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I majored in Comparative Literature. I made that choice under two working assumptions: 1. Higher education isn't about learning how to perform in a vocation; i

I majored in Comparative Literature. I made that choice under two working assumptions: 1. Higher education isn't about learning how to perform in a vocation; it's about learning how to learn. It's not about taking the next step in a career path; it's about being exposed to the wisdom of history, about making one's inner world more expansive, about learning to think in radically different ways. 2. An undergraduate degree is an indication to a prospective employer that you have the intelligence and discipline to stay with a four-year program. You can learn most truly valuable working skills in training or on the job. The problem with both of these assumptions is that even if I believe them, not many others (esp. prospective employers) seem to. Which is ok because I'm constitutionally not a particularly materialistic person and I did find my education to be very enriching, valuable, and, well, educational. Also, I'm still sort of trying to prove the second one by learning to program in my free time (from my boring, low-level bureacratic government job).

VMG 15y ago
> Higher education isn't about learning how to perform in a vocation There's your problem. Do you really believe that someone with an English degree can pick up up a programming language as fast as someone with a degree in CS? It's no surprise that employers don't share your assumptions, they are wrong.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Even if "how fast can you pick up a programming language" is your only metric, I would imagine that individual talent/intelligence/determination are better indicators than college major. I.e. I'd bet that between two identical people, one a Humanities major and the other a CS major, the CS major would obviously pick up a PL faster, but between an average CS major and an excellent Humanities major, I'd put my money on the Humanities. It's wholly possible that I'd lose that bet. The bigger point, though, to me, is that "how fast can you pick up a programming language" isn't what I thought about when choosing a major. That's not what I thought college was about. I honestly believe that employers would do better to consider Humanities majors who did very well in school, and otherwise demonstrate that they're intelligent, disciplined, and capable if not yet specifically qualified for the job. That's probably harder to figure out, but filtering by degree, then, is just laziness. It does appear that college is becoming a more vocational education, which I think is unfortunate. And that's probably because employers think like you do. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
  - VMG 15y ago
    Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? Why signal it in a fields that sometimes don't even really depend on any skill at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) rather than show off your discipline and intelligence in something like engineering or physics?
    - joebadmo 15y ago
      Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? I think your understanding of my position is colored by your assumptions about value. If you mean "no intrinsic value" as 'employability' or 'earning potential,' I would say that I value other things more than either of those. To answer the question, though, I wasn't trying to signal my intelligence when I chose my degree. I was trying to learn. I was exploring fields that I found interesting. I chose Comp Lit specifically because it offered me the broadest set of opportunities for learning. (I minored in Linguistics, and would have probably double majored if I thought I could afford to spend another six months in school.) As for skill, I think you misrepresent what the Sokal hoax was about, and what it proved. I actually did start school as a CS major, and I found it interesting and still do, but the CS curriculum was prohibitively restrictive and exclusive to other fields, and I wanted to explore more. If any of the 'hard' fields had given me more cross-disciplinary opportunities, I probably would have chosen one of them.
tallanvor 15y ago
Yes, there are many things you can learn on the job, but there are things that employers shouldn't have to teach you, and there are things you don't have to know but give you a deeper understanding of what your field of study means. Do you understand the basics of how a compiler translates C code into assembly? Do you understand some of the basic concepts of computer design (why we need RAM, how cache improves performance, or how an operating system allows you to run multiple applications at once)? That's not even getting to the level of understanding what a transistor is, or the calculus behind Ohm's law? Knowing how and why something works makes it easier to know what can be done within the bounds of the system, and the better you know the system, the easier it is to find ways to take the system further than someone else could. I doubt you think you should be able to become a doctor, lawyer, architect, mechanical engineer, or other advanced profession without a related degree, so why do you think that the computer industry should be any different?
- joebadmo 15y ago
  Those are fair points, and I didn't mean to minimize the profession, or imply that it's easy to learn. My point wasn't that you don't need education to become good at something, it was that an undergraduate education shouldn't just be about becoming good at one thing. It should be about learning how to learn. Are you implying that school is the only place one can learn the things you list? And as with the rest of the professions you mention, I imagine there are many subfields of programming for which school is the best place to learn the specific advanced technical and conceptual aspects of, but not for an undergraduate degree. I guess I wish I could have learned more CS as part of my Comp Lit degree, but everything beyond CSE 142 and 143 were closed to me as a non-major. I also didn't mean to imply that I was looking for programming jobs fresh out of school, nor that programming was the only field that I was looking for jobs in. I'm learning to program on my own because I want to, but I was looking for jobs in many fields, but despite the degree and four years of military experience, I had a really hard time. Probably a big part of that was the state of the general economy, but I got the feeling that the 'soft' degree was also a part of it. I do understand the economics of the situation. With so many people graduating from college with a specifically applicable degree in the field you're in, why would you hire anyone else? And, relatedly, why would you pursue a degree in something that isn't going to be directly related to a job when you graduate? Maybe it sounds like sour grapes from someone who picked the wrong major and regrets it, and maybe that is a component, but it's not a complete description of how I feel. I do think a well rounded education is valuable, maybe not in the sense that it's going to make you more money, but in the sense that it makes you a better person, and makes the society that you're a part of a better one. And that's not to say I think I'm better than you because I studied literature and you didn't. It's just that college might be the last chance for you to get exposure to different ideas, different people, different experiences.

VMG 15y ago

> Higher education isn't about learning how to perform in a vocation There's your problem. Do you really believe that someone with an English degree can pick up up a programming language as fast as someone with a degree in CS? It's no surprise that employers don't share your assumptions, they are wrong.

joebadmo 15y ago
Even if "how fast can you pick up a programming language" is your only metric, I would imagine that individual talent/intelligence/determination are better indicators than college major. I.e. I'd bet that between two identical people, one a Humanities major and the other a CS major, the CS major would obviously pick up a PL faster, but between an average CS major and an excellent Humanities major, I'd put my money on the Humanities. It's wholly possible that I'd lose that bet. The bigger point, though, to me, is that "how fast can you pick up a programming language" isn't what I thought about when choosing a major. That's not what I thought college was about. I honestly believe that employers would do better to consider Humanities majors who did very well in school, and otherwise demonstrate that they're intelligent, disciplined, and capable if not yet specifically qualified for the job. That's probably harder to figure out, but filtering by degree, then, is just laziness. It does appear that college is becoming a more vocational education, which I think is unfortunate. And that's probably because employers think like you do. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong.
- VMG 15y ago
  Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? Why signal it in a fields that sometimes don't even really depend on any skill at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) rather than show off your discipline and intelligence in something like engineering or physics?
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    Why signal your intelligence with a degree that you worked hard for but has no intrinsic value? I think your understanding of my position is colored by your assumptions about value. If you mean "no intrinsic value" as 'employability' or 'earning potential,' I would say that I value other things more than either of those. To answer the question, though, I wasn't trying to signal my intelligence when I chose my degree. I was trying to learn. I was exploring fields that I found interesting. I chose Comp Lit specifically because it offered me the broadest set of opportunities for learning. (I minored in Linguistics, and would have probably double majored if I thought I could afford to spend another six months in school.) As for skill, I think you misrepresent what the Sokal hoax was about, and what it proved. I actually did start school as a CS major, and I found it interesting and still do, but the CS curriculum was prohibitively restrictive and exclusive to other fields, and I wanted to explore more. If any of the 'hard' fields had given me more cross-disciplinary opportunities, I probably would have chosen one of them.

tallanvor 15y ago

Yes, there are many things you can learn on the job, but there are things that employers shouldn't have to teach you, and there are things you don't have to know but give you a deeper understanding of what your field of study means. Do you understand the basics of how a compiler translates C code into assembly? Do you understand some of the basic concepts of computer design (why we need RAM, how cache improves performance, or how an operating system allows you to run multiple applications at once)? That's not even getting to the level of understanding what a transistor is, or the calculus behind Ohm's law? Knowing how and why something works makes it easier to know what can be done within the bounds of the system, and the better you know the system, the easier it is to find ways to take the system further than someone else could. I doubt you think you should be able to become a doctor, lawyer, architect, mechanical engineer, or other advanced profession without a related degree, so why do you think that the computer industry should be any different?

joebadmo 15y ago
Those are fair points, and I didn't mean to minimize the profession, or imply that it's easy to learn. My point wasn't that you don't need education to become good at something, it was that an undergraduate education shouldn't just be about becoming good at one thing. It should be about learning how to learn. Are you implying that school is the only place one can learn the things you list? And as with the rest of the professions you mention, I imagine there are many subfields of programming for which school is the best place to learn the specific advanced technical and conceptual aspects of, but not for an undergraduate degree. I guess I wish I could have learned more CS as part of my Comp Lit degree, but everything beyond CSE 142 and 143 were closed to me as a non-major. I also didn't mean to imply that I was looking for programming jobs fresh out of school, nor that programming was the only field that I was looking for jobs in. I'm learning to program on my own because I want to, but I was looking for jobs in many fields, but despite the degree and four years of military experience, I had a really hard time. Probably a big part of that was the state of the general economy, but I got the feeling that the 'soft' degree was also a part of it. I do understand the economics of the situation. With so many people graduating from college with a specifically applicable degree in the field you're in, why would you hire anyone else? And, relatedly, why would you pursue a degree in something that isn't going to be directly related to a job when you graduate? Maybe it sounds like sour grapes from someone who picked the wrong major and regrets it, and maybe that is a component, but it's not a complete description of how I feel. I do think a well rounded education is valuable, maybe not in the sense that it's going to make you more money, but in the sense that it makes you a better person, and makes the society that you're a part of a better one. And that's not to say I think I'm better than you because I studied literature and you didn't. It's just that college might be the last chance for you to get exposure to different ideas, different people, different experiences.