Advice on university courses? (Engineering)

My wife is a civil. She's a senior PM at her firm and I would say her career and quality of life are fairly high. That said I think other branches of engineering have the potential to make more however you're certainly not going to starve.

I think some interesting mixes might be civil and public policy/administration (a lot of money is spent by governments on civil stuff). Engineering and an MBA always seem to go together well so there's that.

I don't know about Australia because I'm a software guy in San Francisco so take this with a grain of salt: in America, It looks like you need a graduate degree in civil engineering to become successful.  Double majoring is tough, but I guess it depends what school you go to. 

i did a double in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry and enjoyed it. I liked the academic side of the science degree and the practical side of the engineering degree. i beleive a double degree helped me get a job and i enjoyed the extra year of university but i rarely use my Chemistry degree - some knowledge of finance and account would be more useful but to be honest, its nothing i couldn't learn on the job.

if i had my time again i would do a double degree with an arts degree - engineering and history or english would be a great mix for preparing for work in a corporate environment.

edit; i wouldnt do mechatronic in australia - there inst enough industry - you will end up being a controls engineer in mining. stick with mechanic, civil, electrical or chemical in my opinion.

This is not my experience. Not saying a graduate degree isn't a good idea, as engineering is a very credential driven field, but of the three PEs that own my wife's firm one has an MBA and none have advanced engineering degrees. While liking credentials the field also really respects results and ability and these are not necessarily conferred by having another degree behind your name.

Yeah, my assumption was based on all the people I knew personally in civil engineering(only a few).  You may be right.

Don't spend extra time for what is essentially a weaker undergrad degree that neither complements nor supplements engineering. It's probably best to spend the time on a graduate degree and/or work experience.

In Australia I think you'd be crazy to not take advantage of the mining industry.

I work for a power company that has some assets in Australia .. been checking our job boards lately and it seems we hire a lot of Civil Engineers (geospacial?) to do a lot of our hydro/wind stuff.

I don't think the double major would be worth your time and money. You'd get the same education as a P.Eng/MBA .. for a bit cheaper - with the trade-off of not having an MBA.

I'd say get your P.Eng .. go to work - and see if you can get your company to partially fund an MBA after a few years.

If Australia's Engineering market is similar to Canada's (AUS/CAN are so similar in so many aspects, I can't see the professional labour market being that different) .. you'll be kicking yourself for spending the extra 1.5 years in Undergrad.

university is cheap in Australia - about $6k a year.

I work with a few Engineers from Alberta and they say the economies are very similar. Canada has slightly more manufacturing and Australia has slightly more mining and construction.

I agree with the Engineering degree followed by an MBA down the road. If your legitimately interested in financial engineering then your going to need a masters degree (in financial engineering) instead of two bachelors.