My dad's one of them. He retired a few years ago. The way he puts it, electrical engineering research isn't what it used to be, because all of the "big" discove

My dad's one of them. He retired a few years ago. The way he puts it, electrical engineering research isn't what it used to be, because all of the "big" discoveries in that field have been made. So aside from a fraction of the researchers it's largely a technician's job. At the same time, he says that if he had applied to the same school he studied at and worked at for all of his life, there's no way he'd beat the competition these days. And that's before factoring in the cost of college now. No wonder.