Hi,Could someone hire you if you have a college degree but no skills and formal education?I'm not educated enough by my own parents to do something so I have no idea where I should be trained . Would the employer laugh of me if I told them I graduated from an electronics engineering without having an aptitude to use a soldering gun and to place components on a PCB? The only thing that I have is the internet.......
I mean 90% of this forum were educated by their parents while I had to use the internet as a source of information.....
I didn't graduate yet and I have no mentors other than the internet.
Can you insert this thing in a CV?

 

Anyone?

 

What kind of electronic engineering degree has only academic learning. I had a project every semester.
If you do land your degree, you'll be in the same spot as all other EE degree students, ie no formal experience, but theyt will at least have had "hands on" experience.

 

Would the employer laugh of me if I told them I graduated from an electronics engineering without having an aptitude to use a soldering gun and to place components on a PCB?

No large or medium sized company would laugh at you because you probably wouldn't even get a phone screen. When I was still working, there was never a shortage of applicants. Because of the expenses involved, we only invited the most promising candidates for plant interviews. They were interviewed by around half a dozen people, each having a specific area to cover.

 

@dl324
Then what should I do? Should I continue studying at college and receive the help of my teachers as mentors?

 

I mean 90% of this forum were educated by their parents while I had to use the internet as a source of information.....

Where did you get that idea?

My parents knew absolutely nothing about electronics. I learned the basics from magazines like Popular Electronics and a few books. I did not get any formal education in electronics until college when, as a physics major, I took a lab in it.

 

What kind of electronic engineering degree has only academic learning. I had a project every semester.

Outside the U.S. practical skills are often not taught in college engineering programs.

 

Then what should I do? Should I continue studying at college and receive the help of my teachers as mentors?

Continue your studies. Improve in areas that you recognize as deficiencies. Do some internships to get experience.

These days, companies seem obsessed with degrees. When I started in the industry in the mid 1970's, I only had an associate degree in electronics. That was enough to get offers from HP, Intel, and ESL (defunct R&D lab that did work for the military). And that was during a recession. When I retired, my department was only hiring people with PhD's.

 

Hi,Could someone hire you if you have a college degree but no skills and formal education?I'm not educated enough by my own parents to do something so I have no idea where I should be trained . Would the employer laugh of me if I told them I graduated from an electronics engineering without having an aptitude to use a soldering gun and to place components on a PCB? The only thing that I have is the internet.......
I mean 90% of this forum were educated by their parents while I had to use the internet as a source of information.....
I didn't graduate yet and I have no mentors other than the internet.
Can you insert this thing in a CV?

Why haven't you started learning the things you already think you need to know? Start designing and building projects. Start with kits for small things that explain what the circuits you are constructing do and how they work. Then start designing your own simple projects. They don't have to be complex or even useful. Something like the "Knight Rider" light bar can be extremely educational. You can start out with it being nothing but a string of LEDs that light up one at a time back and forth. Then look for ways to make them more "real" (i.e., look at videos of the old Knight Rider show and look for the fine details of how that display behaved and see if you can get yours to more closely match it). You can also look at various approaches, from pure digital to pure analog, to a mixture of the two and even use it as a way to get into microcontrollers.

Join an electronics club -- or start one. Get a half dozen other students together once a week and discuss projects you would like to build. Then have each one of you take the lead on one project. That person researches the project, gathers the parts, builds one on their own, and then walks everyone else through it over the course of a few meetings. If some of the projects fail miserably, that's fine, because you will likely learn more from them than the ones that go smoothly.

And stop blaming everything on your parents. That's going to be one of the quickest ways to turn off potential employers. Engineers are hired because they are problem solvers. If you can't figure out how to deal with your own problems, why should the employer think that you can help them deal with theirs?

 

Outside the U.S. practical skills are often not taught in college engineering programs.

I'm far from convinced that they are taught in U.S. engineering programs anymore.

Even in the 80's, I got FAR more practical skills in electronics from the physics labs than from the EE labs, and the EE labs back then were far more in depth than what I am seeing now. Many lab courses that used to be very hands on are now simulation only, because it's far cheaper.

 

If you feel that your ability is not enough, then I suggest you continue to learn from your mentors and take some opportunities, such as competitions or projects.Don't tell your employer what you can't do, you can rely on networking and colleagues to solve problems

 

Well, as we all know, finding a good job requires a college degree. Apart from this, skills are also a valuable asset to secure your job. There are various points that also matter here; those are listed below:
1. Building a portfolio
2. Learning online
3. Networking
4. Continuous learning
5. Skills
6. Internships
Thanks

 

Well, as we all know, finding a good job requires a college degree.

I wish you could have had the opportunity to try to tell that to Jim Williams. There are always exceptions and he was one of them.

Some companies have come to realize that college degrees aren't always required. I believe IBM is one of them.

In my last job, more than 80% of the people in my department had PhD degrees. I didn't have a PhD and the job didn't actually require one... Intelligence, knowledge, experience, and motivation were more important than the degree.

 

Even in the 80's, I got FAR more practical skills in electronics from the physics labs than from the EE labs,

I recall back in the 60's, Siemens were realizing that Industrial electronics was taking off in all areas of manufacturing, the service personnel that normally looked after these systems were falling behind in their ability to look after such equipment.
To this end, they instituted advanced practical hands-on learning centers in order to train existing Technicians-engineers and bring them up to speed.

 

Well, as we all know, finding a good job requires a college degree.

This is a fallacy that is increasingly being recognized and exposed. I know many people that have had very lucrative and successful careers in electronics that have never obtained a bachelor's degree or higher. Some have an associates, but most have military training or some form of tech/votech school training. Several of these are among the best engineers I have ever worked with because of their indepth hands-on experience.

 

Soldering is not actually taught in Universities. I myself learnt it from somebody I knew personally. No employer ever asked me whether I knew how to solder or not. Let me tell you something. I worked as an Engineer at an Electronics R and D firm. At the beginning of my job, I sometimes soldered my own components to the PCBs I designed. And you know what? My boss told me not to waste my time and give those to the technicians.

Be a bit careful about making sweeping statements. Many universities teach soldering to at least some degree, though few (if any) are going to put special emphasis on it. If they do teach it, it is likely to be as one part of one lab course.

As to whether you will do much soldering "in the real world", that entirely depends on the situation. Larger companies are likelier to take the attitude that you describe, where they want work handed off to the lowest-paid position that is supposed to be able to do the job. Smaller companies may not have a technician and, if they do, that person might be overloaded with their primary tasks. Smaller companies are also more likely to have the engineers much more closely involved in all phases of the work and recognize that having the person that designed a board be the person to populate it and test it has an intangible value that goes beyond what they are being paid per hour for the tangible work being performed.

 

I recall back in the 60's, Siemens were realizing that Industrial electronics was taking off in all areas of manufacturing, the service personnel that normally looked after these systems were falling behind in their ability to look after such equipment.
To this end, they instituted advanced practical hands-on learning centers in order to train existing Technicians-engineers and bring them up to speed.

I our case, it was an unintended consequence. In the EE labs, they were able to get some grant money to outfit the labs with reasonably up-to-date equipment. In the physics department, they always had to operate on a shoestring and so we were usually working with equipment that was 30 year old or more and had seen much better days. So we had to spend a fair amount of time getting the equipment to work and then had to finesse measurements to get good data. In the EE labs, if was often sufficient to hook things up like the pretty picture showed and then press "Auto Set" on the scope and read off a number. Very little learning involved. This really showed come Senior Design time -- the EE students typically worked in teams of three to six and very frequently had little to show after a year on projects that should have amounted to little more than a week's worth of work for one person, while the physics senior design projects were all solo efforts and most of them turned out rather impressive results.

 

I can't say much for the "electronics" fields, I can say in general for any sort of technical or specialized work around here you either need a degree, or experience. Many places are happy with an associate's degree... they just want you to have some basic skills and the thought processes that go along with a formal education. I'm sure if you know the right people that can vouch for your skills you may be able to side step those requirements, but that is going to be on a person by person basis. Even though it might not be your plans there is still such a thing as starting at the bottom and working your way up. Do the grunt work, ask questions, be honest with people about your skills, and prove that you want to do something more. It will pay off!!

 

Be a bit careful about making sweeping statements. Many universities teach soldering to at least some degree, though few (if any) are going to put special emphasis on it. If they do teach it, it is likely to be as one part of one lab course.

At the university I retired from soldering was a lab in one of the EE sophomore required courses. The EE department is a research-focused one, so the quantity of practical material—making simulations into actual circuits with all the real world mess and activity—wasn't emphasized.

However, for the same reason the importance coverage that was given was emphasized and the undergraduate lab manager who has a practical, industry background. He does a great job of teaching soldering and prototyping activities, and the capstone project always requires actually building something operational.

There are a few standout institutions where the combination of the self-selecting student population and the focus of the faculty (or at least enough of the faculty to matter) means that practical work is something naturally part of the education you'll receive there.

Three that come to mind, representing three different ways of providing practical skills are:

MIT, where there is plenty of theoretical research going on but also a very large body of practical work, so students have the chance to learn if they choose;

The Colorado School of Mines* (a general engineering school) whose 150+ years of practical engineering and applied science make practical work part of the fabric; and,

Rose-Hullman where practical work is an explicit focus, and where students are likely to graduate into jobs where research is not the emphasis.

*I really love Mines. Their history and practical focus is great stuff.

 

The Colorado School of Mines* (a general engineering school) whose 150+ years of practical engineering and applied science make practical work part of the fabric; and,

*I really love Mines. Their history and practical focus is great stuff.

Me, too. That's where I got my undergrad and masters. Undergrad from the Physics department and masters from the engineering department.

As with all institutions, things change with time. The Mines that I attended in the 1980s is not the same school that I taught at in 2012. In the 80's, it still had a large fraction of faculty that had significant industry experience. That was much less the case in 2012 (and is likely less, today). Still, there are factors, including school culture and traditions as well as the kind of research that companies expect from the school, that continue to give it a more practical, hands-on educational experience compared to the norm.