On 11/20/2015 1:22 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
-MIKE- writes:


Reminds me of the tenured professors where I used to work. I called
them "professional students," because many of them never had any actual,
real world, work experience. They went from high school to college, to
grad school, to being a doctoral candidate, to teaching and never did
anything else in their lives. (Think: the professor from "Back To
School" with Rodney Dangerfield.)

That might possibly be true for some social science professor. It is
not even close to true for Engineering professors, most of whom do
as well as teach.

In any case, blanket statement such as you've made regarding 'tenured
professions' are nonsense, as all schools and all professors are not
alike.

Getting your real-world knowledge form a comedy film doesn't help.


I happend to fly model airplanes (he was a team member) with a
professor, who was a phd, a head of the engineering dept, and he had
never worked in the private sector, only for the university. No I won't
mention which Univ. He was good, smart, had to get grants to keep the
program going. He did some neat stuff, but He never worked outside of
the university. He's retired .. He had to have the best of everything,
but did not put the time into practicing. He jumped from thing to
thing, because he never mastered the skills required for any of the
disciplines. He thought it was the equipment that would make it better.
I cared less about the equip, and concentrated on flying, strategy,
and learning the ropes.

I also worked with 2 professors in a finance company. They did work for
the company. Their code sucked, and their designs sucked. They were not
practical.

I also worked in the pharma research area (I'm IT) , where some of the
phd's needed assistants to prevent them from getting lost, or for other
basic reasons.

Yes it does happen. Some of the least educated can be the most
practical, or self sufficient. But there are real smart guys who are
also very down to earth. The problem is there are more that are not well
grounded.


--
Jeff