When New Jersey native Matthew Daiter enrolled within the College of Colorado Boulder’s on-line MS in Electrical Engineering program, he already had almost a decade of real-world expertise behind him. No undergraduate diploma. No conventional educational trajectory. Only a “funky academic path,” a can-do angle, and a profession spent constructing and breaking boundaries in {hardware} startups.
Now based mostly in Hong Kong, Matt’s story is something however typical—however an inspirational one to learn.
Skipping Faculty, Becoming a member of the Workforce
“I didn’t go to undergrad for faculty,” Matt says. “I began working proper after highschool.” That call kicked off a whirlwind four-year journey: two startups, a lot of hands-on studying, and seemingly no actual want for a path again into schooling. Then, upon attempting to return to an undergrad program for a semester in his early-mid 20s, he shortly realized it wasn’t the precise match.
“Most undergrad packages are inflexible, structured four-year experiences,” he explains. “I wished to see—is there a path that displays my previous expertise, with the power to start out going to highschool once more, with out it being repeat materials or time churning?”
Enter: CU Boulder’s Efficiency-Primarily based Admissions
Matt discovered his reply in Boulder’s on-line MSEE, which presents performance-based admissions (PBA)—a system that lets learners show their readiness by means of preliminary coursework, not prior transcripts.
“It helps to have a program that permits you to show your self to get in,” he says. “The flexibleness Boulder provided—permitting you to skip by means of based mostly on efficiency or advantage—actually helped out.”
For somebody like Matt, who had already been consulting, contracting, and constructing actual merchandise, the standard gatekeeping of academia simply didn’t make sense. He wanted one thing constructed for doers.
Why Go Again to Faculty at All?
“You’ll be able to self-teach as much as a sure level,” Matt says. “However I used to be hitting boundaries. I wished to lean into product improvement and bodily product improvement—and I used to be capping out at what I may independently produce.”
Regardless of talking at conferences and advising startups, he discovered that not having a proper diploma held him again, particularly internationally. “Visa issues. Not being taken significantly by the federal government. In the event you solely have a highschool diploma, they count on you to supply at a sure (decrease) stage.”
Incomes his grasp’s was about gaining validity, increasing his choices, and at last diving into subjects he’d been itching to discover, like microelectronics, sign methods, and energy methods—he semi-jokes, “the power to plug in any system to the wall and never blow a fuse.”
What On-line Studying Is Actually Like
Matt doesn’t sugarcoat his expertise: Boulder’s on-line program isn’t for everybody.
“This shouldn’t be for everybody,” he says. “If you wish to learn to swim, you’ll be able to both discover a pool, take on-line programs and train your self. Or you’ll be able to pay to point out up at a pool and have an teacher maintain your hand. Each are legitimate—however they’re completely different character sorts.” For Matt, Boulder’s on-line studying expertise was extra like the previous, having him actually keep a deep curiosity and a self-starter mentality.
In being part of the primary cohort for this program, he remembers irritating moments—finals with incorrect solutions, the isolation of by no means bodily assembly classmates, and the occasional “Reddit-plus” chaos of dialogue boards and Slack threads. However the tradeoff was price it: whole flexibility.
“With Boulder, if you wish to speedrun, you’ll be able to. Attending to the tip of those course markers virtually felt like a recreation.”
He accomplished the diploma between October 2019 and December 2020, and feels happy with lastly making the agency determination to leap again into education. “I wasn’t nice at taking day off to spherical myself out, and faculty was an ideal guise for this. Despite the fact that I wasn’t working, I nonetheless felt like I used to be progressing.”
Recommendation for Future Learners: Simply Begin
Matt’s largest recommendation? Don’t look forward to the proper time.
“Simply begin,” he says. “It’s manner more durable to let it bubble over and discover the precise second to dip in. I bear in mind feeling that manner for 2 years earlier than truly going again.”
“Optionality” was a lure, he provides: “Protecting a door open shuts different doorways down the highway. Simply make the decision and resolve whether or not you wish to do that factor or not.”
Rewriting What Training Means
Now, with a proper grasp’s diploma in hand and years of startup expertise behind him, Matt is constant to do contract and advisory work for startups throughout the globe—and eyeing his subsequent transfer.
“I used to be so labored up over how you can conceptualize an schooling and what that was alleged to imply,” he says. “However you simply have to leap in and begin swimming.”
