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RE: Dots: Collect or Connect? -- Or Why America's College System is So Screwed Up
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm working through a PhD program right now, so I've been up close and personal with the American university system and thinking a lot about what my role will be in the coming years. I'd love to keep in touch with you and keep the conversation open about the future of academia.
What are you studying?
Electrical engineering. My research includes a lot of game theory and analyzing the interactions between social systems and engineered systems.
It's interesting ... I view what you're doing as one of those cases where college could be very necessary. You're learning from expert electrical engineers, you're being guided as you specialize in something. So for that, it makes sense.
But I have a degree in history. Did I really need to go to school for that? If you saw my bookshelf, there are more books on it about historical topics than most of my college text books. :)
Right, the need for college is very context-specific. And PhDs in particular need to come from universities, basically by definition.
But I'm guessing you'd be surprised about the need for college in engineering: I'd guess that somewhere around half of all engineering jobs could be taught perfectly well by apprenticeship rather than university. While I was in college, I had an internship with an industrial automation company; we programmed assembly lines and robots and such, and some of the best engineers in the company didn't have a degree. In terms of real-world "this is how you get it done" sorts of things, I learned at least as much from that company as I did from my classes