>Maybe I'm impatient, but why should an employer be concerned with
>interviewing non-degreed people for a degreed position?  There are
>enough applicants these days to find good candidates among those that
>have enough drive to (at the very least) complete the educational
>requirement.  I see a lot of posts that declare over and over the
>virtues of finding that "great guy who taught himself without the need
>for school".  Thats all well and good, but it bugs me that there seems
>to be an expectation that employers should automatically "grandfather
>in" non-degreed people into engineers.  "Engineer" suggests a level of
>formal education, not just technical abilities.  I know it's weird to
>suggest, but those that want to be called an "Engineer" could actually
>pursue a degree in it.  I've done it while working and trying to have a
>family life, so I know it can be done.  Maybe I'm the only one, but it
>bugs me when someone who didn't earn it calls themselves an engineer.
>And, no, I don't have some kind of inflated ego because of a stupid
>degree; it's just that I know how much work went into getting it.

I do get the feeling that you are equating "lack of a degree" with "dropped
out of school". Possibly not, but that is how it does come across to me.
There is room for calling non-degreed people "engineers", and I do consider
myself in this group, having completed a polytechnic course as part of my
apprenticeship, and receiving a certificate to the effect that I have a "New
Zealand Certificate of Engineering". As a person that now has something in
the region of 40 years experience in a wide range of electronic equipment, I
can see no reason to not be called an engineer.

However what I cannot do in NZ is call myself a "Registered Engineer", a
title that requires one to have completed a suitable project that meets the
requirements of an engineering professional body, that then vets the work
done and decides that one is of a suitable calibre to be registered with
them. In the UK this same status is called a "Chartered Engineer", and
appears to be the title that is slowly growing in use world wide for a
person in this position.

I do remember at one stage working in a government laboratory, where one of
the guys who had his PhD quite openly admitted that he relied on some of the
non-degreed technicians to keep him out of trouble, which they could do
because of their practical experience, which he didn't have. This is as much
engineering as anything taught on a degree course. Similarly I got my
present job because I knew practical things that I could demonstrate by
sketching circuits and giving reasons for use of things like balanced lines,
which people straight out of university with a masters degree couldn't do.
These are all just as much engineering as the book learning - if not more
so.

>Yes, but at the end, he lamented not having completed his degree.

Which is why I am doing one now ... but really only because of the
artificial "glass ceiling" against those without degrees - which in reality
has made the "chartered engineer" status the "new degree" that employers use
to sort job applications.

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