Job posting

Once upon a time, a long time ago, at SLAC, there was this Physics PHD that literally did not know what an oscilloscope looked like, the difference between a capacitor and a variac, was appalled to discover that TEST EQUIPMENT was necessary as a part of any physics experiment. After he "learned" about the PHAs, coincidence detectors, etc he proceeded to destroy a few hundred thousand dollars worth of electronics.

Bottom line, numerous schools teach theory ONLY and give worthless PHDs; NO PRACTICE - not even a hint.

That was my first thought.

Mu version of that story goes back to about 1985. We were designing some co mplicated digital signal processing, and it looked as if we'd be struggling to get it fast enough in TTL/CMOS.

I said something about doing it in ECL and one of the guys said the places where he'd seen that done had always run into trouble getting the ECL worki ng.

I said that "that was odd - it had always worked for me". And he said "but you are basically an analog guy - you are used to coping with messy extra c onstraints".

And it was true. I'd found myself trouble-shooting baulky digital circuits by checking whether the various bits met the set-up and hold time constrain ts of subsequent bits - they often didn't. That happened again in 1992, in a completely different job. I ended up having to replace a 22V10 with the p in-compatible ICY 7024 (which had extra, buried cells) in order to get enou gh elbow room to make the original design work.

I've had to teach a theoretician how to hammer a nail into a 2x4 without bending it. But some of them are great--I used to work with one of the gurus of quantum computing theory, and he was a thoroughly practical character.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

...Jim Thompson

Well I can't speak about EE's, but I'm almost on the front lines of "practi cal" physics education. And there are plenty of Physics Prof's out there w ho do care about the more practical aspects of their craft, and are trying hard to pass that knowledge on to their students.

And of course there are only so many hours in a day. Sure programming in l abview and running a spectrum analyzer may help in their future careers, bu t there is none of that on their qualifying exams. And they *will* have to know about adding angular momentum and Clebsch Gordan coefficients. (whic h still cause my eyes to glaze over.)

George H.

It's on the left and sez "Power" on it :-)

Sometimes it can be weird. On my 7704 it is in the same spot but has to be grabbed and pulled. They made it easy for newbies though by writing "Power (Pull)" above it.

And that's where the problem is. In my days it was not important what was on the exam or not. If it is for the new kids then the exams need to change.

Unfortunately there are still professors out there who believe that it is not the job of universities to teach what the industry needs in candidates. Well, there news for them: It is!

Well if they don't pass the qualifying exam then they are out the door... n o degree. (This is for Master's and PhD's)

Sure but the student's do care, and so do the Deans. They all want the stu dents to get jobs! I was at the University of Albany nanofabrication facil ity a few weeks ago. IBM and Semtec and maybe some other firms are right o n campus. The students do projects with the companies and then most of the m move right into a job. According to the professor I was meeting with the students are banging down the doors to get in.

So my take is that it's changing. If school X has 90% of it's students get ting jobs and school Y is only 50%, then the students will choose school X.

George H.

George was talking about quals, not normal course exams. Your average beginning EE grad student is a Schroedinger's cat: a quantum superposition of a Master's and a Ph.D program, and quals are what opens the box. In EE the quals tend to be tougher, because the BSEE is the basic professional qualification, and an MSEE is better. In physics, a Ph.D. is the basic professional qualification, and a B.Sc. or master's degree generally gets you a job teaching high school.

Yup.

Cheers

Phil "Mainly classical" Hobbs

There is hardly any experimental science left that doesn't involve a lot of electronics. A couple of courses along the lines of AoE should be mandatory for any science education.

Sorry just sticking this on the end of the thread... going through my email s I had this from a professor.. which is typical of small schools these day s. Everyone is fighting to get grants.

Quote follows, George H.

"As a faculty myself, I am just as guilty of ignoring our teaching for rese arch. In fact, we are stressed out by the research and funding activities, which are increasingly difficult and sporadic in recent years (what is new? ). I am working on some proposals currently and won't have much time to tak e care the instrument. If the instructions are clear, would you send them t o me? "

Older one. The power switch was a bat-handled toggle switch.

Hey, it didn't say "read" in the job description. ;-)

:-)

No kidding: When I was in the army there were trends to migrate calibration instructions and the like from text to pictorials. Because lots of folks could not properly comprehend written text. Which made me wonder how they ever passed the written test for the driver's license.

Maybe that's how it should be for people with next to nothing in real hands-on skills.

That's how it should be. Unfortunately I have seen way to many opposite examples. For example, where people had become hotshot LabView programmers but didn't have the foggiest about any of the interface stuff.

That would be excellent. I liove competition becasue that fixes many problems, most of all complacency.

Because our high schools and other schools fail to ascertain the qualifications? I did not have to go through any qualification exam but simply signed on. Non-performers flew out latest after the fourth semester, most after the second. Some resigned after just a few weeks and typically switched to some liberal arts path with lower hurdles.

I would prefer that our high schools make sure kids know their math, physics, English and so on when they graduate. But in many "liberal" regions that would not be PC.

One reason I would never study physics :-)

It is similar in chemistry. If you don't have a Ph.D. you may not have a real career. Not my kind of turf. I was offered a Ph.D. position at the Institute of Measurement Technology of my university after I got my MSEE but politely declined and instead hightailed it into industry right away.

If they stopped nonsense such as paying for positions such as "communications chief" $260,000 per year that would not be necessary. This is not a joke but is actually what UC Davis pays. Ridiculous and sad, IMHO.

No, because people take quals after the first year of grad school.

No argument there.

When I graduated, back in 1987, I wanted to be a professor, but I was always quite clear that I didn't ever want to be an _assistant_ professor. So I went to IBM Research, hoping to be there about 5 or 6 years, publish a bunch of papers, and slide into a tenured position that way. (Used to be quite possible, back when US industrial labs still had their health.)

Then the Berlin Wall came down, and the DARPA/NRL/USAF gravy train came to a screeching halt, so I stayed where I was. Given how miserable it is being a prof these days, I'm pretty happy about that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

AoE was written for Paul Horowitz's electronics for physicists course at Harvard.

It's used as the course text at Cambridge, UK too. Both of these institutions get to select the brightest students. AoE is a bit too much like hard work for institutions that are catering for the rejects from Harvard and the Cambridge colleges.

A B.Sc or a Master's degree in Chemistry would have got me a job in the che mical industry, while my Ph.D, got me a job in the electronics industry, wo rking on unconventional high speed printers.

The crucial part of my job interview went "Tell us how a Xerox copier works ". I did know, and could tell them, and they liked my answer. My future bos s said "Good. You've got the job", though it took them a week to get the fo rmal job offer into the post, which was awkward, because by that time I'd f inally accepted another job (at the BHP steel mills in Newcastle, a long wa y away, for one year, which I didn't really want, and backed out of - by te legram - as soon at the other offer came through).

My father - who only had a B.Sc. in Chemistry - was happy to hire Ph.D.s. T hey knew nothing about the paper industry, just like every other graduate h e could hire, but he didn't have to spend as much time getting them started on solving the problems he wanted solved. He just had to point them at the laboratory library (which was substantial) and they'd read up on the stuff they needed to know. B.Sc.'s needed to be pointed at the right books and a rticles, and he had to make sure that they were comprehending what they wer e reading ...