>>Another course I had in 4th year required that the final multi-week
>>lab assignment was soldered together, I thought that was a good idea.
>>An EE should at least have some familiarity with how to solder.
>
>More than once, I suggested the "final question" to a job candidate
>was to toss them a hot soldering iron, and see which end they grab :-)

<VBG>.

In the latter years of working for the company I did my apprenticeship with, 
I worked with the guy who got the task of sorting the prospective intake for 
new apprenticeships. He got to a point where he gave them two tests as well 
as an interview. One test was a basic electronics test - draw a crystal set, 
identify component symbols, etc, to see if they had at least played with 
electronics in any way as a hobby, and the other test was a basic secondary 
school level maths test, as it became evident that the level of maths 
learning they were attaining was pretty horrible.

When I interviewed for my current position, there were two or three 
technical people (well all minimum degree based, some with doctorates) on 
the interview panel (as well as a couple of HR people), and I beat off 
people with masters degrees - because I had the experience to answer the 
technical questions, like sketch an analogue amplifier built around an IC 
amplifier block, when and why do you use twisted pair wiring, if you feed a 
pulse into a coax that is open circuit at the other end, what signal do you 
see at the driving end, all basic questions which required answers learnt 
early in my career, some through experience, some from book learning. But 
the fresh from university applicants didn't have the experience backing to 
answer these in a manner that was convincing to the panel.

And my feeling is this is where solarwind will find the going tough, he will 
come out of university with a heap of book learning, and come crashing down 
from a great height as he comes up against this requirement for experience. 

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