My experience was rather dissimilar, Tug. I ended up with about seven years of college. While parts of it helped a lot in my first 12 years it was when I got my third position that all the coursework, except for calculus which I never to my knowledge used, were needed in my next position which lasted basically 16 years. I was rather amazed how it all tied together, finally. Sounds like I was lucky in what I took and where I used it.

The part folks seem to lose sight of in resource management, or maybe any management, is that much more is involved than just pure "science". You would not, in my mind, want pure "science", "what the fish need", to be the only metric we use. Law, social needs, economics, competing interests all factor in. Fascinating to work in that arena to try to get the best outcome for resources.