I’m thinking about the long term here. I don’t care about grades, I think they’re a poor signal. What I care about is whether the engineer I’m working with fifteen years and four employers later actually learned the fundamentals. Some did, some didn’t, and I can tell the difference.
> What I care about is whether the engineer I’m working with fifteen years and four employers later actually learned the fundamentals.
For professional engineers, at least, the degree is not what tells you whether they have learned the fundamentals. The license is.
Even for engineers in domains where there is no licensing (such as software, for example), I would expect them to have learned the fundamentals on the job, not in college. I think most employers expect the same; they don't view the college degree as a signal that the prospective employee knows the fundamentals, they expect them to learn that on the job. What the degree signals to the employer is that the prospective employee will comply with their corporate process.
> What the degree signals to the employer is that the prospective employee will comply with their corporate process.
While this is true, I’ll take the engineer who studied diligently with an aim to learn the material over the one who was just in it for the credential. I don’t agree with your implication that you will learn the fundamentals equally well on the job. It certainly happens, but from what I’ve seen it’s usually people who never had the opportunity to learn in school who are aware of their gaps and seek to fill them in. The nonchalant attitude towards theory tends to persist in the workplace.
> I’ll take the engineer who studied diligently with an aim to learn the material over the one who was just in it for the credential.
The former engineer will learn on the job just as well. The latter one won't learn well in either environment.
You appear to believe that the crucial factor is the person's attitude towards learning, and I agree with that. I just don't agree that a person with that attitude towards learning is necessarily any better off going through college instead of getting a job and learning there. Particularly now, with so much good material available for free online, someone who wants to learn can do it without spending anything more than the cost of Internet access. So the opportunity to learn through college is even less beneficial for those who really want to learn than it was in the past. It might be enough of a benefit to justify college for some, but I think that number is much less than the number who actually go to college.
From the employer's perspective, if you think you can evaluate someone's attitude towards learning well enough, I don't see why their having a college degree would matter much one way or the other. If you think they have the right attitude towards learning, hire them! Whatever they don't know yet, they'll learn.
Oh certainly. It’s not about university versus no university; I’ve worked with electrical and mechanical engineers who didn’t have degrees, and programmers as well of course. Generally non credentialed engineers make up in ambition and raw intelligence what they lack in schooling. It’s the credentialed engineers who spent four to six years at university and didn’t learn the foundational material that I avoid. The disregard for systematic knowledge they pick up in school stays with them in the workplace, even decades later.
