Academic Requirements

[Spin Echo]

And in Scandinavia, you don't even think of going for an engineering job without a master's degree.

I don't think that's actually true. For the top positions, you need a Master's degree, but the number of actually unemployed engineers with a Bachelor's degree is fairly small here. Could be it's different in Norway and Sweden, but you will find work with an Bachelor's degree in engineering here.

I wasn't entirely sure what's up with Finland. The Norwegians reworked their education system just a few years ago to get in line with the rest of europe; before then you only had a 5 year masters program. They've now added an option of only doing a 3 years bachelors degree, but from what I've experienced, it's looked down upon. When I had been poking around for work with just my bachelors (from a very good school no less), my contacts told me I pretty much had no hope in finding work unless I went and got a masters.

I think Sweden is similar, though I may have been too hasty to generalise the rest of Scandinavia.

This is also not to be confused with the technical college engineers. I get into nomenclature misunderstandings all the time with Norwegians because they use the term "engineer" where an American would use the term "technician"

[Darth Wong]

Funny piece of trivia: the majority of engineers in my class who went on to a Masters degree got an MBA, not a research specialization. If the majority of engineers wanted to go into research, that would kind of defeat the purpose of engineering as a profession

Really? Back before I realised I wanted to play with magnets as opposed to build and maintain nuclear plants, my advisor recommended to me that I get a masters degree. He said that a bachelors is good for getting a solid foundation but a masters degree is what really makes you marketable. A large percentage of people at my alma mater in the engineering disciplines do stay on to do a masters degree. And in Scandinavia, you don't even think of going for an engineering job without a master's degree.

Mind you, it's been 14 years since I graduated; there has been an overall trend in the education system of pushing the "minimum benchmark for marketability" higher and higher (often by making the value of existing tiers lower and lower). It's entirely possible that by now, so many people are getting masters' degrees that employers look for that. This would explain the rise of these "non-thesis masters' degrees" that I'm hearing about.

Realistically, the amount and type of education you need is not based on any absolute standard, but is relative to other people at the present time and in your present profession. Whatever is the trendy level of education to get at any given moment is whatever you need in order to get employers to look at you.

[Il Saggiatore]

The Norwegians reworked their education system just a few years ago to get in line with the rest of europe; before then you only had a 5 year masters program. They've now added an option of only doing a 3 years bachelors degree, but from what I've experienced, it's looked down upon.

They did the same in Italy.
Thankfully I was getting out of it when they started.

From what I heard, they keep making reforms to fix the problems, but it is not looking good. And it can be very confusing for students.

[Durandal]

Thankfully, in software, graduate degrees seem to be largely irrelevant, even in terms of earning potential. Experience pretty much trumps everything. If you can get an engineering position at a large company like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc., you can move on to way more places and make way more money than someone who's fresh out of a master's program. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that, unless you're in a specialized, 5-year bachelor's plus master's program, a master's degree is a poor investment in the software industry.

[JCady]

And if you're exceptionally good, they'll hire you straight out of college before you even finish your degree. Google's recruiting one of my school buddies and she's only on the first term of her sophomore year!