Education level required for employment as EE

[tggzzz]

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.

Thanks for writing this up. It will be valuable to other people, partly because I'll refer to it when other people raise such questions or the perennial "degrees are useless because I knew a graduate that tried to measure the mains impedance with a multimeter" argument

It seems that you have had the experiences I would have hoped you would have. Or rather that you explicitly ensured that you made good use of your your time there. I'm sure such an attitude and diligence will stand you in good stead during the rest of your career.

Keep on learning, have fun, and don't let ten years of experience be one year repeated ten times

Congratulations on graduating, of course.

[Zero999]

Thanks for following up. It's rare someone will make this kind of thread and come back four years later!

I'm glad you had a positive experience at university. Presumably you're much younger than me. I'm even less likely to go back to study, now at the age of 39, than I was when this thread started. The idea of going to class with a load of freshers, young enough to be my children seems strange and somewhat intimidating now and I've forgotten a lot of the maths, so would struggle to get back into it.

Apprenticeships are also a good route and some even go up to degree level. The apprentice where I work has just left and found another employer who pay more and will fund him to do an HND, followed by a degree and good for him!

Again it's good you want to study further, but why not spend a year, or so on the job, before going back to university again?  I have had experience with those who have spent a lot of time in education, away from industry and they can be challenging to work with.

[Omega Glory]

Keep on learning, have fun, and don't let ten years of experience be one year repeated ten times

I have not heard that before! Good advice, thank you!

Again it's good you want to study further, but why not spend a year, or so on the job, before going back to university again?  I have had experience with those who have spent a lot of time in education, away from industry and they can be challenging to work with.

Yes, in some ways I think going directly into a PhD program without industry experience will work against me if I decide to enter industry afterwards instead of academia. I'm not sure there's a way around that if I continue this route, but I'm hopeful that if I'm humble and always willing to learn, then it will be less painful for those I end up working with, and I will be okay in the end.

For me, the PhD program is also less about taking more classes or improving my chances of employment, and more about having the freedom to do interesting research with some really talented people. One of the things the lab I'll be working with is doing is helping to develop the free and open source FPGA design flows. I got into FPGAs because of the free tools like Yosys, nextpnr, iceprog, etc, which just recently become available (2018 ish), and it excites me that I might have the opportunity to make useful contributions to the community. The lab is also experimenting with new dynamic partial reconfiguration techniques on FPGAs, and I'm also very interested in that as well.

So while this program may not make me a more employable engineer with lots of real world industry experience, I think it will allow me to explore certain areas with more freedom than if I went directly into industry. Looking back to my original post on this thread, I suppose my goals and interests have shifted. Originally I was very concerned that I might not make it through an undergrad program, and wanted to know if it was necessary to get a job. I thought PhD programs were completely theoretical, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Now I know I could probably get a job, (just about everyone else in my class got an offer), but now I know a bit more about the sorts of things I would get to do in a PhD program and it really appeals to me.

[tggzzz]

When working in HPLabs, we once mused about what were valid and invalid reasons for doing a PhD if you wanted to be employed in industrial R&D. We came to the conclusion the only valid reason was "because I wanted to". An academic career is, of course, different. (BTW, "only" is an exaggeration to make the point)

Getting a PhD

• delays you entering the workforce for 3+ years, so you are 3 years "behind" your classmates
• won't increase your salary; unless the PhD's subject is directly relevant you will be on a new graduate salary scale
• will be in a narrow subject that is unlikely to be of direct relevance to an employer (unlike a first degree)
• if it is of direct interest to an employer, you have to be careful they don't suck out your experience, then discard you
• will indicate that you can independently learn in depth about a subject. By implication that will be relevant to some industrial jobs, but there are other ways of demonstrating that

You might care to test the waters by having interviews with some potential employers, and asking them whether a PhD would be useful. They might be put off by a "lack of commitment", but if offered a job, you don't have to accept!

[IanB]

I have been surrounded by PhD's in jobs where I have worked, and the number of people with higher degrees may depend somewhat on the industry. In engineering disciplines there can be something akin to "an industrial PhD", often undertaken with sponsorship and collaboration with an industrial partner.

Research is definitely a component of industrial operations, especially when developing technologies to obtain market advantage and gain a lead over the competition. So PhD training does have industrial relevance beyond the specific research subject. Just as a first degree is about "learning how to learn", a higher degree should be about "learning how to investigate".

[wizard69]

    I will be applying to colleges this year, and I am interested in pursuing a career in electrical engineering. From what I have gathered from this forum and other sources, most EE programs at colleges will not prepare you well for a career in electrical engineering,

I don't see this as true at all.   Now your EE program should be oriented to solid state electronics.    Honestly i couldn't even imagine working at the technician level without a solid grounding in the basics.   Frankly I see college as one of the better ways to get the basics down for an engineer or technician.   That doesn't mean that being self taught is impossible or bad, it certainly can be done.

In any event I think what you are talking about here is knowledge and experience learned from seasoned professionals that might not be covered in school.   That is in fact very important in the development of ones career (frankly it is important be you a engineer or plumber).    However I don't see most professionals wasting time on you to get you up to speed on basic concepts.

but rather, most of your knowledge and skill will come from work experience. I have, however, read that in order to secure an EE job at many companies, you must possess a EE degree.

Mostly true.   In some locations there may be legal obligations depending upon the field of engineering.   That is you may need to be licensed as a professional engineer.

I was wondering if any of you would tell me if a bachelors degree is adequate, or if a masters degree is required for most job applications. Also, if I have misunderstood how a college education and degree in EE benefits students, I would be grateful if you corrected me.

The degree requirement will vary with the job.   You could very likely find positions demanding a PHd.   

You question about the benefits of a degree which can be generalized to any college degree perplexes me.    It may be a case if you have not gone you don't know, but education doesn't stop at the 12th grade.    Even a 2 year tech degree will do much for your understanding of the technology and you really can't dismiss the rounding out of your education.   Things like communications classes, mathematics, and the required misc. classes do much to help your career.    Personally I don't think you would have been able to understand my postings without the extra effort required to get through my communications classes.   It really improved my ability to communicate with other team members on a daily basis.   I really don't think you can improve yourself in this regard without feed back from people reading and evaluating what you write.

You are not alone and I suspect a lot of students entering college ask them selves is it worth it.   In some cases it isn't so we have to be honest here.   However in the specific case of electrical engineering I really see it as a requirement.   You might get a job labeled "engineer" without the degree, but it is highly doubtful it will be in a position that offers real growth.   Maybe more importantly you will have no mobility to move from employer to employer.

[wizard69]

This is so important to understand, an advanced education will not make a useless person useful!!!!!!    There are far more "EE's" out there that are useless than most people realize as you would expect that a degree would imply some intelligence and drive.   However a degree can pretty much assure that such a person will get a job over somebody else without a degree.   

To put is simply if you have the drive and ability to be a good engineer, get a degree as you will end up supporting such useless people otherwise.   

You will find some people that say a degree is a waste of time. You must assess that person and why they have that opinion. Usually they don't have a degree, and often they have been unable to get a degree. If that's the case, how can they possibly know the value of a degree?

I think the reason why some people will say that a degree is a waste of time is because they've worked with people who are very well qualified but are totally useless at their job. Of course I wouldn't say a degree is a waste of time. It just won't make anyone a good engineer.

An engineering degree isn't necessary if you want to become a technician. Consider that engineer:technician = doctor:nurse. Both doctors and nurses support each othe and both are vital; vive la difference.

I wouldn't agree with that. There are plenty of people without engineering degrees who are doing exactly the same jobs as engineers who have degrees but are paid less.

[wizard69]

wow what a post!    I didn't realize that this thread was so old (tired and it is getting late) so I responded to earlier comments.    In any event I'm glad that you have managed to go as far as you have.   Hopefully this message goes viral and more high school students will read it.   Sometime college improves you in ways you don't expect looking from the outside.   Looking back I really wish I had more time to invest in my education so go for all you can handle.

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.

[EEVblog]

Yes, in some ways I think going directly into a PhD program without industry experience will work against me if I decide to enter industry afterwards instead of academia. I'm not sure there's a way around that if I continue this route, but I'm hopeful that if I'm humble and always willing to learn, then it will be less painful for those I end up working with, and I will be okay in the end.

For me, the PhD program is also less about taking more classes or improving my chances of employment, and more about having the freedom to do interesting research with some really talented people. One of the things the lab I'll be working with is doing is helping to develop the free and open source FPGA design flows. I got into FPGAs because of the free tools like Yosys, nextpnr, iceprog, etc, which just recently become available (2018 ish), and it excites me that I might have the opportunity to make useful contributions to the community. The lab is also experimenting with new dynamic partial reconfiguration techniques on FPGAs, and I'm also very interested in that as well.

So while this program may not make me a more employable engineer with lots of real world industry experience, I think it will allow me to explore certain areas with more freedom than if I went directly into industry. Looking back to my original post on this thread, I suppose my goals and interests have shifted. Originally I was very concerned that I might not make it through an undergrad program, and wanted to know if it was necessary to get a job. I thought PhD programs were completely theoretical, and I wanted nothing to do with them. Now I know I could probably get a job, (just about everyone else in my class got an offer), but now I know a bit more about the sorts of things I would get to do in a PhD program and it really appeals to me.

Bolded by me.
The answer is simple and clear:



Doing something you enjoy, getting paid for it (presumably?), and having a PhD in a niche practical field, you'll be unbeatable on the other side of this.

[ebastler]

I wasn't sure what I want to do in future.. but reading this thread helped me to make a final decision. I am deeply grateful to everyone of you.

So what is it you want to do in the future? Posting link spam for a living? 

[Zero999]

I wasn't sure what I want to do in future.. but reading this thread helped me to make a final decision. I am deeply grateful to everyone of you.

So what is it you want to do in the future? Posting link spam for a living? 

Come on, give the poster a chance. He appeared to have read the thread.

[ebastler]

Come on, give the poster a chance. He appeared to have read the thread.

Yes, but no. All the other hallmarks of a spam poster are there -- new user, old thread, vaguely relevant short post. "Education" threads are a popular link-spam target; plenty of student help sites are looking for attention. And if you Google the poster's account name, you will find half a dozen posts to various forums, all dating from the last two days, apparently all with a similar theme.

Nice attempt, and bonus points for getting three "thanks" for a spam post. I have not reported the post yet to see how this plays out, but am pretty sure what to expect over the next couple of days...

EDIT: And here we go... A rather patient spammer, waited a full two weeks. But they dropped their payload eventually:

I wasn't sure what I want to do in future.. but reading this thread helped me to make a final decision. I am deeply grateful to everyone of you. However, I still think that the education system in the US is broken. It's not working as intended, or maybe I had a really bad experience. I had some teachers that were discriminating me, they've been always mean, not accepting my homework and so on. The worst part was about essays. I had to scan half of the internet and look for essays ideas like here [[spam link removed]] for example, in order to make my homework, and my teacher to happy with it. This kind of experience made me feel really disappointed in the whole education.

[Miyuki]

Come on, give the poster a chance. He appeared to have read the thread.

Yes, but no. All the other hallmarks of a spam poster are there -- new user, old thread, vaguely relevant short post. "Education" threads are a popular link-spam target; plenty of student help sites are looking for attention. And if you Google the poster's account name, you will find half a dozen posts to various forums, all dating from the last two days, apparently all with a similar theme.

Nice attempt, and bonus points for getting three "thanks" for a spam post. I have not reported the post yet to see how this plays out, but am pretty sure what to expect over the next couple of days...

At least it highlighted a nice thread.
I can just bring up my experience as I'm now changing a job related to EE and without a title
And the education importance at interviews is like: And btw what was your education?
So totally irrelevant, compared to experience and enthusiasm
University was just too crowded place for me to be, so I choose different way

[free_electron]

PhD

PHD Person Helpless at Designing... or Person Highly Defective

[armandine2]

In my experience, just a "red brick" undergraduate engineering course in the late 1980s, a PhD was not the prize for the best students. Industry beckoned all but the deferred PhD students, who had another agenda.

 I've read those Feynman biographies, where the star's university career seems to be the allotted route for the high flier, without much contradiction.