Yet another "importance of a degree"

[daveshah]

I'm currently a second year student on a comined EE+computing course at a well respected university in the UK.

Unfortunately I'm finding university very miserable; I don't fit in with the others and often find I'm being slightly bullied even. The university haven't really been able to do anything.

I am doing very well academically, coming top in our course of ~40 students last year, but don't find the course that interesting either, the pace is a lot slower than I was expecting.

From my own projects, which is the only way I am able to motivate myself, I have a good knowledge of VHDL and working with Altera/Xilinx FPGAs as well as some PCB design experience. I've also got plenty of programming experience  (C++, C# and Python mostly).

Is this enough to secure a vaguely interesting job if I drop out now or should I try and stick university out for another year and a half?

[snarkysparky]

try to stick with it.  Many companies want the certification of a degree.

[EEVblog]

Is this enough to secure a vaguely interesting job if I drop out now or should I try and stick university out for another year and a half?

Stick it out.
Find your motivation in doing your own side projects you are interested in.

[sainter]

Just keep swimming... courses will get more interesting and challenging, bullies will drop out when things get tough or even will try to befriend you for help. One way or the other, finish your degree.

[DenzilPenberthy]

Stick with it if you can.  I had very few friends on my course for most of university as a result of slipping a year due to failing 1st year Engineering Maths module.  I had completely lost interest in the course as well. It was extremely dry and mathematical, nothing at all practical. I had a very hard time with the course academically and I only really stuck with it because I can be quite stubborn and I didn't want to admit defeat. It took a long time after the course to regain any enthusiasm for electronics. (Dave had a huge part to play in reigniting my practical interest in the subject).  I made friends outside of my course through clubs/societies etc. I found a lot more like-minded people there.

[tggzzz]

Is this enough to secure a vaguely interesting job if I drop out now or should I try and stick university out for another year and a half?

Stick it out.
Find your motivation in doing your own side projects you are interested in.

Precisely.

Don't forget that bullies are principally interested in getting a subservient reaction. If you don't react, they will eventually lose interest.

I'm not surprised the university aren't able to do anything about "slight bullying", since that is difficult for a third party to unambiguously distinguish from "mere" personality conflicts and differences of opinion - and it often ends up as one person's word against another. They could only reasonably step in when someone is visibly being damaged.

Having said that, I expect your uni has a counselling service; strongly consider making use of it.

My daughter had a friend that was seriously thinking of dropping out of physics. They had several long conversations, he didn't drop out - and ended up with a good degree.

In the meantime, concentrate on getting reasonable grades, on the bits you enjoy, and ignore any bullying. At the very least your experiences will form a good conversation point with HR-droids when they ask you the inevitable "tell me about a difficult situation, and how you dealt with it". Phrased properly, your answers could do you credit.

Don't forget it can be a tough world out there, and all jobs have bits you don't particuarly enjoy. The trick is to find jobs where that is minimised

[John Coloccia]

Employers want people that can finish a project, even when it gets boring. I would also say that now is an excellent time to learn how to "fit in." Sometimes, it doesn't just happen. In your career, you will often find yourself in uncomfortable positions, either with other employees, or maybe a customer. To some people, reading people and fitting in comes naturally. To others, it's a learned skill, but you'd best learn it and now is the time to do it when you've really got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Pick up this book:
https://www.amazon.com/John-Molloys-New-Dress-Success/dp/0446385522

Yes, I'm 100% serious. Don't worry about all the fashion advice. The book is a tour de force of how your image, including the way you stand, facial gestures and things like that, affect how people view and treat you, AND how you can manipulate that to your advantage. It's just like any other kind of engineering or problem solving.

[CJay]

Stick with it, a degree is your entry pass these days and it's an awful lot easier to build a career if your foundations are solid.

[CatalinaWOW]

I'd say stick with it.  There are ways to succeed without the degree, but they are rare and often difficult.   Many who drop out find themselves trying to return to finish.  As hard as it may be for you to believe now, almost all find it even harder to come back and finish. 

The pluses for finishing later - your motivation may be better and with added maturity and knowledge the courses will seem far easier.

The minuses - You will have far more commitments on your time, you will find the boring parts even more boring, and you will be stunned by the immaturity of those around you.

[MosherIV]

For my pennies worth - Stick with it 

a degree is your entry pass these days

During the credit crunch/recession nearly all jobs in embedded software/electronics required a good Degree regardless of the experience or number of years worked 

Good luck with it. Try to have a good time at Uni - looking back it was one of the best times of my life 

[RoGeorge]

Is this enough to secure a vaguely interesting job if I drop out now or should I try and stick university out for another year and a half?

Absolutely not enough. Don't you even think to give up!
Stick with the university and get your degree.

[daveshah]

Thanks everyone for the advice ; I'm definitely going to stick it out as it sounds like I've previously been undervaluing the importance of a degree.

[Howardlong]

Much as I despise the situation, it's pretty much a mandatory requirement these days to have a degree to get started is almost any career.

I was in a similar position to you in that before I went to university I was already designing plenty of hardware and programming in assembly language as well as higher level languages, which in those days was ALGOL and BASIC (don't laugh!).

I learned almost nothing practically speaking at university. The exception was to gain a grounding of how to properly write software for high level languages (rather than hack it). Two of the three computer language courses were frankly useless (FORTRAN and COBOL). The useful one was Pascal. Electronics-wise, I learned nothing practical I didn't know already. I did learn how to solve calculus problems in more ways than you could shake a stick at... but in 35+ years I've only very, very, very rarely used that skill.

What I did gain were three letters after my name, and that opened doors that would definitely never have been opened otherwise.

The odd electronics jobs I did prior to my degree were pure grunt work, like tidying up the stores. It was, however, perfectly plausible in those days to work your way up, usually in a rather unstructured way. Nowadays, it's much harder to do that: you can thank the modern-day HR box-tickers for that, plus that everyone and their dog has a degree.

I agree with the other posters, I implore you to continue.

Before I am done though, how does this bullying manifest itself? Frankly, once you're at university age that sort of childish nonsense should've evaporated. If it pervades it's merely a reflection on the lack of maturity of the perpetrators.

[zapta]

Stick with it, and if the bullying or feeling misfit get to a point that it affects your mental or physical health then seek professional help.

The time to decide that you don't want to use a degree in your career is only after you earned it.

[smithnerd]

Before I am done though, how does this bullying manifest itself? Frankly, once you're at university age that sort of childish nonsense should've evaporated. If it pervades it's merely a reflection on the lack of maturity of the perpetrators.

I was surprised at how juvenile a lot of my peers were at university in the mid-nineties. In their case it wasn't so much bullying, as constant low-level disruption during lectures, arsing about during labs and blatant cheating during exams. None of the trouble makers graduated, they wasted 1 or 2 years of fees and loans, and left with nothing but a better understanding of their own shortcomings.

[steverino]

Definitely worth completing the degree.  I'm really surprised to hear of bullying at the university level.  I'm a bit of loner and never fit in with any peers, etc.  I dropped out of HS at mid 2nd year but  later attended university and completed a degree.  I actually liked university because it didn't have all the BS that typically goes on in HS.  If you come to the point where things become unbearable and the university won't address the problem, then maybe choose a different one.  Definitely seek out a counselor to discuss the problem.

-Steve

[hans]

Definitely hang in there for the degree.

I've been bullied to more or lesser degrees in elementary and secondary school. When I was about 15 years old I was supposed to head for community college in 2 years time, but fortunately in that year I got into a much nicer class & environment and very quickly my grades went up. Instead of community college I could do (and did) the extra year(s) in secondary school to go to university straight away.
I've had a time of bullying once more when I was about 17, but I was able to put it aside much better and stay focused on my self. People who are 'so vocal' are usually the ones with the least amount of work ethics out there. In my experience the silent people are either really shy, or are the serious people working hard for their own future. Despite that they can still have the motto 'work hard play hard'. The (vocal) bullies may grow up (some don't) when they get older, but perhaps it's too late once they realize they won't pass enough classes to stay in university. Sometimes malicious pleasure is out place, but I don't care.

However when I put all of this together it still makes me angry that such circumstances have put me in this situation. A normal education path to university would have been much more straight forward, quicker and also develop a much broader skill set when I was younger. It would have saved me a lot of time and agony. But it is what it is. Since that 'turning point' I've been able to source motivation and satisfaction from my grades and hobby projects. Some friends once said I am always busy with stuff at varying levels of intensity, yet that is how I feel right in 'my zone'. I felt out of it for a whole due to some circumstances and I hated that. It's actually one of the reasons why I went back for a degree, however that may sound quite contrary to you. I am now resuming university for a masters.

I would be totally gutted if someone else would be responsible for my decision to quit college. In other words, don't let the actions of others influence you. As said before; no education papers is a big deal for probably many many years to come. Try to source motivation from own hobby projects and what doors the degree will eventually open for you.

Just my 2 cents.

[VK3DRB]

Generally, you will find the course will get more interesting as it progresses. And I join the chorus - STICK WITH IT. For the sake of a few years, you will never look back. In all my career, I only met one engineer who regretted getting his engineering degree, and he is a conspiracy theorist who abandoned engineering as the Illuminati closes in to destroy the world. Everyone else I know never regretted it, despite how tough or dry the course was. Strive on.

[rstofer]

Definitely, complete the degree program.

As to finding something vaguely interesting to do, well, that might be tough.  For the most part, I enjoyed my career.  I wouldn't call it interesting more than about 10% of the time.  The rest of the time was just routine.  Budgets, meetings, report writing and other boring stuff.  Lunch was usually the highlight of the day!  The whole thing paid well, so no complaints.  I am happily retired and not planning to ever work again.

[Wilksey]

With the risk of  , stick with it.
I never went as far to get a degree, I got bored after completing my HND.

A fair few years ago (double figures) when I was looking for a job, a degree wasn't mandatory, but was a benefit, but I started at the bottom (tea boy), even though I could run rings around the existing "engineers" it didn't matter, had i a degree I could have started further up the ladder (senior tea boy).

These days, for the roles I take, experience is key, going for a graduate / out of uni job almost certainly requires a degree, if you can get a PHD, well, you're laughing!

True story, we had a position for a software engineer, some mush comes in for the job, knew very little about C/C++, tried to write embedded code like he would MFC, but he was hired, why, because he had a PHD, the strangest thing (to me) is that his PHD wasn't in software or anything computer related, but in philosophy!  Still finding his code to this day.

[zapta]

... the strangest thing (to me) is that his PHD wasn't in software or anything computer related, but in philosophy! 

The PH in PHD stands for philosophy. It doesn't necessarily mean that the person actually studied what we would consider as philosophy.

[Marco]

I don't fit in with the others and often find I'm being slightly bullied even.

This to me is strange. In my age you could chose to interact so little with people next to no one even knew your name. I guess today with more mandatory attendance, group work and nearly everyone running nominal that's less true.

Also there were very few people who could not find some group to fit into outside of class. Our student network and cable were run by student volunteers with some bizarre characters, the roleplaying group was predictably an eclectic group, the amateur radio crowd was always special etc etc. The multi-year membership of these groups form a better environment for social interaction than the school'ish class one IMO.

[TheWelly888]

True story, we had a position for a software engineer, some mush comes in for the job, knew very little about C/C++, tried to write embedded code like he would MFC, but he was hired, why, because he had a PHD, the strangest thing (to me) is that his PHD wasn't in software or anything computer related, but in philosophy!  Still finding his code to this day.

My boss once interviewed a candidate with two engineering degrees who took 20minutes to wire a UK mains plug and connected the earth wire to the live pin as well as long stretches of bare conductors in the plug!  That candidate was not hired!

Back to OP - stick with the degree course, the side projects will stand you in good stead!

[Howardlong]

True story, we had a position for a software engineer, some mush comes in for the job, knew very little about C/C++, tried to write embedded code like he would MFC, but he was hired, why, because he had a PHD, the strangest thing (to me) is that his PHD wasn't in software or anything computer related, but in philosophy!  Still finding his code to this day.

The best project manager I've ever had the pleasure to work with is at ESA's R&D facility in the Netherlands, and he has an MSc in Physics and Philosophy. He's nearly 20 years younger than me. Being sceptical, I asked him once about the philosophy stuff and what practical use it was, he explained it was about critical thinking and being able to logically prioritise stuff. Having worked with him I believe it.

Why does he make a great PM? Several reasons, but two key ones:

o A good PM has trust and respect in the experience and expertise of the various SMEs who are working with him: he makes sure he understands as much as he needs to from a technical level, but also knows when to stop micro-analysing.

o An SME has a problem and offers the PM a few solutions, with pros and cons. A good PM will pick one, the least worst option, with the information available at the time. Sure, occasionally we'd need to do a bit more investigation, but all too often PMs will sit on problems and procrastinate, and that lack of decision making is frequently far worse than no decision at all.

I like to think those facets might be to do with his philosophy training, and he was making those calls in his mid 20s.

[Wilksey]

... the strangest thing (to me) is that his PHD wasn't in software or anything computer related, but in philosophy! 

The PH in PHD stands for philosophy. It doesn't necessarily mean that the person actually studied what we would consider as philosophy.

I am aware of that, but in this case, it was not computer related, he was writing research papers on philosophers.