After re-reading my hastily typed last post, that was typed up on the floor between breakdowns, I just wanted to clarify that I was most certainly not talking about anyone in particular, or any particular piece of paper really. This forum, and everyone who takes the time to out of their day to post here, has been the most helpful tool I've had in advancing my career. And as long as they pay me like an "engineer", I don't care what they call me.
My only point was that I would hate for some High School student who is interested in this field, reading this forum and trying to figure out what they're going to do next, to feel like getting an expensive degree from a University is the only way to go. Especially when what they're truly passionate about is building and fixing things.. I remember being told going to a University was the only way to succeed, but "The times they are a changin", and I don't know how long this pay-for-knowledge scheme will last.
I also agree about the building bridges analogy. That's kind of how I feel about Union shops. You don't want some small fly by night company building our infrastructure, but that doesn't really equate to roping houses.
To provide some relevant content to this thread, the small systems integrator I worked for, worked like a dog, pretty much 7 days a week. He was amazingly good at what he did, but had a hard time being out there finding and bidding work, and managing all of the jobs he had going on, and his 1 lazy office assistant. He had been trying for years to find help, but it's just not very plentiful around here. Also, I spent a lot of time troubleshooting various automation issues in many different industries, and the cost of software to work on all of those different machines was almost absurd. I don't know how he did it, especially since our hourly rate was about 50$ less per hour than a local service plumber. Most of his re-peat customers were good old boys he'd known for a while, and he didn't want to "offend" them by upping his rates.