[sdiy] Who Needs a Degree?

[Paul Schreiber]

a) full disclosure: I have BSEE/MSEE. I got the MSEE 13 years after the 
BSEE. And I started off in Chemistry (in 1974 I was in the top 3 Chemistry 
students in the US).

b) in my "day job" (military electronics that go into fighter aircraft) I 
talk to many 'levels' of people on a program. There are QC, test, design, 
program manager, buyers, programmers and probably 10 others.

After talking to any one of these people for < 1 minute, I can tell if they 
are degreed engineers or not. Even if they got a degree 15 years ago and 
have never soldered in their lives. I can still *tell*. It's not any 1 
thing: it's a combination of "proper vocabulary", insight, thought process, 
attitude.

Sure, there are always a few 'Jim Williams' tossed in the mix but he is an 
*exception*.

c) here is what a college degree REALLY means:

1 - you stuck to something and didn't quit
2 - you understand how to prioritize your time
3 - you understand the value of time
4 - you think differently than other people (not WHAT you think, HOW you 
think)

People that go to college and expect to learn anything *pratical* are always 
dissappoionted (or quit). YOU are supposed to learn what YOU think is 
pratical. YOU have to have the incentive to "go the extra mile".

The number 1 thing I see different (especially in EEs versus techs) is the 
ability to:

- think abstractly
- able to easily any quickly jump from problem to problem without panicing 
that the specific knowledge is not yet acquired. Many techs excel in a 
*limited and specific* area of electronics, but cannot easily & seamlessly 
jump from DSP to RF to FPGA to pc board layout to wiring to firmware. This 
is why you take "useless" classes in college (thermo for one, I spent 6 
weeks learning about steam-powered generators). The *specific knowledge* is 
100% useless, the ability to walk in, learn it well enough to pass and then 
move on to yet another useless class (Early American Poetry) is 100% the 
reason why you are there.

Paul S.