General > General Technical Chat
Education level required for employment as EE
setq:
OU are pretty good from what I understand.
CJay:
--- Quote from: tggzzz on September 15, 2016, 11:42:05 am ---
--- Quote from: CJay on September 15, 2016, 11:32:24 am ---Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.
I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view
--- End quote ---
Probably not. You are, as someone I know found on an agent's copy of their CV, "PSBD". That's "past sell by date". In some ways we were glad, because that meant he was able to be employed by my department :)
--- Quote --- or just for my own satisfaction.
--- End quote ---
Quite possibly. I know someone your age that has just started an astrophysics course.
--- Quote ---It'd have to be the OU as well...
--- End quote ---
There are many many distance learning courses available, of course. Most big unis do them now.
--- End quote ---
While I'm well aware my career is pretty much set and I'll work out the rest of my days wandering around various government departments trying to find brick walls to batter my head against at the stupidity of the management, it's not a fun realisation that I'm, as they say, PSBD.
Hence the push to 'do something with my life' (I've had a pretty good one so far, lots of fun experiences but it's not gone the way I'd have wanted) so the OU (or other) distance learning course is going to happen.
Just have to decide what in now :)
tggzzz:
--- Quote from: CJay on September 15, 2016, 02:41:47 pm ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on September 15, 2016, 11:42:05 am ---
--- Quote from: CJay on September 15, 2016, 11:32:24 am ---Now after reading all of that, I need to work out if it's worth my doing a degree at age (nearly) *cough* 48.
I don't know if it'd be worth the effort from a career point of view
--- End quote ---
Probably not. You are, as someone I know found on an agent's copy of their CV, "PSBD". That's "past sell by date". In some ways we were glad, because that meant he was able to be employed by my department :)
--- Quote --- or just for my own satisfaction.
--- End quote ---
Quite possibly. I know someone your age that has just started an astrophysics course.
--- Quote ---It'd have to be the OU as well...
--- End quote ---
There are many many distance learning courses available, of course. Most big unis do them now.
--- End quote ---
While I'm well aware my career is pretty much set and I'll work out the rest of my days wandering around various government departments trying to find brick walls to batter my head against at the stupidity of the management, it's not a fun realisation that I'm, as they say, PSBD.
Hence the push to 'do something with my life' (I've had a pretty good one so far, lots of fun experiences but it's not gone the way I'd have wanted) so the OU (or other) distance learning course is going to happen.
Just have to decide what in now :)
--- End quote ---
Welcome to one of the clubs you never wanted to join :(
Even where management is good, and there are such places, you will run into client stupidity (and if you let them get in the loop, salesman stupidity).
We are lucky; most people don't have much choice in what they do.
Omega Glory:
It's been a while since I made the original post here, but since then I made the decision to go to college, and I've now just graduated a few days ago, so I thought I would put down some of what I learned about the experience.
For some context, I'm American and I attended Lehigh University in the state of Pennsylvania which is primarily an engineering and business school. I majored in what they called "Computer Engineering" which is a blend between their Electrical Engineering and Computer Science programs.
In my experience, I did not get better at a lot of the practical aspects of engineering by taking classes there. For example, many of the skills required to make the projects I was interested in weren't taught there. These skills include such things as soldering, PCB design, sourcing parts, and knowing how to set up a basic board with a microcontroller, voltage regulator, and support circuitry. These sorts of skills I had from past personal projects, and continued to improve upon them in my limited spare time, however they were not a part of the curriculum. The one exception to this might be programming. I believe that I definitely became a better programmer while in school, but I believe most of this came from simply being forced to do it so often rather than because of how the classes were taught (a significant exception to this was an operating systems class which was absolutely incredible).
However, besides the obvious difference in employment eligibility by holding a degree, I believe the experience was worth it for some other reasons that I did not expect when I first started:
First, going to college drastically increased my mathematical literacy. I found this to be incredibly important because it allowed me to be able to read textbooks and papers in all sorts of engineering and scientific topics that previously were completely inaccessible to me. I believe this was one of the most valuable things I learned because it enables me to continue to learn on my own in new ways after school.
Having the improved mathematical literacy opened me up to whole areas I didn't know existed, or thought were simplistic and boring. For example, I used to believe that the physics of electricity and magnetism was not particularly interesting, but after taking calc 3, I was able to appreciate its beauty, and it became one of my favorite subjects to learn about. I also used to not know a thing about signal processing, and I thought analog design was boring until I took a signals class where the world of frequency analysis was opened up to me, and it not only became one of my favorite subjects, but also completely changed how I saw a lot of the world. None of this would have been possible (at least to the same degree) had I not had classes in differential equations, linear algebra, and complex variables. Knowing that math enabled me to read and learn new things I could have never accessed before.
Second, the curriculum at college opened me up to fantastic textbooks from which I could teach myself things outside of class, whether in the subjects of mathematics, circuit design, physics, signal processing, computer architecture, or operating system design. While it certainly isn't necessary to go to school to know what good texts are available, I found that to be a very helpful part of the experience. At some point I would like to compile a list of good resources so that high schoolers interested in those subjects know where to look if they want to learn things on their own (When I was in high school, I found that quite difficult, but I was also homeschooled, so that might have had something to do with it).
Third, once I got to some of the more advanced classes, professors started to teach material that I could not easily find online or in textbooks. I found this to be the case in my mixed signals class, my linear systems class, and in a class on special relativity. While there are resources on these subjects available, the best professors were able to offer insight from industry or from new research which would have been much harder to discover on my own even with a library, the internet, and forums.
Fourth, some of the better professors at the school were very helpful with offering me guidance on what classes to take to learn more about specific areas, and learning more about research opportunities during school and after graduation. My academic advisor, Dr. Shalinee Kishore, in particular was very caring and helpful, and she encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in ECE. This fall I'll be starting a PhD at UPenn, focusing on FPGA development which particularly excites me. I know that this sort of thing would not have been an option had I not attended college.
There are many other benefits and downsides to the college experience (in my opinion), but I don't think those are as relevant to this thread, which was originally about employment requirements for EEs. Over all, however, I believe the experience was a very good one, and I learned a ton. Even though this particular school did not directly help me improve on many of the practical aspects of engineering, I was still able to develop those sorts of skills on my own, and combined with the new theory I learned, I was able to create projects that previously would have been out of my reach. Here is a link to my senior design project, which I think demonstrates a lot of both the practical and theoretical: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/pet-on-a-chip/.
Thank you for all your advice and encouragement. It was very helpful when trying to figure this all out, 4 years ago.
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: Omega Glory on May 31, 2021, 04:10:11 am ---It's been a while since I made the original post here, but since then I made the decision to go to college, and I've now just graduated a few days ago, so I thought I would put down some of what I learned about the experience.
For some context, I'm American and I attended Lehigh University in the state of Pennsylvania which is primarily an engineering and business school. I majored in what they called "Computer Engineering" which is a blend between their Electrical Engineering and Computer Science programs.
In my experience, I did not get better at a lot of the practical aspects of engineering by taking classes there. For example, many of the skills required to make the projects I was interested in weren't taught there. These skills include such things as soldering, PCB design, sourcing parts, and knowing how to set up a basic board with a microcontroller, voltage regulator, and support circuitry. These sorts of skills I had from past personal projects, and continued to improve upon them in my limited spare time, however they were not a part of the curriculum. The one exception to this might be programming. I believe that I definitely became a better programmer while in school, but I believe most of this came from simply being forced to do it so often rather than because of how the classes were taught (a significant exception to this was an operating systems class which was absolutely incredible).
However, besides the obvious difference in employment eligibility by holding a degree, I believe the experience was worth it for some other reasons that I did not expect when I first started:
First, going to college drastically increased my mathematical literacy. I found this to be incredibly important because it allowed me to be able to read text books and papers in all sorts of engineering and scientific topics that previously were completely inaccessible to me. I believe this was one of the most valuable things I learned because it enables me to continue to learn on my own in new ways after school.
Having the improved mathematical literacy opened me up to whole areas I didn't know existed, or thought were simplistic and boring. For example, I used to believe that the physics of electricity and magnetism was not particularly interesting, but after taking calc 3, I was able to appreciate its beauty, and it became one of my favorite subjects to learn about. I also used to not know a thing about signal processing, and I thought analog design was boring until I took a signals class where the world of frequency analysis was opened up to me, and it not only became one of my favorite subjects, but also completely changed how I saw a lot of the world. None of this would have been possible (at least to the same degree) had I not had classes in differential equations, linear algebra, and complex variables. Knowing that math enabled me to read and learn new things I could have never accessed before.
Second, the curriculum at college opened me up to fantastic textbooks from which I could teach myself things outside of class, whether in the subjects of mathematics, circuit design, physics, signal processing, computer architecture, or operating system design. While it certainly isn't necessary to go to school to know what good texts are available, I found that to be a very helpful part of the experience. At some point I would like to compile a list of good resources so that high schoolers interested in those subjects know where to look if they want to learn things on their own (When I was in high school, I found that quite difficult, but I was also homeschooled, so that might have had something to do with it).
Third, once I got to some of the more advanced classes, professors started to teach material that I could not easily find online or in textbooks. I found this to be the case in my mixed signals class, my linear systems class, and in a class on special relativity. While there are resources on these subjects available, the best professors were able to offer insight from industry or from new research which would have been much harder to discover on my own even with a library, the internet, and forums.
Fourth, some of the better professors at the school were very helpful with offering me guidance on what classes to take to learn more about specific areas, and learning more about research opportunities during school and after graduation. My academic advisor in particular was very caring and helpful, and she encouraged me to apply to PhD programs in ECE. This fall I'll be starting a PhD at UPenn, focusing on FPGA development which particularly excites me. I know that this sort of thing would not have been an option had I not attended college.
There are many other benefits and downsides to the college experience (in my opinion), but I don't think those are as relevant to this thread, which was originally about employment requirements for EEs. Over all, however, I believe the experience was a very good one, and I learned a ton. Even though this particular school did not directly help me improve on many of the practical aspects of engineering, I was still able to develop those sorts of skills on my own, and combined with the new theory I learned, I was able to create projects that previously would have been out of my reach. Here is a link to my senior design project, which I think demonstrates a lot of both the practical and theoretical: [url]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/pet-on-a-chip/[/url].
Thank you for all your advice and encouragement. It was very helpful when trying to figure this all out, 4 years ago.
--- End quote ---
Great summary, thanks for sharing. Congrats on graduating! :-+
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