[Jenn]

In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Jenn" wrote in
message

In article ,
"Arny Krueger" wrote:

"Jenn" wrote in
message
.
com
In article
, "Arny
Krueger" wrote:

"Jenn" wrote in
message

y.
net

You have stated that you are "essentually a degreed EE
with significant post-graduate work." Could you tell
us what that means exactly, and from where is your
post-grad work?

I did my post grad work at the same school that I did
my undergraduate work. How much post grad? 28 of 32
required credits. I was going to school on the GI bill
which means that my wife was working my way through
college. She became pregnant and had to quit work. That
was the end of my college career. I never made it back
to finish up,

A common story from those days, sad to say. Gosh, so
close; like one class away from finishing. Now, I'm
only asking this for professional interest: were those
four credits a thesis, or would it be a regular class
or two?

??


partially because I found from my
co-worker's sad experience, that an advanced degree was
a professional hinderance in the type of engineering I
did.

How's that?

Most managers are older than their employees. The
average level of education has been rising. Therefore it
is likely that newer employees have better educational
credentical than their prospective employers. People
are often uncomfortable hiring or promoting people who
have more education then they have. I found this to be
true in both engineering and Information Technology.
I've ended up managing PhDs because I was the only
manager in the department who was comfortable managing
people with better credentials than I. I have a friend
who has a PhD in engineering who has found himself to
be virtually unemployable because of his excellent and
well-known credentials.

Interesting. It didn't work out that way in higher ed.

Depends which higher ed. Get a PhD in education, and try to get a job in an
average small school in an average small school system, teaching
kindergarten.

Kindergarten generally isn't considered higher ed! ;-)


There's a reason for that, which has pretty well been explained.

Though there was a time in K-12 teaching when we were
told not to get a Masters degree before getting our first
jobs, because some schools might not hire you if you are
more expensive.

Master's Degrees are almost manditory in some school districts.

True, but rare, and not in the past about which I write. And, teacher
shortages are really starting to come to the forefront nationwide.

So, the new
baseline is a MA. The problem comes in when someone is exceptional.

And doctorates are the baseline in higher ed. In the performing arts,
this really became reality about 8 years ago. In 1995, I left teaching
for 4 years to deal with sick family members and my own medical issues.
At that time, it wasn't uncommon for conductors (including myself) with
"just" Masters degrees to get hired at 4-year schools. Now, that's
almost impossible. Just about every job has a doctorate as basic
requirements. Leonard Bernstein coudln't get hired at a University of
California or State University now.