4 ms·

If you like college good for you. But the first two years are bullshit. The last two, you should be able to learn them on the job for many career tracks and tes

• vehemenz 4y ago
  Anyone making an argument against the value of philosophy usually fails because they don't have the analytical/argumentative toolkit to construct a good argument. Precisely because they didn't study philosophy. And if they had, they probably wouldn't be making the argument in the first place.
  • _8j50 4y ago
    I don't have anything against philosophy man, I just don't to be forced into debt and lose valuable time to learn someone else's philosophy. And even that a very western centric perspective. And how is that relevant to compsci undergrad?
  • 11101010001100 4y ago
    This is right. I try to make a point to STEM graduate students that it is called a Doctor of Philosophy for a good reason.
  • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    Most people can't construct a valid argument unless they have taken philosophy classes in college? That sounds like your argument is rather shoddy.
    • brewdad 4y ago
      What is your argument then? Saying nuh-uh you're wrong isn't a valid argument.
      • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Saying "that argument is faulty" is a valid argument about the other argument. It is not a valid argument about the original topic. I can say that the argument is invalid without even taking a position on the original topic. I can do so with extra appreciation of the irony when the original claim was "those people can't construct a valid argument".
• tedheath123 4y ago
  Was it the British that said so? AFAIK most British undergraduate courses don't have general education requirements
  • arethuza 4y ago
    Yeah - I did a CS degree at a UK university in the 1980s and it was 4 years of maths & CS stuff - pretty focused. Learning how to actually write code was something you were pretty much expected to pick up by yourself - most of the CS classes had requirements to do a personal project which was a large part of the marks for that class. Absolutely no way could any graduate from that course without having produced multiple applications in everything from assembler (6502 and 68000) through to Pascal on a mainframe (yuck) and C and Prolog on Unix minis and graphics programming in C on Atari STs - which was great fun. I loved it - although I did make a bit of a mess of my first year, but you just had to get through that - no impact on my final degree. Edit: I should explain - Scotland so first degrees are 4 years rather than the 3 years of the rest of the UK.
    • _8j50 4y ago
      Would love to take a look at the courses in that degree. That's my main hangup, I have such a thirst to learn college level compsci (not how to code but algorithms, theories,etc...) and crypto but spending two years writing english essays and philosophy presentations is no bueno.
      • arethuza 4y ago
        As far as I know most UK universities tend to have focused degrees - you sign up to a particular course and that area is what you focus on for 3 or 4 years. The good side of this is the focus on a particular area, the downside is that if you choose a course that you find that you don't like it can be difficult to transfer to other courses unless they are closely related. Mind you - my experience is 30+ years old at this point.
    • native_samples 4y ago
      I did a CS degree at a UK university in the early 2000s and we were forced to take two modules of non-CS in the first year. Due to the ridiculous way places were allocated (you literally had a single day in which to physically run around the university town trying to visit the offices and find courses with space), I ended up doing history and archaeology. Mostly, this reinforced the general impression that these subjects were extremely easy and involved next to no work, compared to CS. It didn't help me much in later life though.
• verall 4y ago
  There are tons of schools that have weak gen-ed requirements, which can often be tested out of either with high school AP's or as a college student with CLEPs. My undergrad was about 3.5 years of rigorous engineering education with roughly a semester of gen-eds spread over it. You should try to research the school and program before attending.
• yonaguska 4y ago
  I learned enough in the first two years to start working as far as compsci was concerned. Everything after that was supplemental. Depending on what you are studying and where you are studying, the first two years absolutely aren't bullshit. Yes, I had to take a bunch of classes that I wasn't interested in, but there's also no way that I would have been able to cram in all the math and compsci that I wanted to into 2 years. Especially as not everything can be learned concurrently. Like I said, I could have started working after the first two years, but I would have never gotten the depth that I did if I had stopped there.
• ryanklee 4y ago
  University is not trade school. There is more function there than simply learning to do the narrow job one believes the future may have in store for them. Here are some others: - Obtain fodder for sufficient individuation - Find sexual mates - Find platonic mates - Learn many disconnected things - Learn many connected things - Learn to take criticism in the open - Learn to render criticism in the open - Engage diversity - Engage similarity - Discover the value of value - Make mistakes in the open... recover - Watch others make mistakes in the open... help them recover - Learn to how to think - Learn the history of thinking - Become a robust citizen of the universe - Learn you are much smaller than you thought you were
  • _8j50 4y ago
    I am glad you like those things but for most people an undergrad degree is a piece of paper and a line on the resume. If it does not help me with my job and future income it should not be mandatory for employers to require it. I have no problem with degrees not required by employers. If you apply at a tech company and get rejected because of lack of undergrad degree then are you saying becoming "a robust citizen of the universe" and finding sexual mates was why?
    • BeetleB 4y ago
      > If it does not help me with my job and future income it should not be mandatory for employers to require it. And you've pinpointed the problem - it's not with universities but with employers.
      • _8j50 4y ago
        It's both I think. I can understand employers wanting employees to know more than leetcode for example. English/writing would help having good documentation for example. The current undergrad regime is too broad is my argument. I am not a coder but in my field undergrads are not very well prepared to enter the workforce.
  • andreilys 4y ago
• corrral 4y ago
  > We put up with 12 years of random but generally useful things forced on us. Once we decide a career as adults, information not directly useful to the job we will be working should be optional. It is optional. You just can't get a bachelor's degree without doing that, because that degree indicates completion of a broader course of work than you're interested in. Bonus: auditing classes is usually cheaper.
• Rumudiez 4y ago
  This is a benefit of getting a BFA. BA has the fewest credit hours in your major, BS has more, but BFA requires the most. Out of 4 years in my program I only took 3 classes unrelated to my major and didn’t have to pay my college for any sort of P.E. class. A decade later and I see plenty of people working in my field with BA and BS degrees who still didn’t know even basic things because their college programs were so sidetracked with these credit requirements.
• davidgay 4y ago
  > Articulate for me exactly why biology, chemistry, philosophy,etc... are neccesary for a Compsci or IT degree? In Europe (AFAIK this is very broadly true) you're expected to have covered these in high school, and university is for focusing on a single field (and its prerequisites, so lots of math in engineering fields, e.g.)
  • _8j50 4y ago
    See that makes sense to me. But dare I ask why europe is not 2 years then? Do US colleges teach less because in the US, you could be studying oceanology or electrical engineering and the first two years are more or less same courses. In HS, I mostly showed up to class and cruised through with minimal effort last two years bc it wasn't that interesting or challenging.
    • davidgay 4y ago
      At least for my undergrad (CS, at www.epfl.ch), the answer was basically "more math" (2 years of). The usual generic answer was "it's approximately like a US master's". And at least for the EPFL today, they've essentially formalised your suggestion and that master's equivalence: you get a "bachelor's" after 3 years. And you can optionally continue 2 more years and get a "master's".
• Ekaros 4y ago
  I rather find it strange as here those subjects are covered in High School, to different depths depending where student is aiming at. This might be too early, but in general it opens up avenues to Universities or Applied Schools. Where goal is to teach focused things in certain fields.
• abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  People with CompSci degrees have changed the world in the past few decades. Many of those changes are good, but they have also built tools that are being used to undermine democratic processes, to cause wide-scale depression, the violation of the people's rights, etc. The reason is exactly because people with CompSci already do not study enough philosophy, ethics, sociology and hence do not have any idea that you have to think about the consequences of the tools you build on society. Or do great evil.