Aviation Universities

Maurus said:
Again. You are talking about something you do not know. Have you taken any aviation degree classes that weren't meant to coincide with the flight portion? They get quite a bit more technical than the suck, squeeze, bang, blow portion of jet engines and such.
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I'm quite aware of that, it rolls right into "useless". Personally, I love to learn, about anything. I'm also logical almost to the point of a Vulcan. I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on classes that don't further my goals. Enlighten me, let's use a turbine engine class as an example. Tell me something that's they teach you in it that's "quite a bit" more technical than suck squeeze bang blow. You don't need to spout a thesis, just summarize the topic.

Maurus said:
You are right that aviation degree people love the stuff. Maybe, GASP, that is why they want the degree! They want to know more and actually enjoy what they are learning in college rather than pushing a stick up there butt for 4-5 years in a doing a degree they wont necessarily enjoy.
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So pick one you enjoy! If aviation is the only joy in your life, well, I pity you. And yes, go ahead and do your aviation degree in that case. College is less about learning your profession and more about gaining life skills.


Maurus said:
If you think you can just walk into a Major and just grab a job when this hiring wave starts with no competition you will be kidding yourself. As you know seniority is everything. I'm doing my best to make sure I get in as close to the beginning of the hiring wave as I can. That is where the competition will exist. I'm not going to settle with knowing that I will eventually be hired at a major in the next ten years.
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Direct quote from a United pilot in response to "what will they be looking for," "a pulse."

A degree checks a box. That's it. If you have an aviation degree and 3000 hours while the other guy has a medieval French literature degree and 5000 hours, he's getting it. Experience goes much farther than a piece of paper.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus that ate your iPhone.
 
I would avoid an aviation degree. I would choose a school you want to go to and another degree program that interests you, you can do that and get all of your licenses and ratings at a local flight school for the same money.
 
Maurus said:
They want to know more and actually enjoy what they are learning in college rather than pushing a stick up there butt for 4-5 years in a doing a degree they wont necessarily enjoy.
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I suppose they will at least have cover letters lacking errors in grammar.


Maurus said:
If you think you can just walk into a Major and just grab a job when this hiring wave starts with no competition you will be kidding yourself. As you know seniority is everything.
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Seniority may be everything to some people, but not to everyone. Seniority means very little when the company goes bankrupt. Seniority means nothing if you tire of flying, and want to do something else. Seniority means little if you lose your medical. It also doesn't mean much if your career ends up being part 91/135.

Being number one on a seniority list means but one thing - your career is nearing the end and you won't be there much longer.
 
Ralgha said:
I'm quite aware of that, it rolls right into "useless". Personally, I love to learn, about anything. I'm also logical almost to the point of a Vulcan. I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on classes that don't further my goals. Enlighten me, let's use a turbine engine class as an example. Tell me something that's they teach you in it that's "quite a bit" more technical than suck squeeze bang blow. You don't need to spout a thesis, just summarize the topic.
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Goes well beyond what you would typically learn in ground school at a training event. I never did say a pilot would need to know this advanced stuff, but it has helped me to easily understand the systems of all the aircraft I have flown. Knowing the "whys" are a great thing.

Clearly an engineering degree doesn't further your goals. You can do what you are doing right now with no college degree and save the $50,000+ it would take to get a degree. You contradict yourself. Even the legacies have been dropping their college requirements. Unless you use the degree in a second job it is only gathering dust and becoming more and more worthless each year as tech advances and more recently experienced people continue to flood the job markets.

Ralgha said:
So pick one you enjoy! If aviation is the only joy in your life, well, I pity you. And yes, go ahead and do your aviation degree in that case. College is less about learning your profession and more about gaining life skills.
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I did pick something I enjoyed. Is it all I enjoy? No. Is it the most applicable to my career choice? Yes. Will the other stuff I enjoy actually work after 5 years of piloting? Hell no! Disuse kills most degrees. Can you see yourself going into your degree's field without pretty much studying everything again now that you have been working in aviation for several years? Unless you actually participated in the field your degree is used in as a second job I am willing to bet a college grad would be a better choice than someone who is a 8-10 year SkyWest Captain with no experience outside of college 10 years ago.

Ralgha said:
Direct quote from a United pilot in response to "what will they be looking for," "a pulse."

A degree checks a box. That's it. If you have an aviation degree and 3000 hours while the other guy has a medieval French literature degree and 5000 hours, he's getting it. Experience goes much farther than a piece of paper.
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Unfortunately hiring (at least the interview portion) is ran by HR and their computers these days. You likely wont see a pilot until the face to face portion of the interviews. At that point it will be how well you can sell yourself. In the end before you get the interview you are just a number based on what HR plops into the computer as being important.

My point in the end is that backup degrees are useless if you don't use them. So why should people be discouraged from getting an aviation degree? After several years of flying all the degrees will just widdle down to the 4-year college checkbox in worth. If I were to interview applicants I wouldn't touch anyone that hadn't been involved in the industry for years. Not worth the risk when in the worst case I would have fresh and updated college grads to grab up.
 
My general feeling is that if Aviation is the only thing you love enough to study, you have some serious personality deficits. I agree, btw, that a "backup degree" is often worth very little as a backup career, but, my God, we're lucky enough to be in an industry in which having a degree is enough, thereby permitting us to study any other thing that interests us, and people wilfully choose to study Aviation Appliances? I mean, FFS, you're going to spend the rest of your working life operating them, is that not enough?

I mean, at least go get an A&P...that opens up some interesting career possibilities and there you REALLY learn something about aircraft...
 
drunkenbeagle said:
I suppose they will at least have cover letters lacking errors in grammar.
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internet wars were grammarz becom and argument wen you dont gots one.

Good thing I wasn't an English major. I suck at English along with a vast majority most of Merica. I'm typing fast and these errors will happen.

drunkenbeagle said:
Seniority may be everything to some people, but not to everyone. Seniority means very little when the company goes bankrupt. Seniority means nothing if you tire of flying, and want to do something else. Seniority means little if you lose your medical. It also doesn't mean much if your career ends up being part 91/135.

Being number one on a seniority list means but one thing - your career is nearing the end and you won't be there much longer.
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No matter what there is more security in having more seniority. I understand jobs can be lost, but a backup degree is worthless over time unless you find a way to use it while working the airlines. The longer you are gone the more worthless your degree becomes. Tons of degrees are getting to be specialized in nature. If you forget everything via disuse you are screwed when you lose your medical or job after several years of working outside of the degree's field. You have essentially downgraded that "backup" degree to a 4 year check box. That means it is equal to an aviation degree at that point.

It is not logical to hire someone 5+ years after they graduate who has not been involved in the industry.
 
Maurus said:
That means it is equal to an aviation degree at that point.
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See, that's where we differ. I don't harbor any illusions about my BA in Philosophy and the History of Math and Science (minor in Mathematics) getting me a yob if the ole ticker gives out or any of the other million things that can end a pilot career occur. But faced with the choice of giving up my education or giving up airplanes, there would be a zero point zero millisecond pause before I sent the aviation appliances packing. You and I are more than what we do to support ourselves. One hopes.
 
Boris Badenov said:
My general feeling is that if Aviation is the only thing you love enough to study, you have some serious personality deficits. I agree, btw, that a "backup degree" is often worth very little as a backup career, but, my God, we're lucky enough to be in an industry in which having a degree is enough, thereby permitting us to study any other thing that interests us, and people wilfully choose to study Aviation Appliances? I mean, FFS, you're going to spend the rest of your working life operating them, is that not enough?

I mean, at least go get an A&P...that opens up some interesting career possibilities and there you REALLY learn something about aircraft...
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Not much to argue here. There are tons of things I enjoy where I don't want to get as technical as a degree. I enjoy using and working on PCs, but I can't stand programming them. A Computer Science degree is mostly computer programming with some hardware stuff tossed in. Just not worth my time.

I have no problem with people going and getting something else they are interested in, but telling someone to go and get a degree they likely do not want for reasons that don't exist is going over the top. Bringing up the fact that they have the liberty to study something else is viable, but the whole back-up degree thing really isn't a great argument and could put someone in a position they really don't want to be in.
 
Boris Badenov said:
See, that's where we differ. I don't harbor any illusions about my BA in Philosophy and the History of Math and Science (minor in Mathematics) getting me a yob if the ole ticker gives out or any of the other million things that can end a pilot career occur. But faced with the choice of giving up my education or giving up airplanes, there would be a zero point zero millisecond pause before I sent the aviation appliances packing. You and I are more than what we do to support ourselves. One hopes.
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I don't think we differ that much. The problem is the vehicle of the "backup career" that is being used to express a reason to not get an aviation degree.

Education in general is a good thing and I can understand where you are coming from. I think you are hitting from a 90 degree angle for the argument at hand.
 
I tend to agree that we mostly agree. And I certainly didn't intend to be insulting. I suppose I would phrase it this way: "There's nothing inherently wrong with a 'pro pilot' degree, it's just that there seems to be so much right with studying something (anything) else from the standpoint of personal development and improvement that I have a hard time figuring out why, when everything else is basically equal (which it seems to be, from what I've seen), anyone would waste the opportunity to study something which genuinely interests them rather than planes, planes, planes, more planes, and planes." On that, I suspect that we'll just have to agree to disagree. But again, I don't think people who have pro-pilot degrees are necessarily morons. Except Dough, obviously, but that pretty much goes without saying, doesn't it? ;)
 
Boris Badenov said:
I tend to agree that we mostly agree. And I certainly didn't intend to be insulting. I suppose I would phrase it this way: "There's nothing inherently wrong with a 'pro pilot' degree, it's just that there seems to be so much right with studying something (anything) else from the standpoint of personal development and improvement that I have a hard time figuring out why, when everything else is basically equal (which it seems to be, from what I've seen), anyone would waste the opportunity to study something which genuinely interests them rather than planes, planes, planes, more planes, and planes." On that, I suspect that we'll just have to agree to disagree. But again, I don't think people who have pro-pilot degrees are necessarily morons. Except Dough, obviously, but that pretty much goes without saying, doesn't it? ;)
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I can roll with this.
 
Maurus said:
No matter what there is more security in having more seniority. I understand jobs can be lost, but a backup degree is worthless over time unless you find a way to use it while working the airlines. The longer you are gone the more worthless your degree becomes. Tons of degrees are getting to be specialized in nature.
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You know how much an Electrical Engineering curriculum (my major) has changed in the last 40 years? It really hasn't at all. Manufacturing techniques have advanced, but the laws of physics EE's work with are exactly the same as they were in 1970.

There is specialization in every field of study, to be sure. I can't think of a career that involves doing undergraduate level problems repeatedly. The value of the education is in learning self-study skills, the basic building blocks, and a broad survey of the field.

Extending the same logic to an aviation degree - after a five year furlough is it worthless?

Maurus said:
If you forget everything via disuse you are screwed when you lose your medical or job after several years of working outside of the degree's field. You have essentially downgraded that "backup" degree to a 4 year check box. That means it is equal to an aviation degree at that point.
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There is no reason that you can not work part-time in many fields. In mine, there is no shortage of contract work. It tends to pay very well. To be honest, the only way I could see myself flying for a living is if it permitted me the ability to work on the side as well.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
You know how much an Electrical Engineering curriculum (my major) has changed in the last 40 years? It really hasn't at all. Manufacturing techniques have advanced, but the laws of physics EE's work with are exactly the same as they were in 1970.

There is specialization in every field of study, to be sure. I can't think of a career that involves doing undergraduate level problems repeatedly. The value of the education is in learning self-study skills, the basic building blocks, and a broad survey of the field.

Extending the same logic to an aviation degree - after a five year furlough is it worthless?
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I understand not every degree changes, but do you think you could find a job doing what you do now if you went off for 5 years to a completely different job without looking back? Maybe you could because of the experience you built up, but what about a longer stint? How about if you were a college grad when you branched off and got no actual experience in the field?

The college grad example is the most likely case for someone asking for advice on college.

drunkenbeagle said:
There is no reason that you can not work part-time in many fields. In mine, there is no shortage of contract work. It tends to pay very well. To be honest, the only way I could see myself flying for a living is if it permitted me the ability to work on the side as well.
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This is what I have been saying. Unless you are willing to work a second job within the degree's field you are pretty much screwed on using the degree as a "backup".

People are being dishonest when saying the degree would be a "backup" without stipulating the fact that they would need to work a second job so they don't lose what they learned to disuse.
 
Ralgha said:
You're not grasping the point. People that do aviation degrees, by and large, are obsessed with the subject. They've already been eating up everything they can find about it. Combine that with subject matter that simply isn't difficult (this is a turbine engine, I could explain the whole thing to you in 30 minutes, but we're going to spread it over a whole semester), and there's no need to study, not seriously anyway. Good study habits come from necessity, because of the nature of aviation, that necessity isn't there.

Most other subjects are not the same, be it engineering, business, science, arts, whatever. The prior knowledge isn't there that most aviation students have, and the breadth of study is huge.

There won't be any competition for airline jobs. They will need so many pilots that all you'll need to know is your name.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus that ate your iPhone.
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I'm currently a majoring in Aviation Administration in Farmingdale. I like the courses that I take, but I'm going to have to disagree with you that aviation degrees are not very difficult to obtain. My Safety Ethics course I took last semester had me do a group research paper and short answer exams, and my Government in Aviation course that I'm currently taking involves a lot of essays, tests, homework and 2 term papers (yes, 2 term papers!) because it is a writing intensive course. The Airport Operations course (I have not taken that course yet) I heard are even more challenging, but maybe that's because it's a 400-level course.
 
Just finish your degree and then go to flight school for free, so to speak. Learn to fly this way, it's kind of fun!!! Why pay for something when it's free?! You're not going to get this type of training at ERAU or any other civilian aviation university.

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bunk22 said:
Just finish your degree and then go to flight school for free, so to speak. Learn to fly this way, it's kind of fun!!! Why pay for something when it's free?! You're not going to get this type of training at ERAU or any other civilian aviation university
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Play your cards right and it all could be free going that route.
 
Maurus said:
I understand not every degree changes, but do you think you could find a job doing what you do now if you went off for 5 years to a completely different job without looking back? Maybe you could because of the experience you built up, but what about a longer stint? How about if you were a college grad when you branched off and got no actual experience in the field?
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I've taken a few years off to do other things in my 20s, did not make any difference for me. I do more software than engineering now anyway, mostly on the sales side. I don't actually know of many people that do exactly what they went to University for.
 
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