OT: PhD in Electronic Engineering

If you don't like manufacturing engineering pick something else. Here's a guy who had to fight the license board because of this very issue. He ultimate won but the fact that they initially refused him shows the problem:

Quote "... is petitioning for approval to sit for the Fundamentals of Engineering and Principles and Practice of Engineering Examinations. Mr. Allman holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from General Motors Institute aka GMI, now known as Kettering University. The Department denied Mr. Allman?s application because his degree was not ABET accredited when awarded in 1973. ..."

The guy from Penn State wasn't so lucky, they denied his request to sit for the exam. Sorry, but IMHO this is a bad joke.

Remember, look into the mirror, some of us are older and thus our degrees are from decades ago :-)

I guess Arizona is more fundamental... they count "experience" :-) ...Jim Thompson

OK, I did. There are 28 ABET (EAC) accredited EE programs in California alone. I didn't bother counting them for the whole country.

Sure, you can always find one. Two things: Not everyone has a dad who can afford to put four kids through a fancy university. And then there's a whole lot of older people who got their degree way before ABET. Then there's all the folks who got their degrees overseas.

I do not like it that a few Dollars of my IEEE dues go towards ABET but I guess one has to live with such issues just like with governments, nothing will ever be perfect. Anyhow, industry doesn't care about all this stuff. Heck, nobody ever wanted to even see my degree.

Recently I worked side by side with an engineer with a degree from Monterrey, Mexiko. Ohm's law appears to be the same there and I didn't see any difference in the way we think.

Huh? They're pretty much *all* ABET accredited.

None that are still practicing. ABET started accrediting colleges 75 years ago.

You mean like VIT University in India? ...or University of Karlsruhe, Germany?

They've never looked at my copy of the degree, no. Not even sure where it is. I don't much like ABET (it's a joke) but it's a *lot* better than the government getting involved.

From ITESM, Chihuahua, Campus Estado de Mexico, or Monterrey?

Engineering at CSU Sacramento Computer was accredited in 1989, per yuor link. I got my EE degree in 1986. Am I a geezer now?

At RWTH Aachen University there were always about 10% foreign student including Americans. It was actually encouraged to broaden one's horizon by studying overseas and there are mutual programs between countries. And I wholeheartedly agree with that. Putting an ABET requirement in license laws stabs those people in the back. BTW, this happens to be one of the ivy league universities over there.

But it _is_ getting involved, by using ABET in license laws. I guess if someone really wanted to push the issue they could sue on grounds of age discrimination and win.

Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, and Chihuahua before that.

I meant computer engineering at CSU Sacramento.

CompSci is arguably not engineering.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Did they *have* a CompE degree before then? Note that their EE degree was accredited in '69 and CE and ME programs in '65.

Guess you are a geezer. I note that my alma mater was first accredited in '36, so I'm a spring chicken. ;-) Their CompE program was accredited in '78, but they still gave EE degrees to CompEs, before that.

Kinda like the AMA and the various Bar Associations?

I don't see how it's age discrimination at all. As I said earlier, ABET has been around for 75 years. If you're older than that, I'm sure there is a grand father clause if you got your license before the ABET requirement went into force.

They've got the ABET stamp of approval.

CompSci Comp Engineering

Comp Engineering is essentially electrical engineering with an emphasis on digital and computer architecture. CompSci is where script kiddies go.

there

When I was in Uni, Computer Engineering did not yet exist except as a specialization of EE. Script kiddies didn't exist in the day of the dinosaur IBM/360 and newfangled PDP-10. So, yeah, if one didn't exactly study what was then considered engineering, then it would be somewhat more difficult to be accredited as an engineer (but not impossible). One of the downsides of getting in on the ground floor. Something similar happened in the environmental field in roughly that time period, and the pioneers were inconvenienced a bit.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

AFAIK they did. We had a lot of older SW guys wit local degrees.

Well, in Germany none of the universities other than Karlsruhe is on the list.

Germany?

Not at all. With doctors it's very clear, unlike PE they have always had that woven into their curriculum and followed the path, study, do your residency, and so on. And typically not every state has their little fiefdom and their own little law about it.

is.

As I said, many universities still don't have it (for example mine), others got it very recently. For example, the University of Alaska Anchorage got it for EE in 2007, Boise State in 1999, and so on. Now if you'd call any engineer over 30 a geezer ...

Monterrey? Not for EE as far as I could see, and the rest only in 2006.

too.

I saw it on TV, so it has to be true!

No kidding! I know a ME who is working in a hardware store. :(

Well, the first sign is always being cold. ;-)

They are just unelected politicians, in their small minds. :(

didn't

Worse. Politicans can be fired.

didn't

need a

So can bureaucrats. It just takes a bigger flame. ;-)

there

CompE had just started as a curriculum when I was in school. I could have gotten either degree but CompE wasn't well known, so I stayed pure EE. I figured I could tell prospective employers I had the choice, if they asked. THe only computers I'd ever used were the 360/75 and a PDP-8. Well, there were a couple of analog computers I kept operational. Nice job, since I was the only one outside one of the profs that new how to run them. Nice AC system for those hot summer days, too. ;-)

Like I said earlier, UIUC was accredited for CompE in '78. '74 was the first year they offered the degree (some nonsense that they had to graduate people before they could apply for accreditation). They covered the interim with some, "well, it's really an EE degree" mumbo jumbo.