How sad, you are in effect saying "what we do in school does not help us in a real job". Not that this is news to me.

I didn't say that, although I agree with you. A student designs with different criteria for many reasons. Here are some of them:

1) Little experience compared to the experience of a real pro. As a result of that we go to No2...
2) A student wants to design with the knowledge that he/she already has and not messing with too complex things (this isn't me ;)
3) A student designs a device without the rationale that what he/she designs is a real professional product that might go out to the market, although if some day it will (We have seen that many times in the past. First example that comes to my mind is my beloved Linux ;)
4) A student, in most cases, doesn't have enough money to spend. Except if he/she is Bill Gates' child ;)

I have had an applicant that proudly showed me his state of the art design with an 8255 in it.

Well, ok! It is a funny case, but don't you forget that from simple things we go to more complex things...

As you see Erik, truth always lies somewhere in the middle and not in the edge, at least for me. It's not black or white, or to say it with our language, it's not "1" or "0". Most of the times it's grey ;)

George