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That's what they told us back in merchant marine school when they were talking the honor code. Do you want to be on the ship where you know your classmate cheated in navigation?
The problem is that many business that rely on technical disciplines place a high value on what I described earlier as charisma so as to place that over integrity in the conduct of their business. It's gotten so bad that people who previously refused to remain working for an employer once they see the employer's innate lack of integrity no longer have the luxury to make such choices - in many industries, there are simply too few employers that place integrity over the bottom line.
If your friend was actually doing engineering, cheating wouldn't help.
I do technical interviews for my company. In fact, they've scheduled me to do one on Monday. I ask a series of technical questions for which there is only one answer. I can tell quickly if the candidate knows his stuff. I've flunked quite a few from big Universities and I always wondered how the heck they got that degree.
It sounds to me like your friend must be a master of BS. Those guys usually end up in marketing and flying all over the world selling the stuff.
Personally, I prefer to design and build the stuff.
This. The first time he is tasked with any real engineering problem, he'd be dead in the water. You can't look up RF design, for example, on the internet, and expect to understand what's going on unless you have some background. Same with optical design. Same with mechanical design of parts where materials knowledge is necessary. Same with...(insert a real engineering task here, no matter what the field).
Things sure have changed. We had programmable HP calculators in my day, but the instructor made us remove any 'plug-ins' like the 'HP engineering pack' before any tests. And we had to remove batteries, and the expansion packs in front of him. There was no internet. No smart phones; only smart people. Cheating would have been impossible in a 5-hour mid-term.
the few ee's and me's i know dont have their p.e. and they work at large corporations designing helicoptor parts, ic's and avionics for several years.
I agree. I never got a PE, and worked for 40 years without it. I worked at the forefront of a lot of different technologies, such as hardware (FPGA) based genetic algorithms for AI research, and many years in x-ray camera design back when there were few direct-capture materials, like amorphous selenium detectors, readily available. Had to do it the old fashion way with brains, TDI detectors, and Cesium Iodide scintillators.
Getting a PE would have been impressive (the tests are difficult), but I am not sure one would have helped me career-wise.
I have a friend who cheated his way through his engineering degree. Now has high powered job flying around the world.
I know everyone is like, get a STEM degree job opportunities are better. Perhaps in some cases. Engineering is a notoriously hard degree, and lot of people don't even try because they're not sure they can do it. But those that do try and end up over their heads and cheating their way through, how common is this? I suspect it's actually quite common.
Do you know anyone who cheated their way through engineering school and is now, ahem, an engineer?
At some point you have to show you can do the job. Obviously, he can.
He will probably fail his PE exam, should he take it. Maybe that's why many engineers never sit for the PE. They know they'll fail.
i dont know of any ee's or me's that took the p.e in the last 20 years. its unnecessary, employers dont ask for it. maybe ce's would need it since building/bridge collapses would have devastating effects.
i dont know of any ee's or me's that took the p.e in the last 20 years. its unnecessary, employers dont ask for it. maybe ce's would need it since building/bridge collapses would have devastating effects.
That's what I've noticed as well. Very few engineering job postings ask for it, and the ones that do are typically Civil Engineering. For most of us (I'm Mechanical), it usually isn't worth the time/money. It would be nice to have of course, but experience is a far more important qualification.
I have a friend who cheated his way through his engineering degree. Now has high powered job flying around the world.
I know everyone is like, get a STEM degree job opportunities are better. Perhaps in some cases. Engineering is a notoriously hard degree, and lot of people don't even try because they're not sure they can do it. But those that do try and end up over their heads and cheating their way through, how common is this? I suspect it's actually quite common.
Do you know anyone who cheated their way through engineering school and is now, ahem, an engineer?
Most people, even those in STEM fields, use at most 1/3 of what they learned in school at their jobs. I really doubt there are more than a handful of engineers out there who are solving partial differential equations at work.
Most people, even those in STEM fields, use at most 1/3 of what they learned in school at their jobs. I really doubt there are more than a handful of engineers out there who are solving partial differential equations at work.
Not only that, but the persons who make the most $ are typically in management and spend much less time dealing with design and technical. And OP was clearly making the correlation between having an engineering degree and making a lot of $.
Structural engineering is the discipline in my opinion that takes the most you use from school.
I do think you could learn to do structural engineering from scratch on the job, it would just take quite a while and most companies wouldn't be willing to do it because it'd be too much of a $ sink.
What you say is true, but the bottom line is that software engineers aren't licensed and that is where many professionals have problems when they refer to themselves as "engineers".
UPDATE: I just went on the IEEE website and see that there actually IS a software engineering exam that is administered by the IEEE body. But you should have a SE degree in order to sit for it. Nevertheless, it is optional and many employers don't care about their SEs passing it. They said that perhaps in the future employers will require it. I am not holding my breath. Apparently the SE text that I was referring to was not up to date in this regard.
I've never totally understood why some have problems when they would refer to themselves as engineers, simply based on a professional certification, when that certification has a relatively narrow utility. How many employers require it of a CE or EE that went to Purdue or Stanford or GA Tech?
I wonder what percentage of BSMEs, BSEEs, BSChE's sit for that exam? The only two engineers that I know have done it are structural and civil engineers...And that makes a lot of sense that they'd have to pass the test, because the stakes of screwing up a bridge are a bit different than that of an engine or a pump or something else.
RE the cheating...I'm sure there are some that manage to pull it off, but it isn't exactly like cheating on your multiple choice History test. If its anything like my (limited) college math classes, even with an open book, open note test, there is a fair amount of practical understanding as to how, when and where to apply the formulas to pass.
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