Upside-Down Degrees Connect Skills Acquisition and Education--Milstein Symposium

The University of Wisconsin is working with local technical colleges to be able to transfer credits. Even though these are general educational credits, I believe it helps defer/reduce college costs to obtain ones bachelor's degree. It's also very convenient.

I don't believe that all courses should be transferable, there is nothing that compares to the resources of a high quality classroom experience. As much as this sounds, I do not intend to put down local technical colleges quality.....

The 'Upside down' degrees can help to fulfill some of the 'fundamental' coursework, but the more advanced courses, which also tend to introduce the students to the 'cutting edge' tech that is just starting to enter the plants, should be done at the colleges and trade schools.

--semi-off topic rambling below this line--

I'm reminded of when I got my BSEET degree, the Physics II course felt a bit strange, as that course covers basic electrical theory for about half of it, and we already knew all that fro the first year curse Electronics Fundamentals. I did mean some interesting tidbits, such as a capacitor with stacked dielectrics is treated as two capacitors in series in the bath, and that a capacitor with two different dielectrics side by side is treated like two capacitors in parallel. But who makes 'mixed up' capacitors like that anyway?

I agree on this whole heartedly, structured classroom and I believe I made a reference to it in my post........

such as new technology or structured problem solving.

But I do have to make exceptions, and that is applications........

I'll share an experience what I had 20 + tears ago, but is still relevant . ^{note experience is in bold letters}. I used to program CNC equipment. And I was using CNC programming software. And was getting really into it.... writing posts, macros and such to automate the software (it was called SmartCAM and now I believe is defunct) ...... a night course was offered at a local Technical college The link in my post above........

I went and before the class was over, I had corrected the instructor on some applications. The instructor had no practical experience on the software He later told me that I was not going to gain anything on the class...... At first I apologize for correcting him....... but what he said was my ability was far more advanced than the class coursework......

Along with this, there were also problems with having a well understood usage and application of the software, and that you use the software at an efficiency that is well above what it was intended for...... the problem with this, is an upgrade or a newer release of the software can wipe that out......... as what was told to me by the distributor of the software. Which was very surprise on how I was applying it.

I like to add that NWTC (Northeast Wisconsin Technical College), prior to becoming a college in the 80's, It was known as NWTI (Northeast Wisconsin Technical Institute).

When it acquired the college designation, it had to follow a tight structured curriculum. As opposed when it was a institute. As an institute, the school could shaped it's curriculum more area the surrounding industry's...... it was a very valuable school....... and it still is, being ranked very high compared with the rest of the (2) year tech colleges in the States.

If you accumulate enough credits while in military service you can get a degree through DANTES.

You accumulate college credit with each promotion and advancement test you take and things like CLEP and ACT tests are free and any trade school counts as credits.

However, credits accumulated in this manner are used towards elective credits at a college or university.

I have 37 college credits from military service and I didn't use them towards my bachelors.

If you've had instructor duty while in the military, that counts towards a teaching credential.

Most have that to a certain degree....... plus some colleges credit you with what is called life experiences (applied to general education courses, of which is the transferable Tech colleges credits that are transferable) ........... but anything else, I see that it is more likely can be applied to a liberal arts degree.

These are all great comments. Thanks.

Milo

I was lucky to be able to attend Pratt Institute back in the 50's. Their curriculum's for a bachelor's degree included a lot of "hands-on" courses, like labs, foundry, material testing, machine shop, pattern making, etc. It gave the student an understanding of the manufacturing processes. I don't know if they still operate that way. All of this was before CNC or NC machines. Strong emphasis was given to manual machines. Even in the ME curriculum, there were electrical and chemical labs that were taken. You got a good across-the-board understanding of the then current technology.