<p>Miami Dap, most engineers do not end up working for “engineering firms”. They work for large, global employers (airlines, pharmaceutical companies, consumer products companies, etc.) If this kid is interested in working for a local engineering firm then yes, where he goes to college won’t matter as long as the program is accredited. But many large employers have a list of “core schools” from which they hire for roles all over the country, and their hiring from “local colleges” will be for very specific roles at a plant or manufacturing facility.</p>
<p>Microsoft, GE, Pfizer, United Technologies, Siemens, Exxon-Mobile, Cisco, Apple, Procter and Gamble- these companies cannot recruit at the two or three colleges close to their headquarters and find anything close to the number of qualified candidates they need to staff their operations.</p>
<p>There are tens of thousands of electrical engineers working at companies which recruited them thousands of miles away from where they studied. Your husbands experience is well and good-- and I’m sure he’s had a fine career- but you continue to tell people that it doesn’t matter where you go to college for IT, for engineering, for medical school, and your perspective is somewhat one sided.</p>
<p>For SOME careers it matters where you go. You cannot compare a powerhouse school like Michigan for engineering with a small directional state college which may happen to have an engineering program. If a kid wants to design a build bridges for a small engineering firm in his or her home town than your advice is spot on. But there is a reason why UIUC, Michigan, MIT, Cal Tech (and lots of others) have national and international reputations in engineering. And their students typically do not end up at small, local engineering companies, your husband’s experience notwithstanding.</p>