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An interesting side note from one of the stories: "some universities with multiple colleges house [English and computer science] in different schools, making do
by gcv 14y ago
An interesting side note from one of the stories: "some universities with multiple colleges house [English and computer science] in different schools, making double majoring... impossible."
These universities demonstrate remarkable short-sightedness. Studying different subjects, particularly at the undergraduate level, makes people intellectually well-rounded and far more interesting. Imagine telling Leonardo that he cannot study painting and engineering at the same time.
- pyre 14y agoImagine telling the engineers that they might have to mingle with the mendicants! As an anecdote, at U of Michigan the arts college is called LS&A (Literature, Science and the Arts), but the Engineering school students referred to it as LS&Play (at least circa 2000).
- realitygrill 14y agothat moniker is still popular
- lambdasquirrel 14y agoAt CMU, we called Humanities and Social Sciences "high school studies." In retrospect, it was kind of immature and shortsighted. Social psych was one of the most valuable classes I took, and I found I was missing the kinds of literature classes I had in high school.
- majormajor 14y agoSomewhere I think I still have an "Imaginary Engineering" t-shirt from a couple of years spent as an IE major. Learned some fascinating stuff that was quite useful after switching to CS and has also been quite useful in my career. It's fascinating, in retrospect, the things people will come up with to try to make themselves feel superior.
- novum 14y agoI'm an alumnus of H&SS. I majored in Information Systems, which is (amusingly, I still think) in H&SS rather than the Tepper School of Business or the School of Computer Science. Sure, we had some occasional teasing ("H and Less Stress" was another one) but I found it invaluable to go through H&SS' general studies curriculum. Everyone in H&SS studies philosophy, history, communications, economics, writing, and math (among others) in addition to their core major classes.
- dgabriel 14y agoI thought it was H&Less Stress.
- ken 14y agoIn practice, at least at my university, this wasn't as big a deal as it sounds. A normal single-major doesn't mean you only take classes in one department. A double-major typically means you use major A's elective slots to take the core classes for major B, and vice versa. The upshot is that as a double-major, after sophomore year I would have no time to take any classes outside of those 2 departments. Counter-intuitive as it seems, staying a single-major allowed me to take a much greater variety of classes.
- pnathan 14y agoAgreed. It seems to me that the highest level of CS education possible is a combination of theoretical CS, programming, as well as a ferocious study of the humanities. The best and the highest goal (in my opinion, obviously) is to build a wide understanding of the world around you, integrating many different thought processes and situations into your daily existence. Programming is "easy". Software engineering is something we learn in industry. Why should we be trained in those - let's get educated?
- neutronicus 14y agoI was very happy that the School of Engineering allowed me to avoid humanities classes. I didn't much care for them. This was a common attitude among my classmates.
- Jach 14y ago> Imagine telling Leonardo that he cannot study painting and engineering at the same time. Bad example. Imagine Leonardo attending any modern day university for education. It's also a bad example because Leonardo did much, much more than painting and engineering. I do agree it's a bad idea to split students by degree by more than a few miles, though. I'd avoid any school that did that.