From my personal experience I can say that the engineers who are there in commissioning, startup and project execution work of plants are not very technically strong.They are filled with a false pride. While the people who who are involved in basic designing aspects like feed characterization , crude assay , making energy, mass balance sheets , they are quite gentle and technically good and a lot to learn from.The same can be said about University professors and researchers who do industrial consultancy...they too are very good.The point is --if you are really passionate about engineering, "academia " and "higher education" are the good options too.And please dont say that "all those who are involved in operation of finished plants are fools". Sometimes they are more intelligent than the commissioning and project engineers.The real crux is that---Dont let the profiles like "commissioning,project manager," etc befool you.The real excitement still in the labs and your textbooks.