[sdiy] EE Degree

[Tony Clark]

> I would say if you are in the US, move to another country, go to school for
> less, get your EE, and come back to the states.. Yeah, you will have to
> learn another language, but it won't take you 7 years to finish, nor 100k
> dollars.. I regret not having stayed in Germany to get my citizenship and
> going to school there.. :(

   I don't know about all countries, but I can certainly tell you that 
_some_ engineering programs overseas will not prepare you for proper EE 
work.  I know for sure that nearly every Indian we've gotten here at the U 
that has claimed to have taken EE can't even look at a schematic with a 
simple inverting op-amp block and tell you what it does.
   The sad truth of it is that their programs lack hands on experience, 
so the only thing that they can do is quote verbatim from whatever books 
they might have used.  Nice having the theory, terrible to not have any 
practical applicative knowledge.
   Even many of the programs in the US may not be that great either.  I 
remember looking to transfer out of the U to a state college to save 
money, but once I discovered that the equipment was still 60's-70's 
vintage and lacked many of the modern tools, I knew it would have been a 
bad mistake!
   So, to sum up, I think that it is definately a wise choice to be in a 
program where they DO give you a good workload, where you have access to 
good equipment, and more importantly, have enough time left over to 
tinker.  :)
   BTW, for anyone that's interested, I did my senior project programming 
FIR filters (non-resonant) into a TI 320C30 DSP chip.

   Cheers,

   Tony

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     Excerpt from EE Times April 2, 2001