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All of this makes sense if you only pay attention to what universities say they are instead of how they function in society. Functionally, companies and student
by janalsncm 4y ago
All of this makes sense if you only pay attention to what universities say they are instead of how they function in society. Functionally, companies and students treat university as some combination of trade school and expensive credentialing system. A bachelor’s degree is both a signifier and predictor of class. They are expensive, and every office job requires one at a minimum.
The vast majority of CS students aren’t interested in the minutia of theory, they’re interested in reliably getting a job in a field that will let them have a family. And schools know it too, which is why a degree can command and justify a six figure cost. All of the saccharine scholarly platitudes aside, the cost of learning about Homer or first year calculus keeps going up every year.
Forcing students to pay for their own vocational training isn’t stupid and short sighted at all. It’s a form of industry-wide tacit collusion [1] and it’s working.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_collusion
- retrocryptid 4y agoI've been thinking this for at least a decade and thought I was going crazy. Thx for verifying there are others thinking similar "crazy" thoughts. I wasn't going insane, I was just going Marxist. (Which sounds like an insult, but isn't.) More specifically, it seems that you can easily get a load of cash for your startup if you're a Stanford CS grad. Then you grow up, have a couple of liquidity events and put some of your cash in a VC fund managed by a college pal. Then you get asked to listen to a few pitches from young kids and you spend the hour talking about fun times on the quad and in Terman hall. And you vote to give them some cash 'cause they seem like nice kids. Don't get me wrong. I'm as committed to perpetuating classiest stereotypes as the next guy. But it all seems a bit financially and socially incestuous.
- pnt12 4y agoI think it's very short sighted: tech stacks come and go, you can't find people who know all the ones you picked. People who know their foundations and have applied them to practice (no matter the tech stack) will be better prepared. That's why boot camps haven't really taken off: most students can reproduce what they learned but will struggle growing up. They learned the tech before the theory!
- janalsncm 4y agoI don’t think OP is advocating teaching tech stacks. OP is advocating generalized software engineering vocational training.