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From: siegman@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Anthony E. Siegman)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,soc.college
Subject: Re: Hey, any schools that give credit for experience in the bay area?
Message-ID: <12@sierra.stanford.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 88 05:25:59 GMT
References: <6048@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <9731@pur-ee.UUCP>
Reply-To: siegman@sierra.UUCP (Anthony E. Siegman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 28

With regard to getting degree credit for 10 years programming experience:

Why don't you call up "The Woz" (Wozniak), who went back to Berkeley
and got his bachelor's degree AFTER founding Apple Computer?

Seriously...he's reputed to be a kind of unusual guy; might be hard to
establish contact with him; but you might get through to him by some
message that says, "Hey, I'm a guy who's been out in the real world, and
want to go back to school like you did, and could you give me any
advice?".

I can't give you much useful advice myself, except to say that there
really is a difference between the kind of formal education we professors
try to give in college, and real world experience, and they're both
valuable and both involve learning and both are important -- but
they're different, and 10 years programming experience is something
different from an genuine engineering education.  I'm not "prejudiced"
against the real accomplishment of 10 years programming experience, but
I'm not going to accept it as the same as an engineering degree; and I
think you need perhaps to drop some prejudice in the reverse direction.

As a final thought, the real villain in this might seem to be, not the
stuffy schools who won't accept your real world experience, nor you, who
tackled the real world -- but the dumb company that seems to be demanding
an irrelevant credential, instead of looking at your real performance
...???

--Tony Siegman (Prof. EE, Stanford)