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> What you do in uni is demonstrate that you're interested in certain things and you have enough work ethic to learn the exam answers. That's all. Wrong. Why?

> What you do in uni is demonstrate that you're interested in certain things and you have enough work ethic to learn the exam answers. That's all. Wrong. Why? There are many counter examples. But perhaps you meant that it tends to be true, if so then I read your comment a bit too black and white. That would be a lot tougher to see whether that's true or not. I'm purely going to keep this comment on a content level (e.g. I'm not concerned with the fact that you also make lifelong friends at uni, etc.). I've done quite different study programs, so let's see what happened there (I'm only talking about the ones I've finished since I know those well). I studied: - Psychology (bachelor) - Information Science (20% business, 80% computer science, bachelor) - Game-design (master) - Computer science with a specialty in multimedia and security (master) For my psychology degree, I really agree with your general message. When I look at where my classmates are today, I feel that content-wise university was a bit worthless. However, of those psychology students there are about 5 to 20 percent of people that are using their knowledge. One does a lot of statistics at work and did a lot of statistics in a psychology minor (structurual equational modelling). Another one did research for the government and wrote fairly similar-ish research reports compared to psychology papers. Finally, a large part of this group becomes a clinical psychologist and then a large part of your study is relevant because most of the program is about interpreting research. So... 80% agree, 20% disagree. Information Science: 20% of the people were already working in IT. For us other eighty-percenters a lot of us went into consulting and a few of us into hardcore computer science. Information science definitely teaches things about requirements gathering that I've used as a freelancer later on. I wouldn't say that the whole program is useful, mostly because it's split between two worlds and you end up picking one of them. But for the world that you pick, it had a lot of useful courses. For me, I gained the ability to learn anything in the IT world. Before I went to uni I've tried it but I failed. I tried learning PHP, I failed. I tried learning Objective-C/iPhone apps but I failed. But at uni, I learned programming, networking and computer systems (among other things) and suddenly revisiting those topics 3 years laters I felt learning Objective-C was easy! So... I tend to disagree completely here. Game-design: people went to a lot of different fields after this, I think most of us aren't using any of the theory/practice that we've learned in this degree. However, some of us are! I'd estimate about 10% is still heavily using their game-design skills (e.g. one is a online curriculum-designer and the whole thing about user feedback shares a lot with game-design). In my case, it's mixed. I made one game Unity3D and it was the first time I was introduced to C#. I did a few things in JavaScript. But mostly I learned about player behavior and I've noticed a lot of game-design knowledge is a specialized version of UX. So when I tend to develop an app, I tend to see "users" as "gamers" (if applicable) and utilize my intuition that I've built up with this program. So... I tend to agree, but there are exceptions. Computer Science: in one course I made a computer graphics engine that had 10K lines of code. That was very educational. In another I made and sold an iPhone app (rewarding and educational). And I've done a lot of hacking courses that now allows me to pentest production applications while I'm a full-stack engineer. So... I tend to disagree. Yes, the skills I've learned here are foundational and not fully on point to what I do now (full-stack dev, currently interviewing with a FAANG company, searching for referrals to Google still :P) but it definitely helps with what I do today. At the very least, I tend to catch critical security issues in code review (and hack into them as a PoC when no one believes me) and code (hopefully) secure code myself.

shapefrog 5y ago
Undergraduate degree is ~90% generic learning ~10% specific learning. These are lego bricks in ones personality and thinking process. > But at uni, I learned programming, networking, and computer systems You also learned logic, planning, typing, troubleshooting, project management, etc. You could be thrown into many situations and would have to learn a few extra specifics associated with the task and attach those to your existing knowledge. You would (should) outperform a history major in many of these tasks, and should be at a disadvantage in many others. Consciously or not you will be applying your psychology learnings to interviews along with your failed PHP dreams. Naturally having that psychology background you don't need me to tell you that acknowledging and understanding that will be beneficial to you in that process.
- mettamage 5y ago
  > Undergraduate degree is ~90% generic learning ~10% specific learning. If you mean generic learning about a specific field then I tend to agree. If you mean "general learning" at all then I disagree. It's because one learns generically about a specific field that it allows them to learn quicker later on in life about various topics within that field. I'm proof of this given that after my CS degree, I wanted to do a coding bootcamp and was immediately hired to be an instructor, I self-taught myself that program within 2 weeks and then taught it to others (with a non-CS background) for 3 months. Moreover, the quality of learning is different since I noticed I was way quicker at building stuff out or diagnosing bugs compared to the best students in their final week. The reason why was simple: I've written a lot more code and experienced a lot more bugs than they had. > You also learned logic, planning, typing, troubleshooting, project management Partially agree, partially disagree, in many cases I knew those things and merely applied it. I've learned logic, planning, typing and some forms of project management at elementary school (e.g. a touch typing course, basic if this then that logic, etc.) and high school (calculus, fairly advanced statistics etc.). There were more advanced versions in some cases (e.g. logic, certain forms of planning), but in most cases I relied on skills I've learned during elementary/high school. There are a lot of presentations given before someone enters at university. > You would (should) outperform a history major in many of these tasks, and should be at a disadvantage in many others. Don't know, I think some might be pretty good at typing, certain forms of logic and perhaps project management as well.

shapefrog 5y ago

Undergraduate degree is ~90% generic learning ~10% specific learning. These are lego bricks in ones personality and thinking process. > But at uni, I learned programming, networking, and computer systems You also learned logic, planning, typing, troubleshooting, project management, etc. You could be thrown into many situations and would have to learn a few extra specifics associated with the task and attach those to your existing knowledge. You would (should) outperform a history major in many of these tasks, and should be at a disadvantage in many others. Consciously or not you will be applying your psychology learnings to interviews along with your failed PHP dreams. Naturally having that psychology background you don't need me to tell you that acknowledging and understanding that will be beneficial to you in that process.

mettamage 5y ago
> Undergraduate degree is ~90% generic learning ~10% specific learning. If you mean generic learning about a specific field then I tend to agree. If you mean "general learning" at all then I disagree. It's because one learns generically about a specific field that it allows them to learn quicker later on in life about various topics within that field. I'm proof of this given that after my CS degree, I wanted to do a coding bootcamp and was immediately hired to be an instructor, I self-taught myself that program within 2 weeks and then taught it to others (with a non-CS background) for 3 months. Moreover, the quality of learning is different since I noticed I was way quicker at building stuff out or diagnosing bugs compared to the best students in their final week. The reason why was simple: I've written a lot more code and experienced a lot more bugs than they had. > You also learned logic, planning, typing, troubleshooting, project management Partially agree, partially disagree, in many cases I knew those things and merely applied it. I've learned logic, planning, typing and some forms of project management at elementary school (e.g. a touch typing course, basic if this then that logic, etc.) and high school (calculus, fairly advanced statistics etc.). There were more advanced versions in some cases (e.g. logic, certain forms of planning), but in most cases I relied on skills I've learned during elementary/high school. There are a lot of presentations given before someone enters at university. > You would (should) outperform a history major in many of these tasks, and should be at a disadvantage in many others. Don't know, I think some might be pretty good at typing, certain forms of logic and perhaps project management as well.