Quote from morganist:
I think university is a bit of a cheat anyway. You get people who pass a few exams and get a certificate and then expect to earn a lot of money and get positions above employees working for the company for many years. The reality the graduate is rarely better than the employee but there is the assumption they are. I think the university system is a disservice and it is a good thing it is going away.
I was a technician in the Electrical Engineering field. The ten thousand hours rule seems to make the dividing line between talent and no-talent, every ad I see for engineers specifies 5 years experience or more and that is about 10,000 hours... Some just can't do the work after they get the degree. I did a home study course and was always interested in electronics so I could engineer things that lots of degreed people just couldn't. The worst off were the oriental buggers that were engineers because their grandfather decreed they should be. If one is not suited for the work one simply will never excel at it.. I had friends that could not design the simplest of circuits, they just had krammed their way though all their courses and learned nothing... they were the epitome of misery on the job..