6 ms·
University is a total racket. We pay these institutions to be treated like their low level employees to provide job training for companies. Corporations have
by yters 7y ago
University is a total racket. We pay these institutions to be treated like their low level employees to provide job training for companies. Corporations have successfully offloaded their training responsibilities onto a process that used to be much broader than vocational training.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoAnd if you try to study some of those broader topics, you're a sucker - don't study philosophy when an extra accounting or STEM course would be a "better" use of your time. So you super specialize and then after 4 years of college and 5 years in industry you're burnt out you have few other skills, so the only option is to get back onto the education treadmill to bet on another highly specific vocation where you once again start your career as a junior.
- GhostVII 7y agoAt my school I was required to take many courses on broader topics. Personally I didn't like it, I took as many CS courses as I was allowed.
- yters 7y agoYes, due to the vocational focus, the broader topics are often watered down introductions.
- wavefunction 7y agoWe were supposed to take "History of Technology" which I guess is supposed to be the corollary to "Business Math" classes or whatever. I really enjoy the humanities so I took all the real electives I could.
- shantly 7y agoThey were total jokes at my (admittedly) second-rate-at-best state school. Most of the gen-ed courses failed to go beyond material we'd covered back in 10th grade or so. The English courses were probably the nearest to being remotely "serious" since they at least expected writing and critical reading on a slightly-above-high-school level, usually pretty early in the course.
- yters 7y agoYes by ultra focus on tech, we can provide a decent living, but lack the bigger picture and become the peons of those who know better, and can articulate their view clearly and logically. E.g. look at any PG essay that tried to talk about broader philosophical or political issues and you'll see this limitation. His frame of reference is stuck in a recent enlightenment framing of the world. Granted, PG is indeed a great communicator in technical fields.
- GhostVII 7y agoThe courses I took were the same that anyone getting a major in that field would take, and I was required to take them beyond just an introductory level.
- leshow 7y agoThis is a very pessimistic world view. I found in the engineering faculty that the subjects we were taught were very broad. However, I continued to learn on my own in my free time after I got my degree. I've been doing this consistently for the last 8 years or so. I now have completely new skills and much more depth on knowledge on CS topics than I had coming out of university.
- adamsea 7y agoThe point is that while for you it is your choice and pleasure to spend your free time doing something with a direct career benefit, for others, there are often other valid and important uses of their free time and so there is a cost to that. The question is if that cost an individual occurs if they choose not to spend their free time on career-related skills is ethical or good for society.
- hstreet 7y agoI believe this is the crux of the problem - it favours people with minimal external life factors or responsibility, and they’re quite often the ones to rise to power, therefore creating a “well it was good enough for me” sentiment lacking empathy. While by contrast, there are some people who want to kick back and simply collect a pay check, there is a whole segment of people in the middle ground who are hungry to learn, but are stretched so thin that they can’t outside of work — a whole segment that isn’t being catered for, and therefore an opportunity exists to tap into this.
- leshow 7y agoIt's not realistic to expect to go to school for 4 or 5 years and then work for the next 30 without learning anything new. Or rather, not if you care about advancing and making more money. Maybe I'm lucky that I actually enjoy it, so it doesn't feel so much like work to me.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoI'm a bit confused what you're arguing against in my point - you continue to super specialize in your off time. If you wanted to switch vocations from something in the CS domain, how much of what you now know and have self-taught would apply? At my university engineers were offered two elective courses in the faculty of arts or sciences. That's not a particularly broad education.
- andorov 7y agoI found that studying philosophy has had an extremely useful application to software development and architecture.
- JakeTheAndroid 7y agoI think this is really dependent on your choice of field to enter into. In the tech space, so many engineers didn't major or necessarily even take CS courses in college. I have interviewed and hired plenty of people with diverse colligate focuses. Sure, CS or STEM courses are probably really solid to pair with a non-CS major because it teaches you stuff that helps extend your abilities in your own field. So I can see why my friend that was going to school to be a nurse might have wanted to take a CS course or two instead of minoring in sociology.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoCS, being still a bit of a wild west, still has flexibility, but you definitely couldn't take some nursing courses (which, let's be honest, aren't even offered) and switch to that after burning out in comp sci.
- JakeTheAndroid 7y agofair point.
- hueving 7y agoMost STEM courses aren't vocational training and aren't super specialized. I think you might have a biased negative view for what STEM courses are? Edit: Let me state it a different way that might shed more light on my point. A CS major can pass all of his/her classes with a perfect GPA and still be incapable of writing software ready for a production system (even at small scale). The STEM degrees emphasize fundamentals that are rarely (if ever) used in day-to-day "real jobs".
- naniwaduni 7y agoHell, most of S&M is about maximally far from "vocational" training.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoSorry, yes S&M courses are generally poor to include in that list. A calculus or chemistry course or two aren't going to affect your career potential.
- yters 7y agoFor some value of 'super specialized' you are correct. For a value that includes the bigger perspective on our culture and what it means to live a good life, an exclusive focus on STEM is indeed 'super specialized'.
- hueving 7y ago>For a value that includes the bigger perspective on our culture Sure > and what it means to live a good life That's just self-aggrandizing bullshit. There is no class that will tell you what it means to live a good life. Anyone who thinks so is dearly lacking perspective. >an exclusive focus on STEM is indeed 'super specialized'. An exclusive focus on STEM will include the philosophy of science and what it means to seek truths about the physical world. IMO that has immensely more value in a philosophical sense than you seem to imply.
- 7y ago
- avgDev 7y agoI disagree. I went to a state University and it really made me a better person. I worked in groups with diverse group of people and while it was tough I enjoyed the experience. Plus, it wasn't really that expensive considering my income now and before. However, I guess non-technical/engineering degrees have different results.
- yters 7y agoI had a good experience at undergrad, but that was due to its divergence from the norm. It actually gave me the broader perspective by having me read thousands of pages of the primary literature for the Western canon, along with in depth critical group discussions of the texts, and learning to write coherent papers. Nothing in my CS degree impacted my life, except making me marketable. Much of the CS I could have picked up on my own, and very little have I actually used in day to day jobs, except the programming experience. On the other hand, the literature program has indeed changed my life.
- quackback 7y agoThis seems to be a very unpopular thought within CS culture and I find that really unfortunate. It feels like people are rushing to reduce their education, their lives, to optimized market interactions and that's a terrible lens for a human life. There may be an argument that it's a method of successfully navigating our society, thus enriching one's personal or familial existence, but it seems to me that would just lead to a poor societal structure with few common bonds among the people within it.
- soulofmischief 7y agoIt's a side effect of no safety net, knowing that the slightest mishap could put you into crippling debt. To stand still but for a moment is to be trampled by the masses. By the time you are in a financially stable situation, old habits are ingrained.
- Braggadocious 7y agoI like how a liberal arts education is "divergent from the norm" now. The primary function of university is to make people read for four years. Business degrees, CS degrees, essentially job training programs are a bastardization of the institution.
- wincy 7y agoI went to community college but didn’t get my Associates because the final class was me paying to work in the computer lab. It was so mind numbing I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
- fhennig 7y agoYes, paying so much money is absurd. At least in many European countries higher level education is free.