Re: engineering graduate school question

"cpope" <cepope@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:467704e5$0$16562$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> The master's says
>
> *you were a good enough student to make it into grad school
> *you can handle advanced material
> *and (for most schools) you can handle a large independent project, e.g. a
> thesis
>
> I think you'll find from salary tables that the MS pays for itself, i.e.
you
> make more in higher pay than you lose in the 18 to 24 months it takes to
get
> the degree.

Maybe so; maybe no.

Obviously, many engineers aren't smart enough to even start in grad school.
Others are smart enough to get in but don't have the energy and
self-discipline to get the degree(s).

But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
do well regardless of credentials.

Note that the richest man in the world (Bill Gate$ is a college dropout.)

Advanced degrees are useful if:

1) You want an academic career (the original meaning of "doctor" was
teacher).

2) There is some truly leading edge technology you can master more quickly
in school than on the job. Note than in engineering, innovation as often
as not comes from industry rather than the university.

3) You get a "management" degree like a MBA from a GOOD school. This
"signals" your intent to join the ranks of management. In case you didn't
know, managers make more money than engineers.

If you want to just show how smart you are, find some journal that you might
get yourself published in. If you can get yourself published at a young
age it's possible to quickly get an advanced degree. A solid record of
publications is more impressive than a MS or even a Ph.D. and a grad school
might rush you through the system just so they can take "partial credit" for
your future publications.

> But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
> do well regardless of credentials.
>

This is a good point and has been used to show that ivy league schools are
not worth the money. The alumni make more money but they would make more
money anyway because they are in the top few percent of all students.

So I can agree in one respect that grad school may just be another gate
keeper statistic like number of years of experience. It may or may not have
relevance to a particular job.

I guess one could say that one should strive to get into grad school but
once accepted it may not matter whether they go? I have some problems with
this. First, it's like saying as long as you have good grades through your
junior year you may or may not finish your senior year. You can extend this
logic back to going to school at all, right? Certainly if a bachelor's
degree has value then a master's degree has value.

The second problem I have is that, as a person who has been in continuing
education since my master's degree, I know that the corporate training and
education are totally different. In corporate you go for a couple days,
learn one tool or management practice, you're never tested and you may or
may not retain the information for more than a week. In school I have to
learn topics/material that I might never encounter in my direct job but
still teach me useful engineering principles and forces me to be current on
the latest tools.

In all, I think every engineer should be in continuing education. You don't
know what you don't know. I think a lot of the folks who claim to know it
all based on their work history would be quite surprised to enroll in a
modern graduate class on a topic even in their own field.

-Clark

In article <mKadnXBEybTY7R_bnZ2dnUVZ_rLinZ2d@nni.com>, gilmer@nni.com
says...
>
> "cpope" <cepope@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:467704e5$0$16562$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> > The master's says
> >
> > *you were a good enough student to make it into grad school
> > *you can handle advanced material
> > *and (for most schools) you can handle a large independent project, e.g. a
> > thesis
> >
> > I think you'll find from salary tables that the MS pays for itself, i.e.
> you
> > make more in higher pay than you lose in the 18 to 24 months it takes to
> get
> > the degree.
>
> Maybe so; maybe no.

I've found it's usually not the case. If one wants to do a true
financial justification, the years of earning potential have to be
amortized over a lifetime.
>
> Obviously, many engineers aren't smart enough to even start in grad school.
> Others are smart enough to get in but don't have the energy and
> self-discipline to get the degree(s).

For a MS? I started my MS, while working, and quite because it was
such a joke. I was learning far more on-the-job than I could ever
get out of class.

> But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
> do well regardless of credentials.
>
> Note that the richest man in the world (Bill Gate$ is a college dropout.)

BillyG is a little "different". ;-)

> Advanced degrees are useful if:
>
> 1) You want an academic career (the original meaning of "doctor" was
> teacher).

Exactly.

> 2) There is some truly leading edge technology you can master more quickly
> in school than on the job. Note than in engineering, innovation as often
> as not comes from industry rather than the university.

Yep. The degree is often the entrance fee for these jobs in industry
though.

> 3) You get a "management" degree like a MBA from a GOOD school. This
> "signals" your intent to join the ranks of management. In case you didn't
> know, managers make more money than engineers.

Depends on the company. The difference, except at the corporate
executive level, can be small.

> If you want to just show how smart you are, find some journal that you might
> get yourself published in. If you can get yourself published at a young
> age it's possible to quickly get an advanced degree. A solid record of
> publications is more impressive than a MS or even a Ph.D. and a grad school
> might rush you through the system just so they can take "partial credit" for
> your future publications.
>
If you want to show how smart you are, go into politics. ;-)

--
Keith

"John Gilmer" <gilmer@nni.com> wrote in message
news:mKadnXBEybTY7R_bnZ2dnUVZ_rLinZ2d@nni.com...
> Note that the richest man in the world (Bill Gate$ is a college dropout.)

Yes, but he did drop out of Harvard, which says something a little different
than just dropping out of your local no-name community college. Another thing
to keep in mind is that, while Bill Gates is clearly a savvy guy, the
*technical* knowledge he required to start Microsoft was pretty limited. This
is the start of my rant on how it was rather silly to think that someone who
wants to do general-purpose computer programming or web design or similar
needed a four-year degree... but what's happened in the past handful of
decades has been that the four-year degree has been dumbed down instead
(although I'm not suggesting it's been to the point of where two-year degrees
used to be).

> If you want to just show how smart you are, find some journal that you might
> get yourself published in. If you can get yourself published at a young
> age it's possible to quickly get an advanced degree.

Have you read about these guys? -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair

Somewhere in there it mentions that at least one guy kind of defends them by
saying (very much paraphrased here), "Well, you know, they've been little
better than slave labor for a number for years now, we sort of owe them their
PhDs even if it is a bunch of hooey."

---Joel

"cpope" <cepope@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:46827b46$0$16562$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> In school I have to
> learn topics/material that I might never encounter in my direct job but
> still teach me useful engineering principles and forces me to be current on
> the latest tools.

Which school did you go to? My experienece is that there's a large variation
in whether any given department has new or old equipment and software. Where
I went to school, the PCs were quite shiney (and there we LOTS of them spread
around campus), we had 20" flat panel monitors, the PC software was generally
up-to-date, etc. However, the UNIX boxes -- that were still used for many
graduate-level engineering courses -- were pretty long in the tooth and ran
quite out-of-date versions of HSPICE and Cadence's IC design tools. Some labs
had quite new equipment, whereas others still had "boat anchor" oscilloscopes,
spectrum analyzers, etc. that had *tubes* in them (this last bit probably says
more about the departmental professors and their ability to obtain funding
than the school itself, though).

> In all, I think every engineer should be in continuing education.

I agree 100% (although note that some engineers are able to pull this off
without formal instruction).

---Joel

cpope wrote:
>>But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
>>do well regardless of credentials.
>>
>
>
> This is a good point and has been used to show that ivy league schools are
> not worth the money. The alumni make more money but they would make more
> money anyway because they are in the top few percent of all students.

Yeah sure
I am an alumnus of a certain Ivy League school whose founder is quoted
BY STUDENTS as saying "I *would* found an _INSTITUTION_."

I must be an alumnus. The Alumni Association kept trying to get money
from me. "Alumnus" denotes attendance NOT graduation.
Give my regards to Davy, remember me to Tee Fee Crane.
Tell all the pikers on the hill that I'll be back again.

On Jun 27, 11:17 am, Richard Owlett <rowl...@atlascomm.net> wrote:
> cpope wrote:
> >>But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
> >>do well regardless of credentials.
>
> > This is a good point and has been used to show that ivy league schools are
> > not worth the money. The alumni make more money but they would make more
> > money anyway because they are in the top few percent of all students.
>
> Yeah sure
> I am an alumnus of a certain Ivy League school whose founder is quoted
> BY STUDENTS as saying "I *would* found an _INSTITUTION_."
>
> I must be an alumnus. The Alumni Association kept trying to get money
> from me. "Alumnus" denotes attendance NOT graduation.

The alumni association of the Unversity of Vermont has created a
membership class for those born in the veteran's trailer park
(actually in the hospital up the hill) on campus during the years
following WWII. The park was located in a parking lot for the
baseball stadium.

On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:57:09 -0300, John Gilmer wrote:
....
> 3) You get a "management" degree like a MBA from a GOOD school. This
> "signals" your intent to join the ranks of management. In case you
> didn't know, managers make more money than engineers.

Well, you know who you are:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilber...ers/index.html

Cheers!
Rich

Richard Henry wrote:
> On Jun 27, 11:17 am, Richard Owlett <rowl...@atlascomm.net> wrote:
>
>>cpope wrote:
>>
>>>>But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
>>>>do well regardless of credentials.
>>
>>>This is a good point and has been used to show that ivy league schools are
>>>not worth the money. The alumni make more money but they would make more
>>>money anyway because they are in the top few percent of all students.
>>
>>Yeah sure
>>I am an alumnus of a certain Ivy League school whose founder is quoted
>>BY STUDENTS as saying "I *would* found an _INSTITUTION_."
>>
>>I must be an alumnus. The Alumni Association kept trying to get money
>>from me. "Alumnus" denotes attendance NOT graduation.
>
>
> The alumni association of the Unversity of Vermont has created a
> membership class for those born in the veteran's trailer park
> (actually in the hospital up the hill) on campus during the years
> following WWII. The park was located in a parking lot for the
> baseball stadium.
>
>

Interesting. A friend was born in Vt, was a nurse in VA hospital on
VT/NH border and now at a VA hospital in Florida.

krw wrote:
> In article <mKadnXBEybTY7R_bnZ2dnUVZ_rLinZ2d@nni.com>, gilmer@nni.com
> says...
> > > I think you'll find from salary tables that the MS pays for itself, i.e.
> > you
> > > make more in higher pay than you lose in the 18 to 24 months it takes to
> > get
> > > the degree.
> >
> > Maybe so; maybe no.
>
> I've found it's usually not the case. If one wants to do a true
> financial justification, the years of earning potential have to be
> amortized over a lifetime.

The salary tables show that "usually" which is to say on average it IS
the case. It's pretty hard to somehow discount all those future years
at a salary higher than the average person without the degree and say
that somehow a higher salary for all those years "amortized" over a
lifetime will be less!

However, we are talking about PEOPLE and LIFE here! What happens on
average may not be what happens to you! So "maybe so, maybe no" has
validity. And more important than that is how one FEELS about various
things. If you hate classwork and school life, trying to force
yourself to do more is probably not going to be very successful for
you.

> For a MS? I started my MS, while working, and quite because it was
> such a joke. I was learning far more on-the-job than I could ever
> get out of class.

I don't think getting an MS has ANYTHING to do with job-related
knowledge! Contrary to some misconceptions among freshman, they do NOT
teach you how to solder or design stereo amplifiers at college. It
has to do with credentials and a demonstration of energy and self-
discipline (which obviously you didn't have) Maybe doing a thesis
would have helped you learn to spell "quit". Same thing goes for an
MBA. I doubt you'll find anything there that will really make you a
business whiz. But in the corporate bureaucracy it's a badge and a key
to a number of things. It's symbolic in many ways, but sometimes
symbols are important. (especially in politics).

> > But, but ... Folks with smarts and with energy and self-discipline tend to
> > do well regardless of credentials.

True. But every little bit helps.

> > Note that the richest man in the world (Bill Gate$ is a college dropout.)

(who had rich and influential parents!)

> If you want to show how smart you are, go into politics. ;-)

You mean if your goals are financial, go into politics. But generally
speaking, this is not an option for most engineers who have any
engineering skills at all. Politics and the law are usually best left
for those who have the social and speaking (lying) skills. Engineers
usually have the social skills of a paperweight.

Engineer joke.
Girl is at party. Meets this good-looking guy. Tries to strike up a
conversation with him. Nothing! Can't seem to get more than a grunt or
a single word out of him. She gives up and continues circulating.
Pretty soon she comes back to where the guy is standing by the punch
bowl and takes him by the hand. "Follow me!" she says, And leads him
outside to where another good looking guy is sitting on the edge of
the fountain. "You two guys should get to know one another!" she
says, and stomps off. The two of them sit there saying absolutely
nothing for maybe 20 minutes. Finally one of them says to the other: "
So, what motherboard are you using?"