I'll be honest and say that street smarts aren't going to replace simple academia any time soon, but at the same time don't put too much faith into your studies because even as some my lecs say "your textbook was written by an idiot". Not everything can be done from a perfect perspective, for example, you might be the world's best doctor, but put yourself in the shoes of a Navy Corpsman and treating a man with an RPG stuck in his ass and you'd be shitting more bricks than ever.

My personal aim to do decently in both, instead of excell in one, i believe that practicality is as important as a formal foundation. Most EE students just deal with theory and small scale, i like doing stuff like soldering, arc welding, clamp testing and other field work because i believe it augments my knowledge that i've learned in the class.

No point in finishing your exams with a HD if you can't deal with a 115kV transmission line IRL or have basic common sense. The is neither a point in totally bombing all your test and being unable to understand what a rotating phase is in cartesian. Best of both worlds i figure.

PS: I'm a lousy student, i do everything last minute and i just aim for anything higher than a C+, i believe my time is better spent putting my life on the line by playing with high voltage in lab.

Not everyone wants to be an academic.

Everyone has their reasons for doing things, and academia isn't the achievement in life, like everything else it's just a ticket. What ever it is an achievement should be practical. Wanna do well? Fine, don't need to defend it like you're defending the last of the species.

Alot here make a valid point. My old man graduated with a 3rd from UCL , and he hires first class graduates to do his dirty work, yeah, he pays them well, but at the end of the day, who's making the real money?

Same with my neighbour who runs a firm, they pay their engineers well, but his english and his writing skills leave so much to be desired it numbs my brain. At the end of the day, he's living in that 3 million dorrar house which he paid for in cash.

If you talent is in academics, then fine, but no one owes it to you to recognize your skill. Who cares about my CGPA of 3? Nobody does, especially when it comes to academics, coursework has to be the most banal of achievements if it ever was one in the first place, sitting down and doing research for mankind now that's something, making money for yourself, now that's something and so on.

In retrospect, you have acheived nothing for being able to memorize a few reams worth of material. Academia doesn't entitle one the right to sit in an ivory tower, contribution does.

f*** i ran out of fags.

Although i study stuff EE as for my degree i do believe in extending my studies to include philosophy, both classical and abit of modern.

Academia isn't the drive you see, it's the accumulation of either wealth or power, like i said before it's just a ticket. Capitalism isn't a social class, it's a form of society. There will always be more realms to excell in rather than just studies.

Men just fill up the prerequisites to gaining wealth and power, society's advance has nothing to do with it, after all, it is already defined as capitalist, meaning that the individual's profit is held at the highest regard. It's not an advancing society but a society which is tricked into advancing by the use of pure greed, not egalatarianism.

Let's be practical here, no point in self advancement unless it brings self benefit. Now that's capitalism.

Hardly. Greed is primal, and inventors like it or not have always found a need to cash in on their own discoveries.

Tesla for example sold alot of his patents and ideas to Westinghouse, to gain funding to put in more research in for his other ideas. There's always somewhere along the line when basic economics steps in, it is the foundation of continental belief as we know it. No scientist can be of the upper class if he or she is penniless, it's simple social theory but it's held well enough, and if you can't make money of a great idea, it has no worth. Greed can be non excessive as well, but it is fundemental, we work because we want more money, to live more comfortable and hedonistic lifestyles.

When one says Capitalist, one talks about the idea of a society. When one directs Capitalist on a person/group, you generally mean a select few that generate capital, and no, academics, no matter how well paid, don't generate capital. Gilbert's ideals on american society have a few holes in it, i like the old staples like Hobbes, Hume and the rest better for now since they've held up better.

And remember as with any society the power in it is still held by the mob. Even i have no illusions about that. A society never really progresses, it just changes to suit the times, if academics goes out of style, men will follow.

You still money for things, you still need to capitalize on a market, that's why you call it a capitalism. It's either contributive or it isn't, pure creativity and discover is often shadowed by real world problems. I'm sure in your engineering education you're taught that you're primary duty is a solve a problem, often for economic incentive.

I disagree, they don't generate wealth, they're still paid by a rung of people who have guile. A true capitalist isn't one who receives pay, but one who pays himself, demographics are in some way skewed due to the fact that people a majority of top earners have better academic qualifications, but looking at the trend whereby you see in your own source that PhD holders earn less, there is some sort of trend that says, "hey, it's not only a diminishing return, but there's something else taking the place of pure academia"

At the end of the day it's just individuals who has the galls to do things others don't and the ability to sell themselves, not to mention a competence in what they do. An engineer is an engineer for life, he just becomes a better engineer as he goes along, still seeking the pay of others, but add that engineering knowledge with business sense and pratical interpersonal ability and you have a winning combination.

Shockley for example was a fine engineer with 0 business sense and 0 ability to deal with people and look what happened to his ass.