Masters in Basketweaving.

Ok, I'm working at a university right now. I get tuition that is close to free. Boss says take a few classes. Union says take a class. I have a BS in Sec ondary education.

So the easiest thing to take is a on-line masters with a short thesis.

In my case the quickest thing that I can complete within the contract is a non-technical masters.

So Employers, does a MA on a resume get your attention? Or would you rathe r see a second, partially completed AS or BS more related to the job?

In this case the MA would be in "Teaching Technology to Post Secondary Lear ners".

My alternative is a two year Electronics or Manufacturing Technology degree on top of the existing BS. It would take a long time to complete, if I can complete it. If I leave the job, it becomes 500$ a credit hour to complet e whatever I start.

The MA is 32 online credit hours plus thesis vs. another 60 hours of classr oom plus labs. I realize that the 60 classroom hours are worth far more. H owever the Masters fits the daily schedule and all I would have to pay is t he taxes on the equivalent value of the classes. The AS or BA is far more expensive.

Suggestions? Comments... Does additional parchment matter besides showing growth and motivation?

Steve

Reply to
sroberts6328
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I started my Masters in my field while working for a defense contractor and was told it would not result in any additional compensation while working as an associate engineer *without* a degree in my field. I would not expect a masters outside your field to produce much in the way of additional compensation over the course of your career.

Why can't you work on a degree higher than an AA in the field you want to work? I think you will find the AA degree will not be much of a boost unless you are working as a technician. A friend of mine was pushed by his mom to complete an AA in Engineering Technology. He then worked part time in a paintball store for a year or so before I got him an interview with the company I worked for. The AA degree was the only reason they considered hiring him with no experience. He has done well and the company is now pushing him to get into management, but he may have go get a BS in something, lol.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

-----^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How has that affected your employment opportunities?

Just to clarify: you have a *contract* at "a university". Presumably, no guarantees that the contract will be extended/renewed beyond its current term. Hence, your desire to finish whatever you start *in* that time frame (lest you have to carry the cost of completion "out of your own pocket")?

For "fresh out of school", it may earn you a second look. Or, if it is somehow related to their business: e.g., business administration being a check-off item (esp if the new employer would consider having you *finish* the program). Likewise, "sports medicine" might have value to a firm that designs products for that application domain.

OTOH, "English Literature" or "World History" may work *against* you (in applying for a technical job).

Would you expect to be hired in a position where that was directly applicable? I.e., help desk, marketing/sales, etc. It's hard to see how that would enhance your perceived value as a "design engineer", etc. Is this just "more of the same" (secondary teaching) in the eyes of employers??

The key phrase, there, is "if I leave the job". If you have a *choice* in the matter (see my initial paragraph), then you could consider the value of staying in the position for another year (?) as being heavily influenced by the value of that "benefit" (below, you suggest it to be O($30K)? or so).

Of course, if you don't have a *choice* in the matter, then that's a different matter.

Also consider that your new employer may or may not opt to provide assistance (or other support -- e.g., permissive working hours) in attaining that goal.

IME, "experience" usually counts for more than the sheepskin. It says you can "do".

Good luck!

Reply to
Don Y

If you're any good at math, I'd suggest taking the math requirements towards an engineering or optics degree, especially differential equations, calculus of complex variables, and Fourier analysis. Those are dead useful to an electrooptics guy.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

How much technology do you have to understand to teach that?

Are you interested in electronics?

We prefer engineers to have a BS degree, but additional degrees don't matter much, unless the person did some thesis that's specifically interesting. An MA is neutral or negative.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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Reply to
John Larkin

Right now I'm the department technician, with both design and repair res ponsibilities. I'm here to complete a year I need for various things to be vested. I have funding that would ensure the summer classes and one full semester, plus one partial semester. That is 1/2 the way to the Masters, with the support of the main office for the on-line classes and partial sup port during the day for the classroom stuff. Many of the tech classes are n ot available evenings, every semester, which is a constraint. . I'm not hou rly, so there is no care when things get done, if the students are properly supported. After all, they can page me if need be.

A Masters credit hour is valued at 450$ per semester plus fees..

If I go the technical college route, I have to take Technical Math II,III a nd IV as pre-requisites before I can take heavy math. These are all 2 cred it hour courses. Which is a bummer as they have to be taken sequentially. U pside is I could whip my way thru the design, computing, and physics course s, taking one concurrently with the math classes. Downside is I would have no life outside of work.

A BS credit hour costs 355$ per semester plus fees.

There is a cost driven hiring freeze, but that can be lifted by a far high er power if I can score a paper, or a patent during my remaining tenure he re. That is not hard, based on past work I have done for the institution. T he publication submission is also inbound in a few months, if the powers th at be will allow disclosure.

There has not been much funding since the 2008 crash for repairs/upgrades/n ew equipment, so I'm quite busy fixing things. I could be here for an addi tional year.

Jeorg, John Larkin, what do you guys think from a employer's point of view?

Steve

Reply to
sroberts6328

One other thing, I'm a self taught LEOT and Instrumentation Technician, wit h 15 years of serious technical work on the resume. I also work with ultra

-fast lasers, which translates to microwave and fast pulse skills in the ci vilian world. I can machine, also.

When getting a job in the degree field didn't work out, I fell back on the lifelong hobby. I do have two years of basic EE before having to switch ma jors, way back when.

I do think the MA would look good on the resume for getting past the HR dep artment at companies where the Engineers do not do the hiring.

Steve

Reply to
sroberts6328

+1. If you're doing technical stuff and you've completed the math part of a technical degree then that will mean something on a resume, at least if it gets into the hands of an engineer.

If you can't do the math, get as much of an MBA as you can, and pay for the rest of it.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Why do you change email addresses each time you post? Do you have chameleon genes from some experiment you were part of where you work?

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

Just as a footnote, I think you will find Larkin's company to be other than your typical employer. Keep in mind that most engineering companies are driven by management with HR rather divorced from the engineering department. The larger the company, the nastier the divorce. The end result is you need the degree and often they want an MS.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 2:53:53 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@nospamnull.com wrot e:

o free.

econdary education.

a non-technical masters.

her see a second, partially completed AS or BS more related to the job?

arners".

ee on top of the existing BS. It would take a long time to complete, if I c an complete it. If I leave the job, it becomes 500$ a credit hour to compl ete whatever I start.

sroom plus labs. I realize that the 60 classroom hours are worth far more. However the Masters fits the daily schedule and all I would have to pay is the taxes on the equivalent value of the classes. The AS or BA is far mor e expensive.

g growth and motivation?

My wife hated most of the "education" courses she took. I'd say don't waste your time doing anything that isn't interesting.

George H. (Time is short after 50. :^)

Reply to
George Herold

It's been about 25 years since I interviewed or hired anyone. That makes me the least qualified person here to have an opinion and offer advice. Still, I manage to get involved in hiring exercises and help interrogate prospective employees and consultants for friends and associates.

25 years ago, I was looking for people that were willing and able to learn new things. I really didn't care what a person knew or even had experience doing. I wanted people that would educate themselves in what was needed and could do so quickly and with little drama.

Today, employers seem to be looking for engineers that have relevent experience in a designated narrow area, can be productive instantly, and can be fired or laid off fairly easily when the project is eventually finished. In other words, a series of fast hired guns with good reputations. Today, job security means starting your own company or consultancy.

All this results in a dilemma. Does one specialize in a specific field at the risk of having technical progress render them obsolete, or do they become a multi-discipline generalist and run the risk of not being employable because of the lack of applicable experience or expertise in specific areas? In your terms, do you get an MS or PHD in some specific field, or do you get experience and an education in multiple disciplines, which I guess means that you're collecting certificates and diplomas for your wall. Not an easy decision.

I don't know which is better for you. Much depends on how you work and whether you can tolerate the rest of your life working in one area. For what it's worth, I chose to be somewhat of a generalist, forgo the diplomas, eschew the certifications, and Learn by Destroying(tm), mostly because I'm easily bored.

It's difficult to ignore the free tuition angle. Reading between your lines, you limit yourself to only two possibilities of what to do with the free tuition, neither of which seems very attractive. Your problem seems to be deciding between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps you might find it useful to shop around for a degree in math, science, engineering, and other useful disciplines, preferably in areas that are of interest.

Also, please cease nym shifting. If you expect to be treated as a professional or future professional, it would be helpful if act like one.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

ng growth and motivation?

An M.Sc. may train you in a specific area - the area will have been defined by the academic who set up the M.Sc. course, so the training will be eithe r out of date or mostly irrelevant and usually both.

A Ph.D. involves getting deep enough into a specific research problem to ge nerate a publishable result. The major constraint on the research area is t hat it is cheap to research, so there's a vanishingly small change that it will be directly relevant to what anybody else is doing for money.

In either case, pretty much everybody who is hiring M.Sc. or Ph.D.'s is loo king for the ability to learn, rather than specific skills. Multi-disciplin ary Ph.D.s ought to be more attractive than people with narrow skill sets, but the one time I plumped for a particular candidate on that basis, everyb ody else went for the amiable Englishman, rather than the flexible Pakistan i.

I wasn't in on the interviews, and Chris would have interviewed well.

If electronics keeps on changing as fast as it has for the past 50 years, g eneralism is a much safer bet.

Good advice.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Just commenting on your headline :-), electronics+basketweaving might interest companies making LF (below 300 kHz) transmitter systems, in which huge (250-1000 m) antennas would be required. This can be avoided by using loading coils, which are often use basketweaving.

Of course LF systems are quite rare, so it doesn't make sense to train for such rare carriers.

Reply to
upsidedown

Hi Steve,

I think your alternatives will lead you down very different future paths. One way to make the choice would be to ask yourself which path you find most attractive. If you're looking at the problem from the strictly utilitarian view of what path yields the most opportunity for future employment, then you may want to consider classes related to software development. There is much need by employers, thus making entry barriers lower (and salaries higher), and you don't need a ton of education to be productive. I've known many software developers that started off with liberal arts degrees, but few in electronics that have taken that path.

Good Luck,

ChesterW

+++ Dr Chester Wildey Founder MRRA Inc. Electronic and Optoelectronic Instruments MRI Motion, fNIRS Brain Scanners, Counterfeit and Covert Marker Detection Fort Worth, Texas, USA
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wildey at mrrainc dot com
Reply to
ChesterW

Huh? Basketweaving isn't only for low frequencies. It's also useful at microwave frequencies: The original design must surely come from a college graduate in basketweaving. Sorry about the lack of a dish feed in the photo. It's still being grown somewhere in the jungle. Also, in another year, the bamboo waveguide should be large enough to work at C band.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
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Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Coding is mostly qualitative, and rarely involves either theory or math. That's why there are billionare software people who are college dropouts and never took a CS course. I've heard that English majors often make good coders.

It's very rare to meet a self-taught, non BSEE, electronics engineer who isn't handicapped by never taking the basic circuits and electromagnetics and control theory and signals-and-sytems courses. Of course, those courses are increasingly electives, so I also meet EE grads who are similarly handicapped.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   laser drivers and controllers 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Not me. I look for a BSEE with intelligence and energy and "electronic instincts", namely a feel for voltage and current and how parts behave. Some "signals and systems" is great, too. Kids can get that as hobbyists, or can pick it up in college if they take the right courses and pay attention.

I expect a young engineer to learn a lot; it's my job to teach them, and then keep them interested enough to stick around.

My latest EE hire is a young girl, BSEE from a Mexican college, with no work experience. But she gets it. She's in the lab trying to get our $50K LeCroy scope to make histograms, which is a serious challenge.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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Reply to
John Larkin

On Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 2:53:53 PM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@nospamnull.com wrot e:

o free.

econdary education.

a non-technical masters.

her see a second, partially completed AS or BS more related to the job?

arners".

ee on top of the existing BS. It would take a long time to complete, if I c an complete it. If I leave the job, it becomes 500$ a credit hour to compl ete whatever I start.

sroom plus labs. I realize that the 60 classroom hours are worth far more. However the Masters fits the daily schedule and all I would have to pay is the taxes on the equivalent value of the classes. The AS or BA is far mor e expensive.

g growth and motivation?

How's that macaroni and peas diet working for you?

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Peas and Macaroni? I'm actually trying to loose weight, from too much Per Diem. :-)

Been averaging 50-54K a year until returning to the U. But the state pension is priceless. Their ROI is amazing.

Steve

Reply to
sroberts6328

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