Changing petroleum engineering education to meet industry demand

The Department of Petroleum Engineering at Curtin University had its inception in 1998. For the last 10 years,it lectured the Masters in petroleum engineering course to local Australian and international students, graduatingmore than 200 students. The rapid increase in the price of oil during 2006/7 saw a sudden and substantial growthin industry employment opportunities, which resulted in the department losing over half of its staff to industry. At the same time, the supply of local students reduced to less than 10% of those taking the course. This loss in both student numbers and staff at the same time threatened the department’s future, and resulted in the need for a new focus to return the department to stability.