Hopeless engineering graduates fail grade school electrical problem

[IanB]

OK, I'm sure this has been edited to make it look bad, but really, nobody, nobody entering engineering school should be able to fail this, let alone anyone graduating from one. Sadly, however, I think this situation is all too real:

https://youtu.be/aIhk9eKOLzQ

We are doomed, I tell you. Doomed!

[trophosphere]

The video didn't really surprise me. There are bound to be people that don't know how to put theory into practice or end up needlessly making a situation more complicated than what it really is.

I remember during the first half of my Circuits Analysis class in undergrad the professor blew everyone's minds that a line drawn across a schematic connecting several components together could mean they were connected to a single node. Electrical Engineering students, that were seniors, didn't even know that other op-amps besides the 741 existed as that was all that was in the lab and what they had ran their experiments on during their time in school. The majority couldn't even make sense of a datasheet if presented with it.

That being said, almost everyone there at the end knew how to do things that the majority of electronics hobbyists would not even know about such as perform steady state analysis of RL, RC, and RLC circuits. Calculate and derive feedback loops used in PID controllers and switching converters, perform convolution related to continuous LTI systems, solve multi-parameter systems using linear algebra and differential equations, and so on and so forth.

I think the point of teaching just theory in college is to make sure everyone is well equipped to be critical thinkers and be able to use varying concepts to achieve a goal given a set of restrictions. The applicability can be easily taught on the job. If you want someone to build or repair something, hire a technician. If you want someone to design something, hire an engineer.

[Simon]

oh university students not being competent ? what a surprise. I need not remind you of the albeit many of the few people I have dealt with that can't use their brains in conjunction with what they are taught. The most amazing was the guy that claimed he could not use all 10 bits of an ADC in a uC while whinging about the resolution.

[retrolefty]

If you want someone to build or repair something, hire a technician. If you want someone to design something, hire an engineer.

 Does that mean to manage a company you need to hire only a MBA?

 The large > 100yr old oil company I worked for before retirement always selected the CEO from within the company and always with an engineering education, most frequently chemical engineer. Seemed to work out long enough for my retirement. 

[trophosphere]

If you want someone to build or repair something, hire a technician. If you want someone to design something, hire an engineer.

 Does that mean to manage a company you need to hire only a MBA?

 The large > 100yr old oil company I worked for before retirement always selected the CEO from within the company and always with an engineering education, most frequently chemical engineer. Seemed to work out long enough for my retirement. 

Why would you want to hire a MBA to run a company? If you followed my example then the MBA would only be hired to think about ways to get the company to run better. Leave the running to the person who actually knows how to get stuff done and has practical knowledge of what he/she is dealing with (in your case someone already in your company). 

[IanB]

The video didn't really surprise me. There are bound to be people that don't know how to put theory into practice or end up needlessly making a situation more complicated than what it really is.

But I believe that practice comes before theory. When you are growing up as a child you are able to do practical things long before you are able to understand the theory behind them. If you are not doing practical things, making things and doing experiments before enrolling in an engineering program then I would doubt your aptitude to be an engineer. Lighting bulbs with batteries is something you learn to do when you are about 10 years old. It's not putting theory into practice, it is child's play, literally.

That being said, almost everyone there at the end knew how to do things that the majority of electronics hobbyists would not even know about such as perform steady state analysis of RL, RC, and RLC circuits. Calculate and derive feedback loops used in PID controllers and switching converters, perform convolution related to continuous LTI systems, solve multi-parameter systems using linear algebra and differential equations, and so on and so forth.

A good question would be, did they understand what was going on when solving these problems? Or were they just passing the test?

I think the point of teaching just theory in college is to make sure everyone is well equipped to be critical thinkers and be able to use varying concepts to achieve a goal given a set of restrictions. The applicability can be easily taught on the job. If you want someone to build or repair something, hire a technician. If you want someone to design something, hire an engineer.

I don't think you can apply theory well unless you have enough depth to understand the practical side. When I was at university the mechanical engineering students had a fully equipped workshop available where they could strip down and rebuild car engines. Nothing adds more clarity to the theory than seeing practical examples of how other engineers have designed things.

[pitagoras]

What is more surprising to me that they never became interested in building (obviously they cannot built anything).
It is obvious why so many times we get answers like "it cannot be done", "not worth the mess", not to mention the "you will never get the degree of commercial stuff" religion.

[trophosphere]

But I believe that practice comes before theory. When you are growing up as a child you are able to do practical things long before you are able to understand the theory behind them. If you are not doing practical things, making things and doing experiments before enrolling in an engineering program then I would doubt your aptitude to be an engineer. Lighting bulbs with batteries is something you learn to do when you are about 10 years old. It's not putting theory into practice, it is child's play, literally.

That would be a problem with society and education in general. A large majority of engineering students (at least from when I was an electrical engineering undergrad from 2005-2009) wanted to get into engineering because they thought it would either be financially secure, they had an interest that was close to it such as building computers/liked science fiction, or that's what their parents told them to do. Very few individuals did any electronics outside of the classroom or what was required beyond homework. As far as learning practical things before understanding them, you will have to talk to the education department about that. Theory is usually taught before you go to the lab as the pre-lab assignment involved doing the calculations before seeing them in real life.

A good question would be, did they understand what was going on when solving these problems? Or were they just passing the test?

Oh, by majority, passing the test for sure. It would take them less time to relearn it if they were required but by far most already forgot how to do such things by graduation. To put it this way: they just are familiar enough with the material to be able to pick it back up if needed.

I don't think you can apply theory well unless you have enough depth to understand the practical side. When I was at university the mechanical engineering students had a fully equipped workshop available where they could strip down and rebuild car engines. Nothing adds more clarity to the theory than seeing practical examples of how other engineers have designed things.

That is true but getting students to do stuff outside of required class work is hard.

I was an electronics hobbyist prior to go into electrical engineering as an undergrad. Often I would wonder why more practical stuff was being taught but that was partially extinguished when I had to learn theory and do hundreds of problems just to make sure I could go through the motions of solving test problems. I hated electromagnetics especially (there was no lab for that so it was all theory). Still, I did make an impact by getting my professor in my digital circuits class to invest in those Diligent FPGA boards for everyone. That was cool but it fell apart because no one actually used them to build anything outside or inside of class. For homework problems, why go through the motions of having to spend time downloading files, setting things up, and writing a program in Verilog when you could just do it by hand on paper? It is much faster, and if you couldn't get the answer on your own just ask the gunner student for the answers before class.

[Simon]

The problem is we don't do hobbies anymore so children learn no practicl skill or analytical thinking. For as ling as I can remember i tried to design and make stuff.

[EEVblog]

The problem is we don't do hobbies anymore so children learn no practicl skill or analytical thinking. For as ling as I can remember i tried to design and make stuff.

The hobbies still exist, they have just changed (for the worse usually).
Before the internet and ubiquitous personal computers there was only one obvious outlet for someone who wanted to know how modern technology worked, DIY electronics.
Now DIY electronics has to compete for attention with the multitude of other things on their phones and online.

But the number of engineering students who had done DIY electronics before they studied it was always small, like a handful at best, even in my days of the late 80's and early 90's. They were easy to spot, they were reading Electronics Australia.
I can't vouch for before that though, but it was likely a bit higher?

[Simon]

I get the impression that if you go back to the 50s everybody had a hobby even parents. Children grew up in an engaged atmosphere where they had an interest or their parents had an interest in something and they got their hands on to something and had something to think about. As time has gone on the whole population has become more lazy. I suppose TV started it and then computers and then the Internet and of course Facebook. But these days I just don't find anybody who actually has an interest in how something works or want to solve a problem or make something better or do anything that requires thinking. Everybody seems to be more interested in being better than each other or watching TV or doing some other brain fading activity. We just don't have the aptitude any more. And then you go to work and you realise that actually nobody gives a shit. Everybody is just doing the job for the money and they will do whatever job they think gets the more money. Granted I hate my job but this is because of the way the company is managed and how management think of the work I do. But my role is one I would expect to enjoy and sometimes I do when I am left to get on with something on my own and come up with the perfect solution or I am allowed to sit down with our official electronics subcontractor who is also a member of this forum and between us we come up with perfection if we are allowed to do it. But this is because I have an interest in my work it goes beyond just doing it for the money. These days everybody just wants money so they can buy stuff they think is going to make them look good while they are slouched in front of the TV or nattering to their friends on Facebook or doing both at once. Nobody has an interest any more in making anything except for an extreme select few. Nobody collect stamps any more, nobody reads books nobody does so many things that although not directly related to work in schools or personal development do in fact improve these areas of their life as well. When I started writing essays at school the teacher turned round in front of the whole class and said to me "you read a lot don't you" I said yes how did you know, she said by the style of your writing. Now I never ever cared about good writing style or about writing at all. I just had a zest for reading books mostly Enid Blyton books but this indirectly contributed to my schoolwork. I did not read books to improve my schoolwork I read the books because I found them interesting but it also helped in other areas of my life.

As a kid I always came up with ideas for building things. It was not until my later teens that I actually was able to build anything but for as long as I can remember I schemed and design things in my head. These days I trump other people because I not only do the electronics but I also do the mechanical design and I devise complete solutions. I'm not specifically trained in either area but because I had a personal interest it has helped me later in life

[Rick Law]

You should not need to hook up a light bulb in safe space.  When a safe space is designated by the university administration, all human needs should be included and functional.

Upon graduation, student can then move from their college safe space, to the safe space at their place of employment.  Hooking up a light bulb is beneath them; at their place of employment, there should be people that do that kinds of chores.

[CatalinaWOW]

To be fair to the MIT graduates, in several of the segments no one could light that particular bulb with that battery.  Were the graduates thinking it was a trick question?  Others were dealing with physical coordination problems, trying to hold the light bulb, wire and battery in position with only two hands and no clamps, vices or other aids.  Geeks and nerds are notoriously low on the physical coordination scale.

[Rick Law]

To be fair to the MIT graduates, in several of the segments no one could light that particular bulb with that battery.  Were the graduates thinking it was a trick question?  Others were dealing with physical coordination problems, trying to hold the light bulb, wire and battery in position with only two hands and no clamps, vices or other aids.  Geeks and nerds are notoriously low on the physical coordination scale.

In the early segments, the bulbs used was a good bit larger.  One look at the light bulb one can see it is probably not a 1.5v bulb.  But, I expected the MIT grads to quickly realize that.  The excitement of graduation probably got them off balance.

On the other hand, the Harvard grads, I don't know.  The Harvard kids were probably turned off by the bulb being a big white bulb perhaps with too much privilege to light up.  So, they didn't try hard.  They were probably preoccupied with thinking about having bulbs of other color to make the line up diverse.

[vk6zgo]

I really wanted the MIT graduates to be dumb,but,looking at the first part of the clip,I think they were"set up".

The "light bulb" they were provided with was not a 1.5v one,or certainly, was unlike any bulb for that voltage which I have ever seen.
The "bunnies" could have connected the circuit correctly,got no light ,& started to doubt themselves.

Fair Go,guys---Either ask them:- "Why the bulb doesn't illuminate?"( which would be a more serious test),or use the correct bulb for the circuit voltage.

This is classic TV show crap--I remember a programme which purported to show that TV Repair Shops were ripping off their customers.

They found some so-called "Engineer" to put a fault on a TV.
He did this by tweaking a trimmer pot.
The Station had dozens of Techs & several EEs who could have made a more convincing fault,(Hell,even the old "drawing pin in a capacitor" would have been better),but no,they got this dope.

The TV was sent out to various Repair shops.
Naturally,they assumed the trimmers were all correctly set,& looked everywhere else,before ultimately readjusting the trimpot & returning the TV with a note that they had adjusted it to work,but asking the owners to return it if it failed again.

The "Engineer" pontificated at length on how they should have found the maladjusted pot in a couple of minutes.
All the Techs & EEs at our Studio called BS on this,but we only had decades of "hands on " experience--what did we know?

[IanB]

I really wanted the MIT graduates to be dumb,but,looking at the first part of the clip,I think they were"set up".

The "light bulb" they were provided with was not a 1.5v one,or certainly, was unlike any bulb for that voltage which I have ever seen.
The "bunnies" could have connected the circuit correctly,got no light ,& started to doubt themselves.

It is true that it may have been a mains bulb, but I would have expected them to recognize that in an instant and ask for a low voltage bulb instead (as one guy evidently did).

[Simon]

The clip was obviously set up for students to fail. To be honest I probably would have asked if it was a 1 1/2 V bulb. I'd be surprised if any light bulb lit up one battery.

Same sort of thing really for the TV. You can make anything out of anything these days and this is one of the reasons why I don't own a TV or watch any form of TV because I know it's all manufactured nonsense. I also don't read any of the tabloids or get time to read any newspapers for that matter because they all have a pretty much declared bias so what is the point in reading something with the aim of finding facts when there is a declared bias. The TV programme was the same there was a declared bias they were going to prove that the TV shops were no good. When I've taken TVs into repair to people that I do know on behalf of other people when I lived in Italy the guy was always quite honest with me and often will tell me about how many hours he had spent chasing down a dry joint for example. It is simple stuff that takes hours in repair but of course Joe public seem to think that the simpler the fault of the easier to find.

[vk6zgo]

Of course.there is sometimes the "exception that proves the rule".
We decided to outsource domestic type TVs rather than fix them ourselves.

That said,we still did "first in" checks .

On one occasion,we did the most obvious checks,before "buttoning it up" & sending it off,attaching a note saying what the symptoms were & what we had checked.

When we got it back it still had the repair shop's job docket attached,with (under "Nature of fault"):-
"It doesn't work".

[EEVblog]

It was funny when the mechanical engineering student said she's not an electrical engineer 
That's like me saying I can't assemble Ikea furniture.

[EEVblog]

To be honest I probably would have asked if it was a 1 1/2 V bulb.

That's exactly the response I would expect from an MIT graduate!
And it's a good response asking such questions first, it shows you know the basics and are actually thinking.

[EEVblog]

As a kid I always came up with ideas for building things.

Every kid is.
Any parent will tell you that every kid is born curious. Evolution seems to have designed us to be curious creatures, we need to explore are natural world and figure out how things work.
Seemingly annoying stuff like banging pots and pans together is actually a child experimenting to see what noise it will make (potential acoustics engineer there).

[Circlotron]

If you are not doing practical things, making things and doing experiments before enrolling in an engineering program then I would doubt your aptitude to be an engineer.

Amen to that!

Reminds me of one of several different jobs where I was the one-man R&D department. I have no qualifications as an engineer. We got this EE in as my helper who had been qualified for maybe 3 years. I asked him to draw me up a 2nd order low pass filter for a particular application. Several days later he came back to me with five foolscap pages of poles and zeros and letters that are not even in the alphabet. I asked him yeah, but how about a circuit to build the LPF??? He just shrugged; he didn't know.

[Simon]

As a kid I always came up with ideas for building things.

Every kid is.
Any parent will tell you that every kid is born curious. Evolution seems to have designed us to be curious creatures, we need to explore are natural world and figure out how things work.
Seemingly annoying stuff like banging pots and pans together is actually a child experimenting to see what noise it will make (potential acoustics engineer there).

Well I don't have much experience of children although I think I went on to wonder for longer than most children perhaps and this is probably the case for those of us that become engineers. Yes children probably are born curious but I think in a lot of cases parents ignore this and tell children why bother all that has already been done I don't think all parents try to nurture that creativity. When I was a teenager I was still trying to design things I think most teenagers these days have other interests. Obviously as a teenager up my ideas were more realistic and I have carried on into adult hood with a zest for solving practical problems with devices.

[tszaboo]

But I believe that practice comes before theory.

The issue with universities is the perfection. Look at the, saying they are the best of the best, and they actually believe it. If you are doing practice, something is going to go wrong. You connect things the other way around, blow up stuff, fail, sometimes succeed. Universities discourage failure. The entire thing is built up to punish failure. You fail a test, you get "punished" the more you fail, the worse the punishment is.
Practice is not easy. You need to try several approaches, and there just isn't enough time to do it. So you better get it right the first time, don't take chances. They also dont teach you problem solving skills, because the majority of engineers are not going to need it in their life. I've seen an automotive manufacturer looking for a team of 40 people to design a 12V lead acid battery power meter project, which will be 2-5 years. Are you kidding me? How much administrative overhead do you think there is in that company? How much time a hobbits need to put it together? 2 days after the components arrive?
For every competent engineer, there will be 40 people whos job is button mashing. They go home, to their wifes, and they have 0 interest for electronics, and the most difficult task in their professional life will be choosing the wine for their bosses birthday.
That is what the university prepares people for.

[rstofer]

Fair Go,guys---Either ask them:- "Why the bulb doesn't illuminate?"( which would be a more serious test),or use the correct bulb for the circuit voltage.

This is classic TV show crap--I remember a programme which purported to show that TV Repair Shops were ripping off their customers.

They found some so-called "Engineer" to put a fault on a TV.
He did this by tweaking a trimmer pot.
The Station had dozens of Techs & several EEs who could have made a more convincing fault,(Hell,even the old "drawing pin in a capacitor" would have been better),but no,they got this dope.

The TV was sent out to various Repair shops.
Naturally,they assumed the trimmers were all correctly set,& looked everywhere else,before ultimately readjusting the trimpot & returning the TV with a note that they had adjusted it to work,but asking the owners to return it if it failed again.

The "Engineer" pontificated at length on how they should have found the maladjusted pot in a couple of minutes.
All the Techs & EEs at our Studio called BS on this,but we only had decades of "hands on " experience--what did we know?

Back in the days of Muscle Cars, Plymouth used to sponsor a Troubleshooting Contest which included parts deliberately manufactured as defective.  Stuff you wouldn't immediately think about.

https://books.google.com/books?id=TtQDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168#v=onepage&q&f=false

One thing about those days, we kids certainly knew how to make cars go fast!  Turning wasn't nearly as advanced.  And, no, I wasn't a participant in the contests but we did have a couple of Dodges and a Plymouth that were pretty quick.  Seven liter engines tend to pump out gobs of horsepower!

[vodka]

OK, I'm sure this has been edited to make it look bad, but really, nobody, nobody entering engineering school should be able to fail this, let alone anyone graduating from one. Sadly, however, I think this situation is all too real:

https://youtu.be/aIhk9eKOLzQ

We are doomed, I tell you. Doomed!

Lucky, that she don't ask them  how  does work the pacifier's mechanism? 

For every competent engineer, there will be 40 people whos job is button mashing. They go home, to their wifes, and they have 0 interest for electronics, and the most difficult task in their professional life will be choosing the wine for their bosses birthday.
That is what the university prepares people for.

So ,you are saying :One works and the rest (40 man) stay to see to other  how  works.
 Simply , i result very familiar

[hans]

Over half of MIT and Harvard students get this question wrong the first time:

A bat and ball cost $1.10.

The bat costs one dollar more than the ball.

How much does the ball cost?

If you rewrite this question as with any calculus test like x + (1+x) = 11/10 (no - not 1.10), solve for x, they would laugh at you.

You don't go to university for practical problem solving capabilities. You should have the 'knack' by your own interests. I've had an intern who studied computer science because he said it leads to well paid jobs for a nice house and car. Sure, a good engineer (or any profession actually) will be paid very well, but that does not mean university is the only ingredient that accomplishes this. He couldn't even get some of the basics down in computer programming, and he was a 3rd year Bsc student. In his spare time he did not program or anything like engineering. Well it's obvious you will be outperformed by engineers that do occasionally do some tinkering at home.

University teaches more about abstract thinking than anything else. These courses are packed in such a tight schedule as well. It's a test if you're capable and willing to spend so much time on theoretical subjects with little direct application. It can prove that you're quick in picking up new information.
However most of the nifty details will be gone in about 6 weeks, which sucks if you have an exam in 7 weeks time. Yet there is not enough time to slack things off the first 4 weeks and then go full autistic on the homework. The trick is to learn yourself the broad concepts and be able to dive into them when needed.

There are many subjects that are only taught well at university. Sure you can self teach a lot of things, and everyone should to keep the knack going, but not all subjects are easy to get into. Like semiconductor design for example.

[rfeecs]

It looks like only two of the graduates are possibly from MIT.  The others with the "crow's feet" symbol on their gowns are from Harvard.

Interesting the Harvard folks say "sure", "definitely" and then can't do it.

The MIT guys seem to be thinking "Is this a trick question?", "Maybe..".

[helius]

Oh, that video. Why doesn't this site have a filter to hide "fake news"?

[Rick Law]

To be honest I probably would have asked if it was a 1 1/2 V bulb.

That's exactly the response I would expect from an MIT graduate!
And it's a good response asking such questions first, it shows you know the basics and are actually thinking.

That is why I gave them the benefit of the doubt and that the excitement of graduation might have frozen their brain for the moment.  But if I am an employer, I would certainly press the "monitor" button and monitor this guy carefully to validate.

But I believe that practice comes before theory.

The issue with universities is the perfection. Look at the, saying they are the best of the best, and they actually believe it. If you are doing practice, something is going to go wrong. You connect things the other way around, blow up stuff, fail, sometimes succeed. Universities discourage failure. The entire thing is built up to punish failure. You fail a test, you get "punished" the more you fail, the worse the punishment is.
...
...

I don't think there is any thing wrong with "universities is the perfection ... punish failure..."  In fact, I think there is not enough that around.

When one fails, one learns from it during the learning phase.  The learning phase is where one should be able to have failure without consequences.  That failure benefits learning.  During the validation phase (test), failure should have consequences which would be the grades.  Test grades should reflect the degree of success and low grades is uncomfortable and upsetting.

That is why I poke fun at "safe space."   It is not compatible with discovery of failure and consequences of failure.  Shielding the student from the consequence of failure (discomfort, shame, whatever) will end up lowering the quality of their student.

Merit appears to be a forgotten word at way too many universities these days.

[tszaboo]

I don't think there is any thing wrong with "universities is the perfection ... punish failure..."  In fact, I think there is not enough that around.

When one fails, one learns from it during the learning phase.  The learning phase is where one should be able to have failure without consequences.  That failure benefits learning.  During the validation phase (test), failure should have consequences which would be the grades.  Test grades should reflect the degree of success and low grades is uncomfortable and upsetting.

That is why I poke fun at "safe space."   It is not compatible with discovery of failure and consequences of failure.  Shielding the student from the consequence of failure (discomfort, shame, whatever) will end up lowering the quality of their student.

Merit appears to be a forgotten word at way too many universities these days.

Oh, no, I'm not talking about the "everyone is a winner" attitude. Obviously not. But there are people finishing the uni without failing a single test, yet they are complete morons. They know how to pass tests, and they are awful engineers.
If you dont fail, you dont learn how to correct it. Think about quality control in engineering. There is of course the DFM and DFT principles, which make sure, that the yield will be high. Yet some parts are going to be wrong. Now, the quality team doesnt start punishing the workers on the production line.
They ask the question: Why did it fail? What can we do to avoid it in the future? What did we learn from the failure?
Theory is always fine, because you are just replicating a textbook. If you start doing practice, stuff is going to go wrong. Problem solving is definitely not a skill being taught today. Find X is not problem solving as far as I'm concerned.

[cdev]

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

[Someone]

I don't think there is any thing wrong with "universities is the perfection ... punish failure..."  In fact, I think there is not enough that around.

When one fails, one learns from it during the learning phase.  The learning phase is where one should be able to have failure without consequences.  That failure benefits learning.  During the validation phase (test), failure should have consequences which would be the grades.  Test grades should reflect the degree of success and low grades is uncomfortable and upsetting.

That is why I poke fun at "safe space."   It is not compatible with discovery of failure and consequences of failure.  Shielding the student from the consequence of failure (discomfort, shame, whatever) will end up lowering the quality of their student.

Merit appears to be a forgotten word at way too many universities these days.

Oh, no, I'm not talking about the "everyone is a winner" attitude. Obviously not. But there are people finishing the uni without failing a single test, yet they are complete morons. They know how to pass tests, and they are awful engineers.

The expectation that everyone can get good grades and pass is ever growing, students having ridiculous claims such as "I put in a lot of effort so I deserve a good grade" or "I get good marks in other courses so I should get a good mark here" or "this course is too hard so you need to make it easier" all for courses which had not changed in 10 years while those around them had dropped their standards. Its a negative feedback where the degrees are becoming worth less and less each year as their standards are eroded. As you say, they have been built up to pass tests, not to learn. So you end up with final year electronic engineering students who can't measure a current in circuit because the assessment of those skills have been pushed into irrelevance.

But there are common problems for students coming out of the technical institutions too, expecting that all problems will have a procedure to follow to solve them. Asking open ended questions to students coming out of modern education is usually going to end up with blank stares and a request for the instructions, even when its something you know they've been taught specifically. So you can understand why companies will only hire people with prior experience to avoid being shouldered with the can't do attitude of the new generation.

[TechnicalBen]

What is more surprising to me that they never became interested in building (obviously they cannot built anything).
It is obvious why so many times we get answers like "it cannot be done", "not worth the mess", not to mention the "you will never get the degree of commercial stuff" religion.

To know what is impossible and what is possible, is a really really good skill to have. I use to have a hobby of posting images/products of things claimed "impossible" in posts. Like, really basic maths/gadgets/constructions. But the experts considered it an impossible task to hard to do (with no claims of "too expensive" or "not worth the time", just "impossible").

Programming has lots of examples of this.

The real impossibilities still stand, FTL, free energy, AI. But the "too difficult" ones keep getting beaten one by one.

[xrunner]

LOL the one girl said "Don't you need two wires?"

Should have given them three wires and see them try to use them all. 

[batteksystem]

The video didn't really surprise me. There are bound to be people that don't know how to put theory into practice or end up needlessly making a situation more complicated than what it really is.

I remember during the first half of my Circuits Analysis class in undergrad the professor blew everyone's minds that a line drawn across a schematic connecting several components together could mean they were connected to a single node. Electrical Engineering students, that were seniors, didn't even know that other op-amps besides the 741 existed as that was all that was in the lab and what they had ran their experiments on during their time in school. The majority couldn't even make sense of a datasheet if presented with it.

That being said, almost everyone there at the end knew how to do things that the majority of electronics hobbyists would not even know about such as perform steady state analysis of RL, RC, and RLC circuits. Calculate and derive feedback loops used in PID controllers and switching converters, perform convolution related to continuous LTI systems, solve multi-parameter systems using linear algebra and differential equations, and so on and so forth.

I think the point of teaching just theory in college is to make sure everyone is well equipped to be critical thinkers and be able to use varying concepts to achieve a goal given a set of restrictions. The applicability can be easily taught on the job. If you want someone to build or repair something, hire a technician. If you want someone to design something, hire an engineer.

On the other hands, you have engineers in the field who only know the existing practices, and estimation is based on experience and testing rather than calculations. Somebody who can do both, or willing to do both, is actually rare.

[raptor1956]

Decades ago, while working at IBM East Fishkill, I and a couple other guys were working in the lab when the new engineer came in to see what was going on.  He was fresh out of school with a Phd in electrical engineering, and he walked over to the bench, picked up a resistor, and asked -- what's this?  We laughed thinking he was joking but he wasn't, he didn't know what it was.  I found that impossible to believe.  I was going to school part time back then and if I ever had a problem with Calculus Ali was brilliant at it and would always be able to get me back on track quickly -- he was very smart.  But, had zero practical knowledge.

Around about that time we were installing some automated equipment on our diffusion/oxidation furnaces and we contracted with a company to design the controller for it.  The guy that lead that work was an MIT graduate and when we fired up the system it didn't work.  I traced the problem to grounding -- they'd grounded multiple components with ground loops and we had to redo them to make the system work.  The MIT engineer didn't understand the problem and he was the one that designed it.


Brian

[XynxNet]

Well grab 100 engineers from their company christmas party and ask them some basic chemistry questions.
I think you could easily cut your footage to an equally hilarious seeming video.
Though that doesn't necessarily represent their competence in chemistry.

[xrunner]

Well grab 100 engineers from their company christmas party and ask them some basic chemistry questions.
I think you could easily cut your footage to an equally hilarious seeming video.

Like - are you aware of the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide?

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

[Howardlong]

Several decades ago, on my Electronic Engineering BSc course, the majority of students completed successfully without ever having lifted a soldering iron in their lives, and 95% wouldn't know where to start with a scope. They could, however, solve most calculus problems in at least three different ways.

While I don't want to denigrate the value of maths, the balance wasn't right, and the university I attended advertised and prided itself on being vocational.

So I am not surprised that the video shows supposedly bright students being unable to achieve an apparently simple task. But equally I am sure we didn't see the whole picture.

[Howardlong]

LOL! I just tried it with the wife.

"Where do you put the bulb? Ouch, it's getting hot!"

[VK3DRB]

I once worked with a bloke who boasted his MBA (Master of Bullshit Artistry) ad-nauseum. (I will call him the MBA.)

When five of us made up a technical committee to introduce new technology to a local school as a trial project, at the project kick-off we all introduced ourselves to various external parties. The MBA was the only one who said "I have an MBA and two other degrees in engineering and my skills will be critical to the project." None of the rest of us who had degrees even mentioned our qualifications. It turned out the MBA never lifted a finger or even got involved in the project. The rest of us did all the work, much of it in our own time. When the accolades came, the MBA positioned himself to outshine the rest of us by acting as if he lead the project.

The MBA once asked me how a picture tube and video drive circuitry worked in a TV. A few hours later, I found out from another colleague that the MBA discretely had gone to a senior manager and told him that he was the right person to run a new monitor manufacturing project because he was the only engineer in the company that knew anything about monitor technology, as he explained to the manager how picture tubes worked.

The MBA once came to me with a problem of an audio amp with excessive hum, but had no idea what could have caused it. The cause of the problem was obvious and I gave him a junk box 2200uF cap 35VW to replace a 2200uF 25VW cap that had spilled its guts. He said something like, "Can you get a 25 volt capacitor instead? The 35 volt one might blow up the amplifier because it could make too many volts." 

But unlike any of the skilled engineers, our MBA was successful. He played politics like a sly fox. He even rescheduled a flight from the US to ensure he was on the same flight as an exec, so he could have the MBA's ear. Within a week the MBA was promoted to a senior management position. The MBA would not associate with anyone who was not useful to him or had an MBA. He subsequently made terrible business decisions and failed to employ common sense, costing the company millions of dollars, destroying some people and contributing for company's downfall.

[VK3DRB]

A bloke who reported to me once who boasted two degrees -one in engineering and the other computer science - was a know-it-all. Working with him was like walking on eggshells. He once warned me, "You can't run too much data through the Bluetooth dongle, else the chip inside the can melt." I let him go not long after.

A woman who had an electrical engineering degree was responsible for a test system. Her technical skill was very poor. But she was promoted because her test system had great first pass yields and she was seen as a shining star. The reason she did so well was because she had commented out 3/4 of the tests to make them pass. No wonder the subsequent test system down the line had poor yields. After her promotion, a fresh grad discovered the issue and he spent many months putting the tests back in and fixing the original problems. She was clueless with electronics. Fortunately, in her promotion, she became one of the best project managers I have ever worked with.

That fresh grad was pretty bright. He loved numbers. He went on to quit electronics saying it was a dead-end job, and he did an accounting degree and then did his CPA. He is now the CFO of a several large car dealers and owns 10% of the conglomerate. He said the best move he ever made was getting out of electronics.

[vodka]

I once worked with a bloke who boasted his MBA (Master of Bullshit Artistry) ad-nauseum. (I will call him the MBA.)

When five of us made up a technical committee to introduce new technology to a local school as a trial project, at the project kick-off we all introduced ourselves to various external parties. The MBA was the only one who said "I have an MBA and two other degrees in engineering and my skills will be critical to the project." None of the rest of us who had degrees even mentioned our qualifications. It turned out the MBA never lifted a finger or even got involved in the project. The rest of us did all the work, much of it in our own time. When the accolades came, the MBA positioned himself to outshine the rest of us by acting as if he lead the project.

The MBA once asked me how a picture tube and video drive circuitry worked in a TV. A few hours later, I found out from another colleague that the MBA discretely had gone to a senior manager and told him that he was the right person to run a new monitor manufacturing project because he was the only engineer in the company that knew anything about monitor technology, as he explained to the manager how picture tubes worked.

The MBA once came to me with a problem of an audio amp with excessive hum, but had no idea what could have caused it. The cause of the problem was obvious and I gave him a junk box 2200uF cap 35VW to replace a 2200uF 25VW cap that had spilled its guts. He said something like, "Can you get a 25 volt capacitor instead? The 35 volt one might blow up the amplifier because it could make too many volts." 

But unlike any of the skilled engineers, our MBA was successful. He played politics like a sly fox. He even rescheduled a flight from the US to ensure he was on the same flight as an exec, so he could have the MBA's ear. Within a week the MBA was promoted to a senior management position. The MBA would not associate with anyone who was not useful to him or had an MBA. He subsequently made terrible business decisions and failed to employ common sense, costing the company millions of dollars, destroying some people and contributing for company's downfall.

Here  we name to  these kind of people like "The Plum Teacher that he doesn't know to  read but he puts school" and they always are promotionated to boss.

[free_electron]

It was funny when the mechanical engineering student said she's not an electrical engineer 
That's like me saying I can't assemble Ikea furniture.

you can assemble ikea furniture ? stop the press.

i know people that don;t buy anything from ikea because 'you have to self assemble them and 'they dont have the tools to do that' ..

ikea even provides you with the little allen wrenches you need ..

[TerraHertz]

The clip was obviously set up for students to fail. To be honest I probably would have asked if it was a 1 1/2 V bulb. I'd be surprised if any light bulb lit up one battery.

Well yes, but that is the point. Anyone with basic knowledge of electricity AND a functioning brain should have immediately realized that bulb was not going to light with a 1.5V battery. Before even trying it. They should have known the voltage rating is always written on the bulb, read it, and asked for a correct bulb. That's called problem solving ability, and without it no amount of theoretical knowledge is going to help in real life.

Same sort of thing really for the TV. You can make anything out of anything these days and this is one of the reasons why I don't own a TV or watch any form of TV because I know it's all manufactured nonsense. I also don't read any of the tabloids or get time to read any newspapers for that matter because they all have a pretty much declared bias so what is the point in reading something with the aim of finding facts when there is a declared bias. The TV programme was the same there was a declared bias they were going to prove that the TV shops were no good. When I've taken TVs into repair to people that I do know on behalf of other people when I lived in Italy the guy was always quite honest with me and often will tell me about how many hours he had spent chasing down a dry joint for example. It is simple stuff that takes hours in repair but of course Joe public seem to think that the simpler the fault of the easier to find.

I share your views of the media, and also watch no TV and ignore newspapers. There are plenty of real-time uncensored online news sources. Which can be very entertaining; eg yesterday's 'piss-gate' comedy, in which senator John McCain, CNN and a slew of other MSM 'we-are-not-fake-news' serious clowns, published a juicy 'leaked intelligence dossier' as factual. It turned out to have been totally made up by a 4chan joker back in Oct-Nov last year. Ha ha ha... CNN got rickrolled.

[vk6zgo]

What those of us who are a bit older fail to realise,is that a  generation has arisen to whom incandescent bulbs are unfamiliar.
For many of us,our first experience with electric circuits was the electric "torch",or flashlight.

They were often quite grotty,& somewhere along the line,would fail,& kids would try to "fix" them.
We would usually find that we could make the "torch globe" illuminate,& that bit of information was squirreled away in the back of our minds.

Modern LED flashlights just keep on working,so you don't get to play with them.

Another thing we learnt about was candles---they were regarded as dangerous things,& our Mothers warned us about the fire risk.
Kerosene lamps were commonly available or emergency use,so candles were a lamp of last resort.

Modern Electricity supplies are very reliable,so most modern young people have never seen a kero" lamp,& their only associations with candles are pleasant ones.
When there is a  power failure,out come the candles,which because of the lack of knowledge of their dangers,are left unattended near curtains,drapes.etc.

The result:- another of the spate of house fires which often follow power outages.

[gnif]

And how many people did they ask that knew off the bat that they cut from the production?

The only one that got it was the black fellow, and note that he said 'The small globe works', which implies he had previously been given a 'big' globe, ie > 1.5V.

I hate the news, 'reality tv', in fact, I hate TV, today it is just a lie machine designed to enrage people.

[Sal Ammoniac]

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

I once interviewed a candidate for a job who was halfway through his senior year in electrical engineering at one of the University of California schools and he literally didn't know what a diode is. I almost fell off my chair in complete disbelief. How can someone get through 3-3/4 years of an EE program at a good university and not know what a diode is?

[pitagoras]

There is people that can do things. These people can do anything.
There is this other people, that can do nothing, only buy things.

[Howardlong]

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

I once interviewed a candidate for a job who was halfway through his senior year in electrical engineering at one of the University of California schools and he literally didn't know what a diode is. I almost fell off my chair in complete disbelief. How can someone get through 3-3/4 years of an EE program at a good university and not know what a diode is?

I suspect that this is a problem with the system at many universities, certainly it was the case at my alma mater. Universities are riddled with career academics who have little if any first hand experience of commercial needs, so are quite happy to promote a million and one abstract concepts but wouldn't know one end of a soldering iron to the other, and would probably struggle to know one end of a diode to the other if handed a 1N4001.

For me, the balance is often not right, skewed in favour of theoretical intricacies with only very occasional use at the expense of promoting practical understanding and experience together with analytical skills that are used on a daily basis.

I took in an AA cell, LED and piece of wire to a customer of mine this week where I've been doing some work recently, and gave it as a puzzle to about a dozen guys in their IT department. Only one person knew that the LED was polarised, but couldn't remember how to tell. Mostly they were all thinking too hard, I kept having to tell them that there was no trick, but the LED would only work one way around.

Several where getting mixed up with magnetism and dissimilar poles attract and trying to apply that to the fact that the LED would only work one way around. The hardest part was the dexterity problem. Two just couldn't do it at all, which certainly confused me watching them try to do it, trying to understand what they were thinking was baffling. Connecting the + and - of the battery with just the wire ignoring the LED seemed the way to go for some reason.

[vk6zgo]

And how many people did they ask that knew off the bat that they cut from the production?

The only one that got it was the black fellow, and note that he said 'The small globe works', which implies he had previously been given a 'big' globe, ie > 1.5V.

I hate the news, 'reality tv', in fact, I hate TV, today it is just a lie machine designed to enrage people.

No.it is not really "designed" to do anything.

Today's big news item is gone tomorrow,TV stations often end up arguing both sides of an argument  over a few years,as they have "forgotten" ( & hope the viewer has,too),what they said last time.

The "news cycle" is brutal,& Journos don't really have the time to "conspire" with the Commos,Greenies,Right wingers,the AFL,or whoever your "bogeyman" of choice is!.

I worked at a Commercial TV station for 10 years,& ,with a few hours of lead time,they got the News right a lot more often than "The Sunday Times" which had a week to do so!

What we don't always understand,is that Journalists are "lay" people----they don't have expertise in most of the stuff they report on,& again,time constraints prevent deep research.

"Reality TV" is just entertainment,just like "Home & Away" or " Midsomer Murders".

You wouldn't believe that one small beach community would suffer so many natural & man-made disasters,or that one rural County in England  would have that many murders,so why would you take "The Real Housewives of  Someplace or Other"seriously?

Broadcast TV has to stand up to the scrutiny of their competitors,all of whom are happy to see the other channel with " egg on it's face".

The crud you read on so-called "news sites" on the Internet,however,has no such scrutiny,& they happily make up lies "from whole cloth" to feed to their already committed audience .
Anyone who points out that" the King has no clothes",is regarded as part of "the conspiracy".

Looking for deep motives behind either the "lightbulb" item,or the "TV service company" item I referred to earlier,will not lead you to anything but "mush"---stuff that is forgotten by the News Dept the moment it is transmitted.

After all,a news item that showed that MIT EE graduates were all eminently capable of illuminating lightbulbs,or that TV service companies were paragons of technical virtue wouldn't get a lot of viewers.

Another canard directed at Commercial TV (mainly by ABC/SBS viewers)is that "they don't do anything to upset their major advertisers",
This is demonstrably false,as the News Depts regularly "bite the hands that fed them".
TV Networks think they have "the upperhand" over advertisers,so can do things like that----if things change,they may have to pull their heads in.

Back in the day,various eminences used to bemoan the fact that TV was "used for entertainment,instead of as the wonderful media for education it could be".
My answer to that was "If I want to be educated,I'll go to night school!"

When I was a kid,the Print Media was rabidly anti-Labor,& we all got used to this,& took their Political pronouncements "with a grain of salt".
At least,in those days, The Liberal Party of Australia were real conservatives ( & they still have a few such),not the Right wing loonies who pretend to the title "Conservative" these days!

[Rick Law]

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

I once interviewed a candidate for a job who was halfway through his senior year in electrical engineering at one of the University of California schools and he literally didn't know what a diode is. I almost fell off my chair in complete disbelief. How can someone get through 3-3/4 years of an EE program at a good university and not know what a diode is?

Sad.  Really sad.  This kid probably spend too much time taking meaningless courses and wasted four years along with thousands and thousands of dollars.

[EEVblog]

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

I once interviewed a candidate for a job who was halfway through his senior year in electrical engineering at one of the University of California schools and he literally didn't know what a diode is. I almost fell off my chair in complete disbelief. How can someone get through 3-3/4 years of an EE program at a good university and not know what a diode is?

I interviewed a graduate with a couple of years of embedded programming experience, said he specialised in it.
Resume looked pretty good, and I was hopeful he'd be a top pick. He came in, presented and talked well, even bought in his thesis documentation (some embedded thingo, fairly easy, but comprehensive docs).
Asked him to name one brand of microcontroller, could do it.
Opened his thesis and asked him some real easy questions from it, couldn't do it.
Showed him a random page from his own thesis and asked him to explain what he wrote, couldn't do it.
He seemed stunned that anyone would actually ask technical questions.

Didn't get the job 

[HighVoltage]

I hate the news, 'reality tv', in fact, I hate TV, today it is just a lie machine designed to enrage people.

It is the same here in Germany, probably worldwide by now.

The question about the battery and light bulb is so low that one would normally not even come up with such a question for engineering students, because we would expect everyone to know.

However, when we hire in Germany these days, believe it or not, we ask a simple question about percentage calculations. And I don't know why, but so many people can not answer these questions. There is fundamentally something wrong with our educational systems and I am convinced, that the TV played a big part in this over the last 50 years or so.
 

[Howardlong]

I share your views of the media, and also watch no TV and ignore newspapers. There are plenty of real-time uncensored online news sources. Which can be very entertaining; eg yesterday's 'piss-gate' comedy, in which senator John McCain, CNN and a slew of other MSM 'we-are-not-fake-news' serious clowns, published a juicy 'leaked intelligence dossier' as factual. It turned out to have been totally made up by a 4chan joker back in Oct-Nov last year. Ha ha ha... CNN got rickrolled.

Without wishing to derail the thread, that particular story, false or otherwise, has quite some time to run yet, with 4chan being a mere pawn.

[cdev]

I suspect somebody or something deliberately dumbs down the news, for example, for years now I have been trying to get our media here to explain a certain set of inconvenient facts which explain among other things our huge health care problems. The media just won't do it.
 So literally the entire country is barking up the wrong tree.




A million poor people have died during the 20 years it's been hijacked.

[cdev]

That is likely a candidate who paid for somebody else to do their thesis for them. Meanwhile millions of talented people who really do love electronics are excluded by the costs of college and then can't ever even get entry level jobs doing what they love.




Quote from: EEVblog on Today at 01:33:05

>Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on Yesterday at 13:32:29

>Quote from: cdev on 2017-01-09, 17:41:13

I doubt if any of the "engineers" they spoke to were EEs or even in any other electronics related disciplines.  How could they be?

I once interviewed a candidate for a job who was halfway through his senior year in electrical engineering at one of the University of California schools and he literally didn't know what a diode is. I almost fell off my chair in complete disbelief. How can someone get through 3-3/4 years of an EE program at a good university and not know what a diode is?

I interviewed a graduate with a couple of years of embedded programming experience, said he specialised in it.
Resume looked pretty good, and I was hopeful he'd be a top pick. He came in, presented and talked well, even bought in his thesis documentation (some embedded thingo, fairly easy, but comprehensive docs).
Asked him to name one brand of microcontroller, could do it.
Opened his thesis and asked him some real easy questions from it, couldn't do it.
Showed him a random page from his own thesis and asked him to explain what he wrote, couldn't do it.
He seemed stunned that anyone would actually ask technical questions.

Didn't get the job 

[rrinker]

 I can understand graduate level people, who are probably spending most if not all of their time on theoretical stuff and very little if any hand on actual circuit building, but undergrads? Maybe that's how it is these days, but 30 years ago when it was my time, we had hands-on practical labs to go with the theory classes across many areas of study, from the basic semiconductor class on up. It WAS fairly obvious which of us was studying electrical engineering because we truly were interested in it and those who just thought it sounded good and had never worked with building any sort of circuit before getting there. And then all senior year students had to design, build, and demonstrate a project of some sort. There was no way you were getting an undergrad degree at my university without some hands-on experience with electronics. There was also a research and presentation class everyone had to take, pick a technical topic, do some research, and make a 20-30 minute presentation. That's the one I've related elsewhere how the professor actually argued with me over linear vs angular velocity (he was wrong, it took the rest of the class shouting at him to get him to let it be so I could continue my presentation - since then I have not been afraid to give technical presentations to groups of people, despite being horrifically shy - to the point of not even being able to stand up in front of family and relate a story at my uncle's funeral).

[IanB]

And then all senior year students had to design, build, and demonstrate a project of some sort. There was no way you were getting an undergrad degree at my university without some hands-on experience with electronics.

Well, quite. I remember going round to my EE friends' digs and seeing current projects scattered around on the kitchen table: circuit boards, wire wrap guns, boxes of parts...

[Mattjd]

I've never understood what it is with the vocational people that love to shit on academics. Yes, I am an engineering student, but I am not fresh out of highschool and have had numerous jobs, most of which were labor.

Seriously, what is it? I've spoken to quite a few people about this over my 6 years of working (I am 24) and the impression I get that most who fall closer to the "labor" side of the employment spectrum believe academics to have never held a real job in their life. As in, academia isn't a valid profession.

What's with the need to shit on people? Granted, there are quite a few professors at my university who look down upon the technologists, and that is wrong. The technologists seem to know just as much if not more in some areas.

Do some of you really believe the following statement to be true

"For all MIT engineer graduates, x, x is a good and capable engineer"

Are you under the impression that the interviews were of a 1:1 ratio? Meaning that for each interview they did, the interviewee could not complete the task?

Maybe its a social issue. Blue collar work is looked down upon in society currently. Maybe some people are just insecure and need to prop themselves up. 

This video reminds me of those J-walking videos Jay Leno did. How many people do you think they had to interview to get all those cuts of the complete morons who couldn't answer basic historical/civics/geographical questions?

[Rick Law]

I've never understood what it is with the vocational people that love to shit on academics. Yes, I am an engineering student, but I am not fresh out of highschool and have had numerous jobs, most of which were labor.

Seriously, what is it? I've spoken to quite a few people about this over my 6 years of working (I am 24) and the impression I get that most who fall closer to the "labor" side of the employment spectrum believe academics to have never held a real job in their life. As in, academia isn't a valid profession.

What's with the need to shit on people? Granted, there are quite a few professors at my university who look down upon the technologists, and that is wrong. The technologists seem to know just as much if not more in some areas.

Do some of you really believe the following statement to be true

"For all MIT engineer graduates, x, x is a good and capable engineer"

Are you under the impression that the interviews were of a 1:1 ratio? Meaning that for each interview they did, the interviewee could not complete the task?

Maybe its a social issue. Blue collar work is looked down upon in society currently. Maybe some people are just insecure and need to prop themselves up. 

This video reminds me of those J-walking videos Jay Leno did. How many people do you think they had to interview to get all those cuts of the complete morons who couldn't answer basic historical/civics/geographical questions?

Nah, I don't think it is an intentional "look down" on college students.  We are talking about how some college students are not making the cut, so college grads are being picked on.

If a thread is opened about how vocational school kids are not making the cut, there will be an equally filled "band wagon" with folks picking on the vocational school kids just as well.

I think this forum is big enough that statistically there will always be a dozen or so people feeling superior to someone else being discussed.

[mikeCarlson]

I think the venting on this thread is to do with how alot of engineers look down on blue collar, not all of course. I am an appliance tech and i have had alot of engineer types upset at the fact that they couldnt figure out the problem with their appliance. When i fix it in 20 minutes, they get flustered that i make it look easy. There are those also that respect the fact that its my profession, and naturally i know more about it since i do eight jobs a do for years.

That being said, we dont know all of the MIT and Harvard graduate majors, except the one that said she is a mechanical engineer, that would have been helpful. I would not expect a mechanical engineer to understand electricity like an electrical engineer, but in engineering you should have a basic understanding of relevant subjects. (ie. Ive studied chemistry because it applies to electrical/electronics) I have started back to school at 43 to complete my electrical engineering degree, and i dont mind studying so much because the math and science is so relevant to what i do both at work and my electronics hobby. its not just "lets pass the test and get this class over with". we also have to consider that the information students are getting is from a theoretical perspective, not an applied perspective. I fault the educational system, not the students that it produces.

Sent from my SM-P905V using Tapatalk

[CatalinaWOW]

I would not expect a mechanical engineer to understand electricity like an electrical engineer, but in engineering you should have a basic understanding of relevant subjects. (ie. Ive studied chemistry because it applies to electrical/electronics) I have started back to school at 43 to complete my electrical engineering degree, and i dont mind studying so much because the math and science is so relevant to what i do both at work and my electronics hobby. its not just "lets pass the test and get this class over with". we also have to consider that the information students are getting is from a theoretical perspective, not an applied perspective. I fault the educational system, not the students that it produces.

Sent from my SM-P905V using Tapatalk

While I totally agree, you will find a great many in this forum who don't think math and science is relevant to our daily jobs.  Outside of a technical forum like this that feeling is near universal. 

Those of us who do find math and science useful and even necessary on an almost daily basis need to find ways to show that to the rest of the world.  The fault is not only with the education system.

[janoc]

Showed him a random page from his own thesis and asked him to explain what he wrote, couldn't do it.
He seemed stunned that anyone would actually ask technical questions.

Didn't get the job 

Sounds like a former colleague of mine. Perfectly fitting the "sly MBA type" mentioned above (knows everything best, constantly scheming, taking credit for others' work to get promoted but otherwise completely incompetent). But this guy was also rather common sense "challenged" for the lack of better word and he loved to boast about his exploits in front of his "underlings" (even though we weren't really reporting to him, only he presented himself everywhere as our "manager").

One such episode was about how he has done his PhD - "I have designed everything and then had an engineer do the thesis for me" - aka someone else he (or rather his rich dad) has paid wrote the thesis and done everything for him. Your guy was likely a similar case ...

This fellow went so far as almost getting an university tenure at a prestigious Swiss technical university - he had a perfect publication record (because he pushed every grad student to put his name on their papers as co-author - only the prof of the lab had more papers than him), he "managed" funding and knew exactly who to drink coffee with. Unfortunately for him (and fortunately for the school), he has wound up with a prof that actually knew him and his "work" personally in the tenure committee. That has put kibosh on his academic aspirations. But haven't been for that one professor vetoing it, he would have got the tenure because his formal qualifications were impeccable. A guy who couldn't write a single page of coherent text ...

[jonovid]

Arr- the fruit of junk education!

[calexanian]

As an employer looking for somebody trained as we speak I can tell you not a single graduate of the last 30 years comes anywhere near a level of comprehension in electronics to be even remotely useful. A couple friends of mine were at Caltech and i used to go visit. I would always go seek out EE's and was always terribly disappointing in who I would find. I found the physics students to be way more up on things as they had to build experimental hardware and were more result oriented than the EE's

[Red Squirrel]

This is a great example of being "book smart" but not being able to apply anything to real life.  Those people can probably recite all sorts of theory related stuff but ask them to build something simple and they don't know where to start.   University tends to be so much about theory that you can graduate and be "smart" as defined by those standards but yet not know how to apply anything - which is really the most important thing when it comes to a typical job.   I knew a manager who was like that, he had all sorts of certs in IT and management and was very book smart, he was very good at negotiating and getting his way in management meetings etc.  But he had no clue at all about IT.   The worse about people like that is because they tend to also be people person and are very manipulative, they are the ones that tend to move up and be successful.   I think politics are kinda frowned upon here but I'm pretty sure we can all figure out a great example of such a person. 

I've always felt the education system was way too theorical and not enough application.  Even in college, I went to computer science, and in all 3 years, we never even opened a computer!  I only kinda realized that after the fact.  Building a computer is something I already had done before I even started college, but then it dawned on me, people can literally graduate from computer science, and not even know what the basic components of a computer are.      3 years.  3.   To be fair, we did a lot of networking stuff like configure Cisco switches and stuff and did lot of programming.  So there was still a lot of application involved and computer science tends to be more software oriented, but still, you would think there would have been some basic hardware too.   Even in programming classes, it was more about doing stuff the way we were thought, and not about doing it period.  "I need you to write a program that does XYZ, it has to use the way you learned in class".   It seems education is more about being able to recite things that you are teached rather than problem solving.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

I personally have met quite a few switched on Undergraduates with a good understanding of electronics. Who would be easily employable.
And also plenty who aren't quite so good.

It's kind of ironic that the video criticised students, but did so using a 'Fake News' style testing regime without any observable academic rigour.

[calexanian]

I personally have met quite a few switched on Undergraduates with a good understanding of electronics. Who would be easily employable.
And also plenty who aren't quite so good.

It's kind of ironic that the video criticised students, but did so using a 'Fake News' style testing regime without any observable academic rigour.

I don't believe the intent was to criticize students, but to point out some fundamental deficiencies in the curriculum. 

[CatalinaWOW]

Curricula may have deteriorated in the last 40 years, but I had electronics as a hobby from high school on building and doing things, went through a five year program to a bachelor and masters degree, and still learned far more in the first six months on the job than I had learned in the previous ten years.  There is something about doing something that has to succeed at more than a getting a grade while having seasoned professionals watching/guiding/laughing etc. that is uniquely motivating.  So today's underprepared students may not be much, if any, worse than I was.  An honest look back at the start of career may find that to be true for many others.   
 
My hobby work had me fairly solid on vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) and point to point wiring which had no application at the full time job.  The school work was a mix of theory and practice, but the practice just didn't have time to explore pricing, environmental exposures, exotic sensing methods and a bunch of other stuff which were was what the job was about.  The learning rate slowed down after that first six months, but remained higher than it was in school for at least a couple of decades.   

[cdev]

I think I would have attempted to explain the voltage issue with the bulb and light and showed them what I meant, asking them them to try it themselves to see. Were I carrying my backpack I would pull out my LED flashlight that I always carry which gets what seems like days of bright light out of a single 1.5 volt cell and shown them how it does it - by means of a DC voltage converter.

I am one of those people who really wanted to go to engineering school..   but-

MONEY

[ANTALIFE]

oh university students not being competent ? what a surprise. I need not remind you of the albeit many of the few people I have dealt with that can't use their brains in conjunction with what they are taught. The most amazing was the guy that claimed he could not use all 10 bits of an ADC in a uC while whinging about the resolution.

But you can't use all N bits of an ADC due to the noise floor?

[SL4P]

I've always had the belief that to recognised as a valuable engineer, you must be able to solve problems *before* they happen, rather than after they occur!

[maggotronix]

I dunno, I hate uni too, it's a total government scam-job (self-education is heaps better)... but really, you guys make out like "anyone" can sign up for an engineering course? Isn't there any screening anymore? Do uni's just take anybody nowadays?

When I was at uni, ~30 years ago (uni was free back then lol), engineering insisted on the highest high-school test results... business studies took the dumbest bottom dregs lol... (Teaching was 2nd bottom - horrendous, but explains a lot).

[timothyaag]

I dunno, I hate uni too, it's a total government scam-job (self-education is heaps better)... but really, you guys make out like "anyone" can sign up for an engineering course? Isn't there any screening anymore? Do uni's just take anybody nowadays?

When I was at uni, ~30 years ago (uni was free back then lol), engineering insisted on the highest high-school test results... business studies took the dumbest bottom dregs lol... (Teaching was 2nd bottom - horrendous, but explains a lot).

Doesn't everyone know the "good student" type? Aces everything academically, but utterly hopeless at applying simple concepts in real life? I can't say whether that's a lack of confidence thing or actually any sign of their intelligence though.

[CatalinaWOW]

I've always had the belief that to recognised as a valuable engineer, you must be able to solve problems *before* they happen, rather than after they occur!

An extremely valuable engineer solves all the problems before they occur.
A valuable engineer solves the vast majority of problems before they occur, and solves the remainder quickly after they occur.
A useful engineer solves most of the problems before they occur, and solves most of the remainder quickly.

Unfortunately we still aren't down to the average engineer.

[Zero999]

I took in an AA cell, LED and piece of wire to a customer of mine this week where I've been doing some work recently, and gave it as a puzzle to about a dozen guys in their IT department. Only one person knew that the LED was polarised, but couldn't remember how to tell. Mostly they were all thinking too hard, I kept having to tell them that there was no trick, but the LED would only work one way around.

I'd be surprised if an LED would light at all when run off an AA cell, given V_F of a visible LED is normally higher than 1.5V, even at very low currents.. Perhaps a deep red LED, with a low V_F will run off fresh alkaline battery for a short length of time?

If I were set that task I'd question it before even trying. I'd ask for two AA cells and a resistor or small transformer, resistor and transistor, to make a Joule thief circuit.

[John B]

They almost inevitably asked people who were able to answer the problem, however the point of the video is to tell a story, to tell a parable. They took what footage they needed to say what they wanted to. I dislike this approach as I find it dishonest and manipulative, and doubt the students know and agree 100% to what they are being portrayed as. Surely they would have had to sign a release form though?

[xrunner]

Why should they show the students that can answer the question - it's entirely expected that a graduate from an engineering school can answer the question. The point is the ones that should, that cannot.  That's like making a video of drivers that are asked what to do when a stoplight turns red. Almost all know what to do - the scary part is the few that can't answer the question. Those are the ones you show in the video.

What each of them should have done, if not familiar with the problem or components, would have been to diagram the problem and ask for the specifications of the parts. That's what they should have done, but I suppose that would have been too embarrassing for them ... or perhaps they didn't learn that either.

[R005T3r]

oh university students not being competent ? what a surprise. I need not remind you of the albeit many of the few people I have dealt with that can't use their brains in conjunction with what they are taught. The most amazing was the guy that claimed he could not use all 10 bits of an ADC in a uC while whinging about the resolution.

Unfortunately having the engineering degree does not imply you are a good engineer...

[Simon]

oh university students not being competent ? what a surprise. I need not remind you of the albeit many of the few people I have dealt with that can't use their brains in conjunction with what they are taught. The most amazing was the guy that claimed he could not use all 10 bits of an ADC in a uC while whinging about the resolution.

But you can't use all N bits of an ADC due to the noise floor?

Yes that is true. However he never pointed this out. It was an obstinate I can only use 8 bits as in I can only have an 8-bit variable. It's almost like the guy had no idea that 16 bits exist in 8-bit microcontrollers. His general circuit design was also an absolute disaster and in fact the moment the customer mis-connected a wire they blew it to smithereens.

In response to somebody mentioning previously that all self-taught people seem to shit all over academics this is because there are a lot of academics out there who think they know what they are doing and they don't. The problem in our society is that if you go to school and get a qualification i.e. you prove once that you could solve a particular problem given to you in an exam you are given a certificate which then entitles you to things that it is quite possible you are not capable of doing. I am a classic example. I don't have the greatest electrical education I know that but without me my employer would be pretty stuffed and to be honest they don't actually understand half of what I have done for them yet I am paid less than what apprenticeship jobs are advertised for. But in order to be an apprentice I would need at least a HNC this is what I am currently studying and hopefully a HND. But there are an awful lot of people that possess these qualifications and obtained them simply by memorising material and be good at maths. They couldn't make you a circuit to save their lives yet they will get the job in preference to somebody who does know what they are doing but does not have this special piece of paper. This is why non-academics distrust academics, this is why in some countries you can buy qualifications because if you have letters after your name you are respected and this is why some institutions give out honorary qualifications. You only have to look at how we consider qualifications to understand that they are a complete and utter farce. Yes it is extremely essential to study the subject you propose to be an expert in and formal education can be a good idea which I can tell you because I am studying. Yes I can say that what I am studying is good foundation. But just because a guy is good at maths and can solve an electrical network for you does not mean to say he will make a good design engineer.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Doesn't everyone know the "good student" type? Aces everything academically, but utterly hopeless at applying simple concepts in real life? I can't say whether that's a confidence thing or actually any sign of their intelligence though.

In real life I've sometimes found that an engineer's worth professionally is inversely proportional to their GPA at university. The ones with really high GPAs tend to study to ace the test and not to really learn the material. The good ones study to learn the material, and while this often also results in good test scores, it doesn't necessarily correlate. Another factor might be cheating. In the Internet Age it's really easy to cheat your way to high grades, yet know nothing about the subject.

[rrinker]

 A perfect example of Simon's last post is Bob R from Batteroo. So sure his PhD made him right, and someone like Dave and the rest of the world using actual math and science couldn't POSSIBLY be right, or know what they were talking about because he, mighty Bob R, was a PhD! His fantastical invention was not to be understood by mere mortals.
 And we see where that has led....

[tszaboo]

Doesn't everyone know the "good student" type? Aces everything academically, but utterly hopeless at applying simple concepts in real life? I can't say whether that's a confidence thing or actually any sign of their intelligence though.

In real life I've sometimes found that an engineer's worth professionally is inversely proportional to their GPA at university. The ones with really high GPAs tend to study to ace the test and not to really learn the material. The good ones study to learn the material, and while this often also results in good test scores, it doesn't necessarily correlate. Another factor might be cheating. In the Internet Age it's really easy to cheat your way to high grades, yet know nothing about the subject.

No, cheating is actually solving a problem. I dont have a degree, and I dont want to put up with all the crap there is with those you-will-fail-4-times courses. If an engineer managed to cheat a passing grade, I think he can keep it.
Also, putting as little effort to a problem as possible (some people call this being lazy) is also a very good engineer's trait.

[Simon]

Doesn't everyone know the "good student" type? Aces everything academically, but utterly hopeless at applying simple concepts in real life? I can't say whether that's a confidence thing or actually any sign of their intelligence though.

In real life I've sometimes found that an engineer's worth professionally is inversely proportional to their GPA at university. The ones with really high GPAs tend to study to ace the test and not to really learn the material. The good ones study to learn the material, and while this often also results in good test scores, it doesn't necessarily correlate. Another factor might be cheating. In the Internet Age it's really easy to cheat your way to high grades, yet know nothing about the subject.

No, cheating is actually solving a problem. I dont have a degree, and I dont want to put up with all the crap there is with those you-will-fail-4-times courses. If an engineer managed to cheat a passing grade, I think he can keep it.
Also, putting as little effort to a problem as possible (some people call this being lazy) is also a very good engineer's trait.

I sense some Captain Kirk but that was a film.

[IanB]

No, cheating is actually solving a problem.

But it doesn't solve the problem of educating yourself. If you cheat on a test, you are merely cheating yourself.

[Berni]

No, cheating is actually solving a problem. I dont have a degree, and I dont want to put up with all the crap there is with those you-will-fail-4-times courses. If an engineer managed to cheat a passing grade, I think he can keep it.
Also, putting as little effort to a problem as possible (some people call this being lazy) is also a very good engineer's trait.

I would agree with that on cheating.

The presented problem is filling out a piece of paper with answers in a way that results in the highest possible score. So if two people get the same score on a test but one of them spent 1/4 the time because he cheated, that would make that guy was more effective at solving the problem, because he used less resources to accomplish the task with identical performance.

At the faculty that i went to, the way some lecturers got around this is letting everyone bring one A4 sheet with them. I really liked that due to myself being bad at memorizing things, nor having the patience for it. So where i was not allowed to have that A4 sheet i would find ways to bring in notes (Usually on a graphing calculator as this is engineering so i had one a lot of the time). But thing is in everyday problem solving you have access to literature, but if you don't understand the concept you are not going to get a solution even if you have all the literature in the world at your disposal. So to successfully cheat in engineering classes you usually still need to at least understand the concept behind the subject. This understanding sticks with you for many years, the very specific equation for calculating the specific thing on the test you forget after weeks (But you can google it up anytime).

But as much as i would like to blame the education system for educating useless engineers, the thing is that one is "born" to be an engineer, not educated to be one by a institution. The good engineers are raised to be curious about how things work from a young age, always driven to solve problems. You can educate someone as much as you want but if they don't have a desire for problem solving its not going to help very much. Sure you might get an "engineer" who knows exactly how charges move inside a transistor to make it work the way it does by hammering it in to there head, but they will not have the thought process in place to associate the properties of a component with it being applicable in solving a presented problem.

[Sal Ammoniac]

No, cheating is actually solving a problem.

But it doesn't solve the problem of educating yourself. If you cheat on a test, you are merely cheating yourself.

And it doesn't solve the problem of honesty. I wouldn't knowingly hire an engineer I knew cheated. I would not be able to trust that he wouldn't also do shady things on the job.

[Money4Nothing]

All of the philosophy of "maybe something is wrong with how we learn" of whatever by the video narrator....was all total crap.

There's lots of reasons why a college graduate wouldn't be able to light a bulb with a battery and wire, and it has nothing to do with how people are educated.

[djnz]

While some of us like the narrative that college students are not learning enough these days and there is not enough hands-on stuff and whatever, the video is in no way a faithful representative sample of the state of things, especially at places like MIT.

[Simon]

I think the bias of the video is well acepted.

[bson]

The "light bulb" they were provided with was not a 1.5v one,or certainly, was unlike any bulb for that voltage which I have ever seen.

That's what I thought too - that's a mains G7,E7 or such candelabra bulb, and it's not going to discernibly illuminate with just a tiny battery. But then I wondered maybe a 1.5V battery would result in a faint glow?  Does this count as illuminated?

[timb]

The "light bulb" they were provided with was not a 1.5v one,or certainly, was unlike any bulb for that voltage which I have ever seen.

That's what I thought too - that's a mains G7,E7 or such candelabra bulb, and it's not going to discernibly illuminate with just a tiny battery. But then I wondered maybe a 1.5V battery would result in a faint glow?  Does this count as illuminated?

That reminds me of something that happened when I was in 5th grade (about 11 years old). We were supposed to bring in simple science projects and teach the class how they worked. This other kid decided, at the last minute I guess, he was going to do the "Battery, Switch, Bulb" project to show how electricity worked. He had a 12V lantern battery, a knife switch and a standard 120V mains lamp socket and 100W bulb.

I tried to explain to him that it wasn't going to work, he disagreed. I asked if he'd even tested the setup, he hadn't. I offered to take a bulb out of a flashlight I kept in my backpack and attach wires to it for him, but he refused.

Of course when he got up in front of class, it didn't work. Then the teacher asked me to help the kid troubleshoot it, which I did (and managed to get working with my flashlight bulb).

The worst part is this kid's father was an EE; he worked at a local nuclear power plant no less!

(For my project, I did a two transistor LED flasher, explaining the basics of how it worked, then all the kids stuffed their own protoboards and I taught them all how to solder them. I got an A... :smug:)

[lmester]

But the number of engineering students who had done DIY electronics before they studied it was always small, like a handful at best, even in my days of the late 80's and early 90's. They were easy to spot, they were reading Electronics Australia.
I can't vouch for before that though, but it was likely a bit higher?

I'm about 10 years before you. There were not very many electronics hobbyists. I have a friend that's about 10 years older than me. He saw the same thing when he was in school. It looks like this hasn't changed much at least from the 1960's.

Did the graduates in the video snooze through their physics course? One of my courses was physics.  Physics was a core course. everyone getting a tech degree from my school was required to take physics.  Electricity was one of the topics. When  the professor started talking about electricity, he used a battery, light bulb and switch for a basic demonstration of an electrical circuit. Similar to the circuit needed in the video. He went on from there and finished with a quick blast of mesh analysis. Lucky for me, I'd already had mesh in an electronics class  I got tagged to help other students with electricity. When I was in organic chemistry class, I picked the chem majors brains These core courses do have a purpose. You need to know more than just the specific field that you're being trained for.

I think that the light bulb video shows a problem that's caused partially by how we train people. I don't remember any courses that were intended just to teach problem solving and troubleshooting skills. Yes, you must have some of these skills or you'll never graduate. You do your first nodal analysis problem and get the wrong answer. Did you screw up the basic math? Apply the procedure improperly, etc.  Completely missing were troubleshooting  techniques specifically for electronic circuits.  I was taught why it works but not how to determine why it's not working.

I have a B.S.E.E.T. degree. When choosing a degree, my high school counselor told me that the E.E.T. degree was intended more for service and maintenance work. The E.E. degree for higher level design work. An E.E.T. program that did not have a course specifically for electronics troubleshooting is a big problem. That's what you're expected to do in this job. I don't know if this was just an omission in my school or if it's common for E.E.T. or E.E. programs not to teach electronics troubleshooting.


Anyone want to comment on this? Did your electronics training include any courses for troubleshooting?


I was doing DIY electronics in high school. That made the career choice really easy.

It makes me wonder how some people choose a college degree. I'd think that everyone would try to pick a field that they had some knowledge of and that was interesting to them. In school, many of my peers started out with no knowledge of electronics. In the first class where we built a circuit, the instructor had to start out with a hand out for component identification. This is a resistor. Here is how to read the color code, etc. I consider myself very lucky that I was able to start out with some basic electronics skills. I also knew that I'd enjoy an electronics job. It'd really suck to go through 4 years of college or two years of tech school only to find out that you don't really enjoy doing that type of work.

Finally, I believe that there are some people that just don't "have it" when it comes to troubleshooting skills. If you don't have some basic ability, all of the training in the world won't fix your problem.

I went through several auto mechanics before I found one that could quickly and cheaply repair my car. Some had poor troubleshooting skills. They just threw parts at the problem until they fixed it. I paid for those parts My current mechanic has good troubleshooting skills. I can see this just by his description of how he found the problem with my car and how he repaired it. This guy has no college or tech school training. He is very good at automotive troubleshooting. College training is a plus. It won't get you there without some basic problem solving brain power .

[Berni]

...

Anyone want to comment on this? Did your electronics training include any courses for troubleshooting?


I was doing DIY electronics in high school. That made the career choice really easy.
...

Not really but one teacher tried to teach us how to design stuff at his lab part of the subject. Here is how that went... (Long read but gives good insight)

So this was the final year of my Bachlors in EE (Direction Automation and robotics since i liked it being hands on) as many of you are likely familiar lab time is usually that you have to print out a giant PDF that has a task for each day in the lab along with instructions on how to do it and usually has tables and charts to fill out with measurements and such. So there was the subject called "Sensor Technology II" and on the first day in the lab the teacher walks in with a box of various sensors and asks us to join together in groups of 2. Then each group would grab one sensor from the box and was tasked to make it work. The standard goal was to hook it up to a PC and have it display its data. The only limitation was that it has to be built from components on a PCB. The groups are encouraged to ask for help if they get stuck at any point, no matter how stupid the question.

Equipment for etching PCBs is provided, they can use any PCB design software they like, and they had access to common electronic components, but could ask for pretty much any component within reason. The sensors on offer ware a wide selection of cheap things like photodiodes, thermistors, thermocpuples, strain gauges, digital thermometer ICs, PWM output accelerometers etc.

Soon after questions rained down on how to connect them and the answer they got is to look at the datasheet. Then they did not know how to google a datasheet. Once they ware provided with the datasheet for there sensor it mostly went quiet as they poured over there PDFs. They found example schematics in them and that part went well, but then there would be questions of what voltage power supply it needs. Once it came to the connect it up to a PC part the teacher offered them a USB to UART chip and a PIC microcontroller since that's what he was familiar with. The USB part went well since there is a example schematic in the datasheet, but they had no clue what pins on the MCU to connect to what. Eventually everyone had a schematic. Then getting to the PCB part it went mostly well apart from some people not knowing how to use Eagle (It is confusing software so il give them that). Making and soldering the PCBs went pretty well since pretty much everyone came from a "high school" EE program so everyone knew how to solder, not a very pretty looking soldering job but it worked.

So once they had PCBs they had to program them. This should have also went well since everyone was taught C programing under windows in "high school" some of us ware thought assembler on MCUs too. Then in this very program they ware thought C on MCUs last year. While some of them ware held back by there boards not working as they should and had to fix them, but the ones that did start with programing had no clue whatsoever what to do. A lot of them did not even finish by the last day in the lab since at this point they lost hope and didn't even ask any questions anymore so lab time resulted mostly in wasting time on the internet.

After just about 1/4 of the lab classes went by most students said that from all the lab time they spent they hate this lab the most.

So what did i do at that lab? Well i chose to be in a group with a friend of mine that is also a electronics hobbyist, we chose the PWM output accelerometer  cause it seamed like the coolest of the sensors. Pretty quickly threw together a schematic and PCB in Altium. Wasted a bit more time on programming since we ware hunting a weird bug where the reading would occasionally go crazy if the X and Y acceleration was close together that later turned out to be a hardware problem (runt PWM pulse), the accelerometer just needed a 100nF on the breakout board, the one on the PCB was too far. Since we ware so far ahead we also made a GUI for it in VB.net. So at the end we both said that this is by far the best lab time we ever had in school.

There was also classes involving industrial PLC programming that ended up not terribly successful and pretty disliked by the students due to having to think up a solution rather than follow a bland step by step list of measuring tings and writing them down (I hated those).