I've a friend who teaches electrical engineering at K-State University. He says that a pretty good number of his students are merely trying to get a degree, not actually learn/understand it. The minimum required to pass is all they would know at their peak.
On one hand, you really need to get a basic grasp of the fundamentals of a lot of areas. Even if you forget it, I like to think it's all in there somewhere, and would at least require less time to re-study it.
On the other hand, when you are actually working on a project, or at a job, typically you zoom in on one area of focus. For example, I have a Comp E degree from UIUC, and I had to take analog signal processing. Got a C, and never used it in my professional career.
But subjects that I have used, the course material was such a survey over the problems that it's only the very beginning of what you might need for the work. Therefore much study is required anyway on the job.
Then the practical experience, with test equipment, devices, best practices, isn't even usually taught in college.
I mean, is this surprising? Despite the original purpose of college, today the majority of people only go to college because they want a decent job.
If your best shot of getting a decent job requires you to first get a 40k piece of paper, many people will do this and they will put in the minimum amount of work to get what they want. I mean, it's efficient after all isn't it? Why work more for the same result?
