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 instructional path,” a can-do angle, and a profession spent constructing and breaking boundaries in {hardware} startups.
Now primarily based in Hong Kong, Matt’s story is something however standard—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 number 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 fitting match.
“Most undergrad applications are inflexible, structured four-year experiences,” he explains. “I needed to see—is there a path that displays my previous expertise, with the flexibility to start out going to high school once more, with out it being repeat materials or time churning?”
Enter: CU Boulder’s Efficiency-Based mostly Admissions
Matt discovered his reply in Boulder’s on-line MSEE, which affords 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 pliability Boulder supplied—permitting you to skip by means of primarily based 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 may self-teach as much as a sure level,” Matt says. “However I used to be hitting boundaries. I needed 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. If you happen to 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 eventually diving into matters he’d been itching to discover, like microelectronics, sign programs, and energy programs—he semi-jokes, “the flexibility to plug in any gadget 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 may both discover a pool, take on-line programs and educate your self. Or you may pay to indicate up at a pool and have an teacher maintain your hand. Each are legitimate—however they’re completely different character varieties.” For Matt, Boulder’s on-line studying expertise was extra like the previous, having him actually preserve a deep curiosity and a self-starter mentality.
In being part of the primary cohort for this program, he recollects 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: complete flexibility.
“With Boulder, if you wish to speedrun, you may. Attending to the tip of those course markers nearly felt like a sport.”
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 without work to spherical myself out, and college was an important guise for this. Regardless that I wasn’t working, I nonetheless felt like I used to be progressing.”
Recommendation for Future Learners: Simply Begin
Matt’s greatest recommendation? Don’t look forward to the right time.
“Simply begin,” he says. “It’s approach more durable to let it bubble over and discover the fitting second to dip in. I bear in mind feeling that approach for 2 years earlier than truly going again.”
“Optionality” was a lure, he provides: “Holding a door open shuts different doorways down the street. Simply make the decision and resolve whether or not you need 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 tips on how to conceptualize an schooling and what that was presupposed to imply,” he says. “However you simply have to leap in and begin swimming.”
