6 ms·

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+

Ugh...I hear this sort of thing all the time and I find it sooo obnoxious. Look, the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money so whether it "technically" should be a monastery of cloistered academics pondering the universe (based on some high minded notion of what learning "ought" to be for) is besides the point. University costs a shit ton of money and people (the vast majority) pay it so they can have a decent life. And the fact that universities are, on the whole, teaching skills that do not help their students accomplish this means either A) they are actively misleading their students B) university is a class indicator more than a place to learn (I can spend huge amounts of money so I'm probably not poor and black - which sucks for all sorts of reasons) or C) they don't understand that teaching academic CS, as opposed to programming, is not what industry demands (so they suck at what they're selling). These are the people who, quite literally, are billing themselves as the "smartest guys in the room". If that's the case they can well stop sucking at their bloody job!

extra88 9y ago
> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" I went to a private liberal arts college so maybe that automatically puts me and my classmates in the 10% but I did not think the overwhelming majority of us were there to make money. The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and valuable but lack obvious paths to financial success (e.g. most of Humanities and a lot of Social Sciences) indicates "making money" is not why they're there. You think universities should basically be trade schools. They're not and they shouldn't be. Trade schools should be trade schools but the U.S. has a dearth of them and many that fit the description aren't good enough.
- bordercases 9y ago
  I really hope we see greater specialization of mid-line universities that don't know whether they want to be an academic school or a trade school. Programming-as-inquiry is extremely difficult due to the amount of effort and math required to produce novelty, and programming-as-trade is much less difficult in comparison as a lot of the systems you're composing together already have their principles worked out. You can work from the manual in the latter case, while you're defining the manual in the former. Meanwhile a university not knowing whether it wants to be a trade school or a research school has mixed incentives that results in an inconsistent quality of education. You get professors who don't know how to teach and teachers who don't know how to go in depth. By requiring both you've made your staffing requirements that much harder to fulfill if you don't want to trade off education quality. On that note how have bootcamps been doing lately?
- patientplatypus 9y ago
  > the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" Ok come on man. I said 90%+. Don't quibble just to be a prick.
  - abvdasker 9y ago
    The name-calling seems a little uncalled for. I also went to a good liberal arts college and had a similar experience. People studying subjects that probably wouldn't lead to financially lucrative careers were in the majority.
  - dang 9y ago
    If you can't stick to posting civil, substantive comments, we're going to have to ban you. Nitpicking is annoying but it doesn't give license to damage the site in your own right. Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and abiding by the desired spirit when posting here?
- orangecat 9y ago
  The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and valuable but lack obvious paths to financial success (e.g. most of Humanities and a lot of Social Sciences) indicates "making money" is not why they're there. "Financial success" doesn't necessarily mean optimizing the total number of dollars in your income; it can also mean being able to do work that you enjoy while having a decent standard of living. If a college degree had no impact on your employment opportunities, how many students would still go? Trade schools should be trade schools but the U.S. has a dearth of them and many that fit the description aren't good enough. Which is the point. It's not that universities shouldn't exist, it's that they shouldn't be trying to serve both roles.
jknoepfler 9y ago
There are two things wrong with this perspective. First, if you walk out of a four year degree in computer science without a strong foundation in discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and at least one of distributed systems theory, stochastic systems theory, control, statistics/machine learning, AI, data visualization, or design, you've stunted your horizons for growth as an engineer pretty badly. I use three of those every day at work. I wouldn't be able to read the research, do the math, or write the software to implement what I work on without a very strong education in fundamentals. The only CSE course I took in University that I haven't made active use of was an advanced matrix computation course. I mean, if you're just shitting out web services and REST APIs or converting COBOL to Java, fine, but that's something you can train a monkey (and in very short order, a computer) to do. Secondly, we invest in Universities as a public good. You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in. You might be surprised to learn that with the benefit of hindsight, many people find the time they spent reading and learning to be incredibly useful later in life, as it provided a foundation for dealing with conflict and complexity. If that's wasted on you, then it's wasted on you, but understand that you have shot yourself in the foot in terms of your ability to mature as a human being. I personally think public University education should be substantially more rigorous and should fail people aggressively, and should also be free. I wish we separated the whole "whoo look at me I'm 18-22 let's party" thing from the thought of University. If that's where you are in life at 18, there's nothing wrong with that... go work as a code monkey or a barista and get it out of your system, and when you're ready to level up as a human being give University a try, go. That's more or less what worked for me, anyway.
- bordercases 9y ago
  Where the heck do you work? How long did it take for you to get to that position? What was your role as a junior?
- mangodrunk 9y ago
  >You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in. What a great comment. I think that's also missed by schools where the focus is on memorization and/or trivia. It would be great if they focused on the areas you talked about, not necessarily directly, but at least that is the goal.
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
> University costs a shit ton of money and people (the vast majority) pay it so they can have a decent life. First of all, no one is forced to go to university, so if people pay that much money, it's probably because they feel it's worth it, regardless of its supposed "cloistered academicism". Secondly, maybe the main problem is that something that is needed (or at least very convenient) to have a decent life shouldn't cost a shit ton of money at all. As is the case in countries like Germany, etc. (if your parent post is from one of those, your reply doesn't even make sense). Finally, I would rather hire a coder with a strong CS background that one from vocational school. The former may not know the language du jour and the framework fad of the day, but can pick them up easily because they know the fundamentals. The latter will likely adapt much slower.

extra88 9y ago

> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" I went to a private liberal arts college so maybe that automatically puts me and my classmates in the 10% but I did not think the overwhelming majority of us were there to make money. The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and valuable but lack obvious paths to financial success (e.g. most of Humanities and a lot of Social Sciences) indicates "making money" is not why they're there. You think universities should basically be trade schools. They're not and they shouldn't be. Trade schools should be trade schools but the U.S. has a dearth of them and many that fit the description aren't good enough.

bordercases 9y ago
I really hope we see greater specialization of mid-line universities that don't know whether they want to be an academic school or a trade school. Programming-as-inquiry is extremely difficult due to the amount of effort and math required to produce novelty, and programming-as-trade is much less difficult in comparison as a lot of the systems you're composing together already have their principles worked out. You can work from the manual in the latter case, while you're defining the manual in the former. Meanwhile a university not knowing whether it wants to be a trade school or a research school has mixed incentives that results in an inconsistent quality of education. You get professors who don't know how to teach and teachers who don't know how to go in depth. By requiring both you've made your staffing requirements that much harder to fulfill if you don't want to trade off education quality. On that note how have bootcamps been doing lately?
patientplatypus 9y ago
> the reason that all the students go to university is to make money. Like 90%+ of undergrads go there to make money Which is it, "all" or "90%?" Ok come on man. I said 90%+. Don't quibble just to be a prick.
- abvdasker 9y ago
  The name-calling seems a little uncalled for. I also went to a good liberal arts college and had a similar experience. People studying subjects that probably wouldn't lead to financially lucrative careers were in the majority.
- dang 9y ago
  If you can't stick to posting civil, substantive comments, we're going to have to ban you. Nitpicking is annoying but it doesn't give license to damage the site in your own right. Would you mind reading https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html and abiding by the desired spirit when posting here?
orangecat 9y ago
The fact that lots of students still major in subjects that can be very worthwhile and valuable but lack obvious paths to financial success (e.g. most of Humanities and a lot of Social Sciences) indicates "making money" is not why they're there. "Financial success" doesn't necessarily mean optimizing the total number of dollars in your income; it can also mean being able to do work that you enjoy while having a decent standard of living. If a college degree had no impact on your employment opportunities, how many students would still go? Trade schools should be trade schools but the U.S. has a dearth of them and many that fit the description aren't good enough. Which is the point. It's not that universities shouldn't exist, it's that they shouldn't be trying to serve both roles.

jknoepfler 9y ago

There are two things wrong with this perspective. First, if you walk out of a four year degree in computer science without a strong foundation in discrete mathematics, algorithms, data structures, and at least one of distributed systems theory, stochastic systems theory, control, statistics/machine learning, AI, data visualization, or design, you've stunted your horizons for growth as an engineer pretty badly. I use three of those every day at work. I wouldn't be able to read the research, do the math, or write the software to implement what I work on without a very strong education in fundamentals. The only CSE course I took in University that I haven't made active use of was an advanced matrix computation course. I mean, if you're just shitting out web services and REST APIs or converting COBOL to Java, fine, but that's something you can train a monkey (and in very short order, a computer) to do. Secondly, we invest in Universities as a public good. You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in. You might be surprised to learn that with the benefit of hindsight, many people find the time they spent reading and learning to be incredibly useful later in life, as it provided a foundation for dealing with conflict and complexity. If that's wasted on you, then it's wasted on you, but understand that you have shot yourself in the foot in terms of your ability to mature as a human being. I personally think public University education should be substantially more rigorous and should fail people aggressively, and should also be free. I wish we separated the whole "whoo look at me I'm 18-22 let's party" thing from the thought of University. If that's where you are in life at 18, there's nothing wrong with that... go work as a code monkey or a barista and get it out of your system, and when you're ready to level up as a human being give University a try, go. That's more or less what worked for me, anyway.

bordercases 9y ago
Where the heck do you work? How long did it take for you to get to that position? What was your role as a junior?
mangodrunk 9y ago
>You should come out of a four year program able to write well, critically analyze difficult material (not "Catcher in the Rye"), articulate complex ideas persuasively, and understand the world you live in and how to live in it substantially better than when you went in. What a great comment. I think that's also missed by schools where the focus is on memorization and/or trivia. It would be great if they focused on the areas you talked about, not necessarily directly, but at least that is the goal.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago

> University costs a shit ton of money and people (the vast majority) pay it so they can have a decent life. First of all, no one is forced to go to university, so if people pay that much money, it's probably because they feel it's worth it, regardless of its supposed "cloistered academicism". Secondly, maybe the main problem is that something that is needed (or at least very convenient) to have a decent life shouldn't cost a shit ton of money at all. As is the case in countries like Germany, etc. (if your parent post is from one of those, your reply doesn't even make sense). Finally, I would rather hire a coder with a strong CS background that one from vocational school. The former may not know the language du jour and the framework fad of the day, but can pick them up easily because they know the fundamentals. The latter will likely adapt much slower.