[CrimpCity]

I studied civil engineering at an ok engineering school however I was lucky to be there in the “golden era” of the department. I caught the very best professors before they retired. They were old school and really pushed us without worrying about the drop out rate. They took cheating and academic rigor very seriously.

After graduation I got a job at a top 10 nationally ranked engineering firm which has a very strong reputation. My coworkers were the top of their class coming from much better engineering schools. Compared to them my education was better as judged by the number of calculation mistakes in my work vs theirs. I also had a better understanding of some core concepts. So comparatively I do not regret my degree given I landed where they did, with fewer student loans and a comparable education but I definitely got lucky.

Overall I would say my studies prepared me very well for certain things like working hard, preserving through difficult problems, learning how to be more analytical etc but it really didn’t prepare me for basic usage of the tools, learning the building code or working professionally with a manager or on a real engineering team as opposed to a team of students working on a BS design project in some engineering class where the professors don’t really grade the final output.

I think your experience is similar to mine. University teaches a “foundation” level of basic understanding and leaves out a lot of the basic professional skills or when they do try to “simulate” real work it is extremely phoned in. At first I did feel some amount of regret that my degree didn’t “fully” prepare me for professional working life but I think that’s just a result of dealing with “gaps” in development since we can’t possibly learn everything in our degree. If I had gotten internships during my undergrad degree then I think I would have probably had a more complete education with less buyers remorse.

As universities become more market as opposed to academic dominated I think this dynamic might invert.

The real regret came when I saw my paycheck and when I heard what software engineers make. I later switched into software and have never looked back.