Education Levels by Country

[kandrathe]

What exactly does a college education mean elsewhere? It doesn't mean a whole lot in some cases here.

From my experience as a software engineer, and now as a director of software engineers, the attendance at a University may or may not have exposed the fledgling engineer to what they need to know. It does show that they had the where with all to get through a very difficult and challenging educational process, but may mean nothing to their ability to get the job done. Generally, IMHO, some of the best things one learns in the University are from the exposure to diverse cultures, opinions, and the process of learning how to research and assimilate knowledge.

That said, some of the most impressive intellects I've met were incapable of attending the University, as they were unable to "waste their time" proving to a professor things they already knew. Also, many of most of the undergraduate education is not at the cutting edge of technology, so it exacerbates to notion that the University can teach you very little. For instance, I remember my class on compilers was taught by a very distinguished peer of Alan Turing, but the lab materials forced us to write machine language programs on a PDP11 emulator (antiquated), whilst the modern world was using macro assemblers based on Intel or Motorola chipsets. Using the modern equivalents would have taught us the same fundamentals, but would have also contributed some vocational experience.

A mentor of mine explained it to me thus, with an analogy to plumbing; The vocational schools build plumbing apprentices who have had some basic exposure to the field, and the University builds plumbing engineers who can tell you exactly how fast the water will flow depending on the bends in the pipe, but neither can create a soldered joint that will hold water. When I hire engineers, I look at education as background information, but work experience, capability, and attitude are more important.