necessary to be targeted and based on your outstanding advantages. It is easy to bury the advantages by blindly listing the certificates, which can only be counterproductive.

This professional characteristic of environmental specialty itself requires students to have professional skills. Similarly, employers attach great importance to the ability and qualification of graduates. In this case, it is still useful to have relevant certificates. However, when choosing a certificate exam, you should be cautious, and don't blindly follow the trend or hold the idea that the more the better.