On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Rafael R. Sevilla wrote:
> Admittedly, the problem with having a postgraduate degree is that it makes
> you lose touch with the real world, and narrowing your knowledge down to a
> certain degree makes it difficult for you to do anything outside of that
> narrow field of expertise. And makes you almost completely useless for
> doing anything other than research in the field of your choice. These MS
> people are clueless for a reason: what you're asking them to do is delve
> outside their narrowly-defined field of expertise, something that
> militates against everything they did in graduate school.
I agree with some of the spirit of this discussion. Formal education is
not a prerequisite to anything for those with the desire and discipline to
learn on their own.
But the above makes no sense to me. Advanced degrees are an addition -
not a subtraction. Studying beyond the bare skimming that one gets in an
undergraduate course doesn't erase any brain cells, honest. The general
knowledge is still there. And most MS and PhD holders can still use it.
What MS and PhD studies provide is the freedom to dig more deeply into
subjects of interest while providing resources - people and facilities,
an environment where sharing of knowledge and information is the norm -
as opposed to the more cut-throat attitudes often found in business, and
legitimacy - since it sounds better to be studying for your PhD than to
be locked in a basement somewhere reading and scribbling in
notebooks.
And while I am self-taught in a couple areas, I think there is a greater
danger of narrowness in self education. We tend to learn only what we
need or want to learn at a given moment - not always seeing how a
seemingly unrelated field can in any way contribute to our interests. So
we end up with engineers who cannot communicate in writing or people who
do amazing technological things, but without any concern for the ethical
implications of their work. Or, we end up hacking away at a software
problem for weeks - only to find out that the problem could be solved
by a rather simple mathematical approximation that we missed in our
self-studies. Sometimes, the strong, guiding hand which is part of the
degree granting programs can be very useful, especially when we are young
and have yet to develop much humility.
So while I agree that advanced degrees are by no means required. And
there *are* too many people with letters after their names but not much
between
the ears. But I fear that you may have missed some of the positive
points of pursuing post-grad studies.
Chaq'un a son gout.
Bob Williams, MSAE (Had to do it this once) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Trillium Technologies Ent.
General Santos City, Philippines
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